This week, one year ago, the hardest year of my life began.  I have never lost so many I care about so deeply in such quick succession.  My ugliest nightmares just kept coming true one after the other and it isn’t like in the movies.  In real life, the sad parts are so much more than a three minute montage.

I’m soul weary.  My heart is sore and doesn’t want to be touched.  I have felt deep loss before and I know that grief comes when it comes, over and over as time passes.  I also know that so long as I don’t hold onto it too tightly; it will make its way away again.

I remember two years ago when my husband and I were searching for a house while living in a ground floor apartment.  The first time he took me here the snow, silence, and bare branches of the trees made me feel like we’d gone through the wardrobe and come to Narnia.  He pulled in and turned off the car while I stared at the dark woods, the old, rock walls, and large fields imagining raising our children, riding our horses, playing with our dogs, and living out our dreams.

It felt like the perfect place to make those dreams reality.

I’ve been wanting to write for months, but every time a new idea came to mind and I sat at my laptop, my fingertips could only tap out my grief.

Then, last week, I was out walking with my Sunshine and our dog and I looked up to see the above image.  In that moment, I realized that while grief and that particular loneliness brought on by irreplaceable loss are still here, so are joy and peace and contentment.  This beautiful place has been holding us close and giving me reasons to be happy even through the darkest and most difficult days of my life.

Everything I saw in my mind on that blank, snowy landscape two years ago is coming to pass.  We’re home.

And my fingertips finally have something to say other than “I miss you.”