What does moving forward actually look like?
I used to think I would recognize it when it happened.
That maybe there would be some defining moment when grief loosened its grip and I would suddenly think, Okay. I made it. I’m on the other side.
But healing hasn’t looked anything like that.
Sometimes moving forward looks like crying because you desperately miss your husband.
And sometimes it looks like sitting on a beach in Hawaii with your four kids, staring at the ocean and thinking…
How is this my life?
Sometimes it looks like remembering everything you lost.
And sometimes it looks like laughing so hard with your kids that, for just a moment, you forget how much your heart has hurt.
Sometimes it’s both on the very same day.
I thought I was taking my kids to Hawaii to make memories.
I didn’t realize how much God was going to ask me to let go while I was there.
Not let go of Q.
Not let go of the life we had.
Not let go of the love that built this family.
But maybe let go of my need for everything to remain the way it once was.
There’s a difference.
And somewhere between five plane tickets, three Hawaiian islands, beaches, long drives, birthdays, waterfalls, black sand, way too much banana bread, laughter, tears and quiet moments staring out over the Pacific Ocean…
I started to understand it.
This trip wasn’t just a vacation.
It was another step in our healing.
And maybe even a lesson in letting go.
The Trip We Chose Together
This trip really started long before we ever boarded an airplane.
Losing Q changed the way I think about time.
Before loss, it is so easy to believe there will always be more.
More birthdays.
More Christmas mornings.
More vacations.
More dinners around the table.
More ordinary Tuesdays.
More chances to say, We’ll do that next year.
Until suddenly you learn, in the hardest possible way, that none of us were ever promised next year.
After losing Q—and then losing my mom—I became painfully aware of how precious the people standing right in front of me are.
So when my kids had the opportunity to choose something special, we chose memories.
We chose Hawaii.
And looking back now, I think I needed this trip just as much as they did.
Because my kids aren’t little anymore.
Kale just turned 22.
Ella is about to turn 20.
Fisher is heading into his senior year.
And Lily somehow isn’t my little girl anymore either.
They’re becoming adults.
They have dreams, relationships, plans and lives of their own.
And that’s exactly what I’ve spent their entire lives raising them to do.
But nobody really prepares a mom for how bittersweet it is when the things you prayed for start happening.
Someday vacations may include spouses.
Then maybe grandchildren.
Careers will dictate schedules.
Holidays may be divided between families.
Life will expand.
Beautifully.
Exactly the way it’s supposed to.
But differently.
Someone left a comment on one of my pictures during this trip that stopped me in my tracks.
She reminded me how special this tiny window of time is—the season when my kids are grown enough to experience these adventures with me, but haven’t all started families of their own yet.
For right now, I still get pieces of undivided time with all four of them.
And wow.
That one got me.
Because grief has already taught me what it feels like to look backward and wish I had appreciated something just a little more while I had it.
I don’t want to make that mistake again.
Oahu: Where the Past Met the Present
Oahu was probably where the past and present collided most.
We arrived in Waikiki, watched the sunset, swam, explored and started settling into vacation mode.
Then we went to Pearl Harbor.
The last time I had been there was with Q.
On our honeymoon.
Twenty-seven years earlier.
There are places that hold memories in a way you don’t expect.
You can walk into them decades later and suddenly a much younger version of yourself feels incredibly close.
I wasn’t the same woman walking through Pearl Harbor this time.
The girl who had stood there with her brand-new husband all those years ago could never have imagined the life ahead of her.
Four children.
A million memories.
Hard seasons.
Beautiful seasons.
A love story I thought would grow old with me.
And eventually…
A goodbye I never thought I would have to say.
But I wasn’t walking through those memories alone.
This time I had our children beside me.
That felt sacred.
Oahu also gave us so much laughter.
We drove the North Shore.
Ate Giovanni’s shrimp.
Stopped at Waimea Bay.
Saw Kualoa Beach.
Swam at Lanikai.
We surfed—and somehow all of us actually got up on the boards.
Although our poor friend Kerrissa ended up with a surfboard to the eye and stitches, so I’m not sure she would rate the adventure quite as highly as the rest of us. 😂
We laughed.
We explored.
We were tired.
We made memories.
And then came one of those moments I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
We had a sunset dinner at the hotel where Q and I had honeymooned.
There were five of us.
But the table was set for six.
I just stared at that empty place for a moment.
There are things grief does to you that are almost impossible to explain unless you’ve experienced it.
An empty chair can just be an empty chair.
Until suddenly it isn’t.
For years, I think I believed healing would eventually mean those moments stopped hurting.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Healing isn’t reaching a place where you no longer feel the ache.
Maybe healing is being able to feel the ache and the gratitude at the same time.
To miss him and still laugh with our children.
To remember what happened at that hotel 27 years earlier and still be fully present for the sunset happening right in front of me.
To honor the life we had without refusing to live the life God has still given us.
There were five of us sitting at that table.
And yes, I felt the absence of the sixth.
But I also looked around and saw four extraordinary pieces of the life Q and I built together.
Maybe that is what moving forward looks like.
Not erasing what came before.
But allowing the past and present to sit at the same table.
The Big Island: Feeling Alive Again
Then came the Big Island.
And birthdays.
Mine first.
Forty-eight.
I have an entirely different relationship with birthdays now.
Aging used to be something I joked about.
Now?
Aging feels like a gift.
Because I know people I desperately love who didn’t get another birthday.
So I want every single one God gives me.
Kale made me breakfast that morning.
Then we climbed into the Jeep, took the top down, turned up some Guns N’ Roses and drove around the island with the wind blowing everywhere.
We stopped for local banana bread.
We explored.
We went to the beach.
And that night I did something I never imagined would become part of my 48th birthday story.
I swam with manta rays in the Pacific Ocean at night.
At 48 years old, after seasons when I genuinely wondered how I was going to survive the life I had been handed, there I was floating in the darkness while these enormous, beautiful creatures glided beneath me.
I felt tiny.
I felt amazed.
I felt grateful.
And I felt incredibly alive.
That mattered.
Because there was a time when feeling alive almost made me feel guilty.
How strange grief is.
You spend so much time begging God to help you survive, and then sometimes when you finally begin living again, you question whether you’re allowed to enjoy it.
But that night I did.
The very next day was Kale’s 22nd birthday.
Back-to-back birthdays have always been one of my favorite things about being his mom.
So we celebrated his life by exploring even more of the island. This time he drove!
22 looked good on him… still can't believe my baby is 22!
Waterfalls.
Hilo.
Rainbow Falls.
Akaka Falls.
Volcanoes National Park.
Black sand beach.
Adventure after adventure.
And standing on an island literally formed by fire, I couldn’t help but think about our own story.
Volcanic activity changes the landscape forever.
It destroys.
It creates.
It reshapes.
And eventually, life grows in places that once looked completely devastated.
I would never call what happened to our family beautiful.
I would never say losing Q—or losing my mom—was somehow necessary so something better could grow.
I don’t believe that.
But I am learning this:
Beautiful things can still grow in a life that has been devastated.
Those are two very different statements.
The fire changed us.
Loss changed us.
We will never be the family we were before.
But changed does not have to mean destroyed.
God can still grow something here.
Maui: Slowing Down Enough to Notice
By the time we reached Maui, I think my soul was finally slowing down enough to realize what was happening inside me.
And almost immediately, Maui gave me another one of those full-circle moments I never saw coming.
We pulled up to the Royal Lahaina, walked inside, and suddenly something felt strangely familiar.
And then it hit me.
I had been here before. With Q.
Years ago, Q and I stayed at this very resort during one of the biggest turning points in our lives. It was around the time he made the decision to walk away from his 9-to-5 career in banking and take a chance on this crazy entrepreneurial life with me.
I remember the uncertainty. The excitement. The Are we really doing this? feeling of that season.
We had no idea where that decision would lead us. We were simply taking a leap of faith together and trusting God with what came next.
And now, all these years later, I was standing in the same place.
Without him.
But with the four kids we raised together.
Living a life neither one of us could have possibly imagined when we first walked through those doors.
It was surreal.
I hadn’t intentionally chosen the Royal Lahaina because of that memory. I didn’t even realize it was the same resort until I was standing there.
But there I was again.
The first time I walked through those doors, I was stepping into an unknown future with Q beside me.
This time, I was stepping into another unknown future without him.
Maybe that’s why it hit me so deeply.
Because if there was one thing Q and I learned during those entrepreneurial years, it was that sometimes you have to step forward before you know exactly how everything is going to turn out.
Apparently, I’m still learning that lesson.
Just in a way I never expected.
And then Maui gave us plenty of opportunities to simply live.
We did the Road to Hana.
And yes…
It was long.
And yes…
We were exhausted enough that some of us fell asleep during the tour. 😂
Thank goodness someone riding with us had Dramamine, because I’m not entirely sure Ella would have made it otherwise.
But we also tasted strawberry guava.
Fresh banana bread.
Coconut.
Huli Huli lunch plates.
We saw bamboo and waterfalls.
Swam at a black sand beach.
Jumped into the water.
Took in scenery that sometimes didn’t even look real.
And somewhere in all of that, I stopped thinking so much about our itinerary.
I started watching my kids.
Really watching them.
Their personalities.
Their laughter.
The way they interact with each other.
The adults they are becoming.
And suddenly, a comment someone had left me about this season of life came rushing back.
She reminded me that there is something beautiful about this tiny window of time when my children are old enough to experience the world alongside me, but haven’t all branched off and created families of their own yet.
Right now, I still get them like this.
And someday, I won’t.
Not because anything bad happened.
But because something good did.
They grew up.
And isn’t that the strange ache of motherhood?
I’ve spent their entire lives talking about giving my kids roots and wings.
Roots so they always know who they are, Whose they are, and where home is.
Wings so they have the courage to become who God created them to be.
But there’s a part nobody tells you about.
Eventually…
They use the wings.
And the very thing you spent years praying for can break your mama heart a little.
Maybe that’s another kind of letting go God is teaching me.
Not losing.
Not forgetting.
Not closing a chapter and pretending it didn’t matter.
But loving something enough to loosen my grip and trust God with what comes next.
Maybe There Was More I Needed to Let Go Of
I think grief can make you grip things tighter.
When something you thought would always be there disappears without warning, part of you wants to grab hold of everything that remains.
Your children.
Your traditions.
Your home.
Your memories.
The way things have always been.
Because maybe if you hold tightly enough, nothing else can change.
But that’s not how life works.
My children are supposed to grow.
Our family is supposed to change.
New people will eventually join it.
There will be new traditions.
New homes.
New babies someday, Lord willing.
New adventures.
New chapters.
And none of that betrays what came before.
Maybe part of my healing is realizing I cannot spend the rest of my life trying to hold everything in place simply because I’ve already experienced the pain of losing too much.
That isn’t living.
And maybe that is what I was actually letting go of in Hawaii.
Not Q.
Never Q.
I was letting go of the belief that enjoying my life means leaving him behind.
Letting go of the guilt that sometimes comes with happiness.
Letting go of the expectation that our family should still look the way it once did.
Letting go of my need to keep my children close enough that somehow I can protect myself from ever experiencing loss again.
Letting go of the future I thought I was guaranteed.
Letting go of the fear that loving the life I have somehow dishonors the life I lost.
I’m not letting go of Q.
I’m letting go of the idea that I have to remain the woman I was on the day he died in order to prove how deeply I loved him.
I don’t.
He knew.
God knows.
I know.
And that love changed me forever.
And because of that love, it will allow me to love even deeper again.
This Wasn’t Closure
Someone commented that this trip seemed like it might bring me some peaceful “closure.”
It was an incredibly kind comment, and I understood exactly what she meant.
But that word stayed with me.
Closure.
I don’t think I’m looking for closure anymore.
I’m not sure there is closure when you’ve deeply loved someone.
How do you close a 27-year love story?
How do you close fatherhood?
How do you close the chapter on the person who helped create the four children sitting beside you?
How do I “close” my relationship with my mom when I still catch myself wanting to pick up the phone and call her?
I don’t think we do.
Maybe what we find instead is a way to integrate the love and the loss into who we are becoming.
Q belongs to my past.
But his love also helped create my present.
It created these children.
It shaped me.
It influenced the way I love, parent, laugh, work and believe.
I don’t need to close that door in order to walk through another one.
And maybe that is one of the most freeing things God has taught me.
I Can Miss Him and Still Love My Life
There were quiet moments on this trip when I sat by the water and missed Q terribly.
I wished he could see our kids.
I wished he could have watched them surf.
I wished he could have been there for those back-to-back birthdays.
I wished I could look over at him and laugh about something ridiculous one of the kids had done.
I wished Mom were home waiting for the phone call where I told her everything.
There are still moments when the ache feels unbelievably close.
But there were also moments when I looked around and thought:
My life is still beautiful.
Not because everything is perfect.
Not because I would have chosen this story.
Not because grief disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
But because God has continued placing beauty right beside the broken pieces.
I can miss my husband.
I can miss my mom.
I can ache for everything my children lost.
And I can also celebrate turning 48.
Watch my son turn 22.
Drink a piña colada on the beach.
Drive with the top down and GNR playing way too loud.
Eat ridiculous amounts of banana bread.
Jump into waterfalls.
Swim with manta rays.
Watch my kids surf.
Laugh until my stomach hurts.
Love.
Dream.
Travel.
Live.
Even Learning to Love again,
Those things are not betrayals of grief.
They are evidence that grief did not get the final word.
And Then God Gave Me the Ending to This Story
I thought I knew how I was going to end this blog.
And then we went to church our last morning in Maui.
It happened to be three years since the devastating Maui fires.
We attended an outdoor service at Calvary Chapel, overlooking the ocean, surrounded by people who know something about loss.
Families in this church lost homes. Some were displaced and are still rebuilding three years later. And they even lost members of their congregation in the fires.
Then the pastor told us something that immediately got my attention.
He had planned to preach something completely different.
But sometime during the night, he woke up and felt led to change his entire sermon.
And as I sat there listening, I couldn’t stop crying.
Because after spending this entire trip thinking about healing, loss, letting go and what it means to keep moving forward when life looks nothing like you thought it would…
he began talking about storms.
About fire.
About trusting God when you don’t understand what He is doing.
About looking back at His faithfulness when what is in front of you looks bleak.
And about how the storms we survive were never meant to become stories we keep to ourselves.
He took us to Isaiah 43:
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you… When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.”
Not if you pass through the waters.
When.
Not a promise that we will never experience the fire.
A promise that He will be there when we do.
Sitting there, looking at an ocean beside a community that knows firsthand what it means to walk through literal fire, I couldn’t help but think about the fires our own family has walked through.
Losing Q.
Losing my mom.
Watching my children grieve.
Learning how to become a family of five when we were supposed to be six.
Trying to figure out who I am when so much of the life I knew changed almost overnight.
And one of the questions from the sermon hit especially hard:
“Lord, what would my testimony be from Your point of view?”
Not What happened to me?
Not Why did You allow this?
But what story is God writing through it?
The pastor said something else I scribbled down:
Your story is not just for you.
Your storm isn’t just about you.
People need to see you trusting God in it.
And suddenly I thought about this blog.
About why I’ve shared so much of this journey even when it would have been easier to disappear until everything felt neatly healed.
Maybe this is why.
Not because I have figured grief out.
Not because I’ve arrived somewhere.
And certainly not because God answered every prayer the way I desperately wanted Him to.
But because I can stand on the other side of some prayers that weren’t answered the way I wanted and still tell you:
The Lord is good.
Nahum 1:7 says:
“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.”
He was good before Q died.
He was good on the worst day of my life.
He was good when my mom was sick.
He was good when I had absolutely no idea how I was going to keep going.
And He is good here.
In Hawaii.
With my kids.
Watching sunsets.
Celebrating birthdays.
Laughing again.
Making new memories.
Learning to love the life that is in front of me while still missing the life that was behind me.
He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Maybe that was what I needed to hear at the end of this trip.
God never promised me a life without storms.
He promised me His presence in them.
And when I can’t see what He’s doing, I can look backward—not to stay there, but to remember.
Look at what God has already done.
Look at what He has carried us through.
And then came the words from Isaiah 43 that have followed me through so much of this season:
“See, I am doing a new thing.”
There it was again.
Maybe moving forward isn’t about finally being strong enough to leave the old thing behind.
Maybe it’s trusting God enough to believe that He can do a new thing without the old thing becoming any less sacred.
Q is sacred to me.
Our marriage is sacred to me.
The family we built is sacred to me.
My mom is sacred to me.
None of that has to disappear for me to receive what God still has ahead.
And sitting under those trees beside the Pacific Ocean, worshipping with people who have walked through their own unimaginable fire, I felt like God was reminding me one more time:
I’ve got you.
Keep going.
Keep trusting.
Keep telling the story.
Because maybe someone reading this is standing in the middle of their own storm right now.
Maybe you’re asking the same question I have asked more times than I can count:
God, how could You allow this to happen to me?
I don’t have an answer that will make your storm make sense.
But I can tell you what I’m learning from mine.
Draw near to Him.
When you can’t see Him, go back and remember where you’ve seen Him before.
When you’re afraid, call on Him.
When you don’t have enough faith for tomorrow, ask Him for enough for today.
And don’t quit.
Because this morning I was reminded that faith begets faith.
Someone else may need to see you trust God in your storm so they can believe He will meet them in theirs.
Maybe our stories were never ours to keep.
Maybe our scars become testimonies.
And maybe that’s why I’m still telling mine.
So What Does Moving Forward Actually Look Like?
Maybe it looks like this.
Five plane tickets.
Three islands.
Four children who really aren’t children anymore.
Birthdays.
Waterfalls.
Black sand.
Manta rays.
Too much banana bread.
Long car rides.
Exhausted naps.
Laughter.
Tears.
Stories about Dad.
Memories of Meme.
New memories without them.
And a mama slowly realizing that one does not erase the other.
I came to Hawaii thinking I was giving my children a trip they would remember forever.
I think God gave me something too.
A reminder.
Moving forward doesn’t mean leaving Q behind.
I couldn’t leave him behind if I tried.
He’s woven into these kids.
He’s woven into me.
He’s woven into the story that brought all five of us to Hawaii in the first place.
But I don’t believe God is asking me to spend the rest of my life staring backward just to prove that what Q and I had mattered.
It mattered.
It will always matter.
And so does this.
This life.
These kids.
These moments.
This woman I am becoming.
And whatever God still has ahead.
Maybe healing isn’t finally being able to let go of the past.
Maybe healing is learning to carry the love with you without allowing the loss to keep you from reaching for what is ahead.
Maybe moving forward is simply opening your hands.
Thanking God for what was.
Being fully present for what is.
And trusting Him with what will be all the while opening my heart to love again.
I can miss Q terribly and still have a beautiful full life.
Both can be true.
And somewhere on this trip, I think I finally gave myself permission to believe that. ❤️
But there’s another piece of this story I haven’t fully shared yet.
Because those words—choosing life, choosing hope, choosing happiness—carry more weight for me than most people know.
Just months before this trip, near the end of my mom’s life, she held my hand, looked me straight in the eyes and told me what she wanted for me after she was gone.
She wanted me to choose happy.
At the time, I’m not sure I completely understood what she was giving me.
I think I do now.
And that conversation is the story I want to tell you next.
P.S. — Because Trips Like This Don’t Just Happen ❤️
And one last little thank you to my sister and Shenandoah Travel Company for helping put together what truly became the trip of a lifetime.
Three islands. So many adventures. So many details I didn’t have to figure out on my own. 😂 But more importantly, memories with my kids that I know I’ll carry forever.
I thought she was helping me plan a trip to Hawaii.
I don’t think either of us realized she was helping us plan a little piece of our healing, too.
Thank you, sis. This one meant more than you know. ❤️
