A Letter to Tod

My Dearest Tod,

“If the LORD had not been my help,

My soul would soon have dwelt in the abode of silence.

If I should say, “My foot has slipped,”

Thy lovingkindness, O LORD, will hold me up.

When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,

Thy consolations delight my soul!” Psalm 94:19-22

Today, as I sit here with your absence pressing in, my mind drifting back to these days a year ago in the hospital, I am amazed that life has relentlessly moved us along without you here. I am astounded and so very grateful God has walked with or rather carried us moment by moment in this journey since you entered the presence of Jesus a year ago.  I could have never imagined myself over the last year in this strange landscape of loss, but amazingly God has graciously filled it with Himself, compelling me into His presence with His powerfully intimate grace and mercy. He continues to sustain and help us thrive with His merciful love and strength as we move into each day, though the missing of you never ever relents. 

There have been some deep truths that have begun to richly marinate within my heart over this last year. One being, that getting through the first year with all the big firsts is a definite challenge, but that isn’t what I have found the most difficult. Rather it is the simple truth that life keeps moving forward, but nothing is every going to fill that space of you in my life. 

It is the very unique image of God that you bore that is so dearly missed, His nature within your essence, God’s creative and brilliant design and gifting of your individuality and how that reflected God in His glory, mercy, and love to me and our family. That to me is what has been the deeper challenge for my heart over these last twelve months. It is the missing of your very personhood in my life. We have and will continue to make it through this life, with joy, tears, and laughter because life is a beautiful gift everyday that we are given it. But the missing of you is what has increased and there is no getting over that. This is where I find rest for my heart in the truth that this is a short season of time in relation to the length of eternity together in God's presence. Someday, us all together in God's restored heaven and earth brought together, to work, live, and worship in His presence. Something my soul longs for deeply and daily now unlike ever before.

You know how over our years together, I always gave you such grief about how fast you walked.  On any family vacation or Disney park, somehow you always walked on up ahead of me and the kids. It was as if there was a race and you were trying to be the first one to get to our destination. You couldn’t contain your energy as you moved along so quickly. There I would be, bringing up the rear, trying to move the kids along a little faster just in an attempt to keep up with you. Eventually, we would all arrive at our destination everyone intact, though I would be thoroughly frustrated that you couldn’t walk a little slower or be a little more aware of the little people we had in tow.

But now, as I think back, I believe the Lord was giving me a bit of a peek into the days ahead that the kids and I are living right now. You, yet again, are the one continuing to energetically lead the way ahead for our family and, of course, you have arrived first, and here am I, still trying to bring up the rear, making sure our little people keep moving forward on the trail you have blazed ahead for us. This time, though, I’m choosing to embrace the “bringing up the rear” role, as I was apparently being groomed for it in all those moments before.

The times of wanting to talk to you, to call you, to hug you are so numerous I can’t even begin to count over the last year, and there are times I feel like I’m trying to catch my breath when I realize I can’t talk with you. You are so dearly and achingly missed, there are no words that begin to convey my depths of love and missing you.  I didn’t even know my heart had this wide a capacity to love you this much, but apparently it does. What an eye-opening gift to have been given to me over this last year, but also a painful one to bear.

I now painfully understand why, at times, elderly couples who are married for so long, some 50+ years together will often die just weeks or days apart, for when two souls become one, and then one dies, half of who you have become is simply gone. We had a brilliantly fast 26 years of marriage, souls intertwining through that time, and now there is the definite feeling of half of myself not here, half of our heart, our brain, and our memories unfortunately not present as they were before! All those intimate moments in a life shared and lived together that occur with your “only one,” now torn apart, half of our shared life is simply gone from my presence.  And while my life is and continues to be very full here and now, there is no filling in the Tod-shaped space of you in my life.

Yet while this year has been one of journeying without you here physically beside me, I also have never journeyed alone, as you undoubtedly know, for Jesus has been so palpably present, bearing for me and with me each moment day and night, never leaving my side with His protection and provision. I have been overwhelmed as the pains of loss have pressed in, at how strong, gracious, and merciful Jesus has been within it all.  I have experienced His relentless love, which continues to overwhelm me, and He has faithfully lifted my eyes up to behold Him over and over again in countless ways. Amidst the sorrowful missing of you, He has given Himself abundantly, filling up this loss with His peace, joy, and hope that honestly doesn’t make any earthly sense. But Jesus isn’t bound by earthly sense!

One of the rare gifts of this time has been hearing from or meeting with hundreds of people over the last year, who either read or heard about you, your life, and the gifting of your organs. There are so many people in this world who are hurting, walking in their own painful losses, so many with the heart-breaking stories who have willingly and openly shared their journeys with me, which has been a grace for my heart. It has been such a cherished gift to listen, to empathize, and to encourage each other to press on and trust God. Loss is simply ravage and brutal, but in Jesus Christ I am seeing first hand how the nature of loss is transformed by His redemptive and restorative power.

As glory has filled your life now in ways that my mind can’t begin to conceive or imagine this side of heaven, God is also revealing His glorious nature personally here for us too. God is using your life, Tod, your earthly one, and your heavenly one so powerfully, authoring His story through it all, pressing me to sit down, be still, and simply behold, and delight in Him, and I am beholding and delighting in so much! 

Since your physical death, the offering of your organs has provided life and health to 8 people who were in desperate need of a donor, and countless others have benefitted from the sharing of your body’s tissues helping them recovery from injuries and burns. As a way of celebrating your birthday this year, we challenged people to sign up to be organ donors, following your example, and so many of our friends and family did that very thing.  After the celebration service of your life, a website sharing the worship service, your life's story, and your relationship with Jesus went live and over fifty thousand people have visited it to this day a whole year later, majority of them staying on the page an average of 20-30 minutes. Three thousand people, alone, have clicked on the tab “how to start a relationship with Christ.” It continues to blow my mind at how God is using your life to bring Him glory. Nothing stops God in His pursuit of His glory going out!

Through our precious friend, Brian, God birthed a vision for an awesome new Young Life leadership center which bears your name, and Young Life staff and ministry leaders from all around the world are coming to receive training on how to know and live their lives on mission for Jesus Christ, learning how to pursue and passionately live out His love with others all over the globe.  Your passion for high school kids to know Jesus Christ is being accomplished in it, and even more, Jesus’ desire to be revealed and known is going to be busting the walls out of this amazing space with brilliant people crossing its’ threshold every day. We are praying that God will glorify Himself powerfully there and manifest His glory in ways we can’t begin to imagine.

God's brilliance has no end, and neither you nor I could have conceived that the years you spent journaling your personal Bible study times with the Lord would have encouraged a group of people to commit to reading through the New Testament in 2018. But here we are, a group of precious friends have committed to step into it with me, and we will be using bits and pieces of your personal journals entries to add insight and encouragement in this journey. Your faithful example of pursuing God daily and reading chunks of His Scripture working through it again and again has now been used by God to inspire me and others to read through the New Testament as a whole.  Grace upon grace to my heart.

So as the loss squeezes my heart everyday, my heart has also been plunged into a deeper awareness of the awesome nature of our holy God. Jesus’ presence truly changes everything, and while I would never choose this loss here and now, I am embracing life with Him as He continues to faithfully reveal Himself meeting me with His sufficiency, His relentless love, and His goodness pouring out to me and our kids everyday. That has been the most unexpected yet profoundly life-giving air to breathe in. While I would never have asked for this, I have found without hesitation this to be true,

“But the LORD has been my stronghold, And my God the rock of my refuge.”  Psalm 94:22

My heart knows no end to missing you, it is constant and always, and simultaneously, God’s goodness and grace continues to be enormously more than I could ever have asked for or imagined.

Robyn