Breathe in. Breathe out.

Trust not in where you are going but where you are in this moment.

Life is messy. Life is hard. It is embracing the moments in between. Peaks of sunshine in the shadows. Light and hope in the darkness.

We so easily try to reach for what is easy. What satisfies our cravings. Simple pleasures. An infinite, lasting amount of joy that cannot be taken away.

But sadly, it can in a moment.

Through loss and grief I have learned that life is so much more than living for the mundane or seeking something temporary to satisfy my soul.

I lost my husband in February of 2020, prior to Covid when he passed from melanoma. From diagnosis to when he passed was a blur of three months. He had been sick for a few months prior with no answers and when we got it, it slapped us in the face.

But every day I looked into his eyes and into my children’s eyes and knew that it was in those eyes I would find the reason to breathe. And to keep going.

In the space that followed his death I went through the motions of life. Barely connecting the dots. But I knew that life wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about my loss. It wasn’t about my grief that weighed me down like a thick, heavy blanket after my two young daughters went to sleep each night.

Life was and still is about the moments in between the heavy. It was about the laughter my girls brought me each and every day. It was about the neighbors and friends who showed up for me when I could barely keep myself and my children alive when the world was shrouded in fear of a virus.

It was about long walks and rays of sunshine and music playing and birds singing even when I felt the storm clouds inside.

It was and still is about simple prayers and so much grace for myself from a loving creator who gives me a quiet strength each and every day.

It is about trusting in who I am and where I am made to be. It is about knowing we cannot plan for circumstances and that life rarely turns out the way we expect it to.

But even when we find ourselves buried under the weight of it all, that doesn’t mean we can’t find hope in the very moment we are afraid of. There is beauty if we open our eyes and our hearts to it, but we have to let it in.

Since 2020, I have found more hope than I ever thought possible. The biggest lesson I have learned in this life is to not give up when it gets hard, but to lean into the mess. To know that even the biggest challenges we face are temporary. It is so easy to let our circumstances weigh us down or stress us out. Even when I haven’t seen the way out, I have known to trust in someone so much greater than myself. I have known that I am made for and worthy of beautiful things.

When we trust in where we are, when we open our eyes and our hearts to hope, it is easier to see the gifts that surround us. The light and beauty offered through grace even when the journey is hard.

So let go, my friend. Lean in. See the beauty that surrounds you. You’ve got this.