We all know most of the time that change can be hard. We get used to our routine, the status quo. I do this, you do that. Over time, we know what to expect. Processes change at work – sometimes we’re happy about that, but sometimes we think “Why change it?”

Things change because that’s how we evolve… we survive.

I no longer know what to expect. I need to know how to survive. I’m pretty confident I will. But that doesn’t mean I like my personal change or ever wanted things to change. When people are married and going through trouble in their relationship, there are options. They can agree to go their separate ways and divorce, or they can agree to go through counseling, and they can agree to stay married… but when a life-threatening illness comes to one of us…. Our options are limited.

You ask for a divorce, you ask to be broken up, you divide things … and yet… no matter who it is tougher for it.. you survive… move on… but you’re still alive!

With illness and death, you’re left with very little choice in the outcome.

We never asked for one of us to die from cancer so we could live apart.

We never hoped one of us would die so that we could live a life as a single person.

We never wanted our status to change… and yet it did, and it was out of our control.

This may be why we sometimes hate change. My life now goes on without my best friend, my husband. And there was never a memo saying that our household staff needed to be reduced.

I find myself changing things here in our house daily… all the time… creating change, and I wonder why?

I rearrange my furniture fairly often. Steve was not fond of this but he didn’t hate it either… he just couldn’t understand why I would need to rearrange everything. I now find myself rearranging and configuring another way to use that space because I’ve always done that on occasions when I wanted to refresh a room. Or am I expecting a bigger change?

Bigger than losing Steve, am I hoping he’ll come back to complain about the furniture being rearranged?

It’s different now, because I know he won’t come to me and complain. But is it my subconscious wishing that things here were the same and never changed? That I had a choice in him dying… but I didn’t, and neither did he.

This my friends, is the hardest change to endure… knowing and watching your loved one die and knowing there was nothing you could change.

Steve’s birthday was on December 2nd. It was his first birthday in Heaven. If he were here, we would have had our own personal celebration… and I thought about how this special day has changed now. But I’m grateful that on this day in 1953, I was given a gift to be delivered to me in my life. And that makes me love change.