On The Eve of 7 Weeks

Thank you, Katrina, for this lovely quote. It's been nearly 7 weeks. She's been gone longer than we even knew about the cancer. What a strange new world it is without her. Empty, sad, and raw. We all miss her, every second. Times flood in when you realize she's really gone, and the sickness in the pit of your stomach hits. It's a familiar comfort of nausea. The tears are farther between, though certainly not fewer. I think we've all done something when we think of her up there laughing at us for what we've done, or crying with us in our pain, or reveling in that perfect moment of peace with us. I often think of those she's now in contact with, and I know she's so happy. Her good friend Audrey Drury just met up with her a week or so ago. I know they are having a good catching up moment. But now on to the quote. Such perfect phrasing for what we have been through. I'm sure many of you can relate this to some point in your life. For that, I'm sorry, but I know I personally wouldn't change a thing.


"We don't have life experiences so that we can simply endure them. We must endure them well so that those experiences do change us. That is the purpose of those experiences. If we don't change through them, then they are simply tragic. But if they do change us then they are what I like to call "difficult blessings." They are blessings that we would never wish for, that we would never wish upon anyone else. But if we are honest with ourselves we realize that the best attributes we have, our love, our compassion, our desire to serve, to do better, to be better couldn't have come about to the same degree without those experiences. And so, while we would gladly do away with the experience we would never trade what the experience has done to us. Unfortunately, we cannot have one without the other."