“Survivors” used to make me think about people who have lived through shipwrecks and plane crashes.  These were people who had experienced the ravages of tragedy first hand and had lived through it.

Right after Davey was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016, people started calling my family ‘survivors’.  In the fog of last year, it didn’t make sense to me.  Now it does –  I definitely feel like a survivor.

Sometimes, my life since the day Davey was killed seems like a train wreck that hasn’t stopped yet.  Railroad cars filled with my hopes and dreams keep coming.

But the track broke last year,

and the cars fall off the track –

one by one,

down…

into a deep,

dark

ravine.

There’s a big pile of my broken dreams at the bottom of this ravine.

And the cars keep coming,

they keep falling.

The pile is growing bigger.

Other days, it feels more like we were all on a ship that was hit by a huge hurricane.  The storm was totally unexpected.  It was huge and ferocious. When our ship crashed into the rocks, we were washed up on an unknown shore – missing one very special person.

We landed in a place we never wanted to be.  But we’re here together.  The old ship is gone.

We’re all figuring out how to survive in this new place.

With a heart that is broken into a million pieces and with a huge hole in my life, I’m figuring out how to not just survive in this new place, but to thrive.  God had a purpose for bringing Davey home and he has a purpose for leaving me here.

The same can be said for you.

There’s a reason.

We survive for a purpose.

#8144loveyou