I don’t know if there is anything like reading old love letters and journal entries to give you perspective and renew your energy to cherish and lead your children well. Especially on rainy days (weeks!), when little sis has a cold, and you are a stay-at-home-mom with no one coming home to you at night. Ahhh! Reading how he saw you and valued you, and believed you could honestly get through anything together, and become stronger and more full of joy in the process. Reading your own letters, and how you treasured him, and saw him, and yes, really challenged him too. How you both wanted to live a life as close to God as possible on this earth. And then you look at these kids. His kids. His treasures. Oh, I want to do this well.

It’s been a year and a half, and I feel like I’ve been a single mom and “widow” forever sometimes. Our days together and ebb and flow of DAILY routine seems like a lifetime ago. The actual interaction of life on life seems almost impossible. Was it real? Letters and journals and pictures help. I started my friend Jolina Petersheim’s book “How the Light Gets In” last night, because it came in the mail yesterday afternoon. It’s a modern retelling of the story of Ruth, and I stayed up until 3AM to finish it. Last year, Jolina asked if she could use a phrase Trevor spoke to me, that I had written about. After I had been grumpy and mean, he was still kind to me. I protested, and he said “Sweetheart, we left fair at the alter.” This is woven into her book, though the storyline is not the same as mine. Seeing it in print last night was so good for my soul. Seeing the response of people on her page to that line blesses me even more. The wisdom that was in that man ran so deep. This was just a comment in passing, and yet it is so profound. He was.

Then, this afternoon I was tidying our apartment, because my amazing in-laws are coming to visit, and decided to unpack of box of books. Absentmindedly picking up journals and finding letters. Ooooh how close I feel to my favorite man today.

A year and a half out, and his wisdom and love still touch my soul. I am a different person because of Trevor Ryan Floyd.

If I would have known that I would have been a young widow with children at 30, I may have NOT started dating this odd and wonderful man at 23. I’m so glad we do not know what’s in our story. Because I am SO, SO glad I chose him and he chose me.

It is MUCH better to love and to have lost than to have never loved at all. (Though I really, really wish we didn’t have to lose at all.)

Sayings.