Three

Three years. It truly seems impossible. The day Justin left this earth and entered heaven I couldn’t even fathom life without him. I didn’t want to. Yet here I am, still living life. Living a life that makes me marvel at the faithfulness of God. At how He has allowed the kids and me to not only survive but to actually flourish. At how He has taken the heartache and the pain and used it to grow and strengthen us. When I look back over these years I see the hand of God weaving a beautiful story, one that is still being written and is full of such hope.

But my goodness how we all miss the heck out of that man! He still flows in and out of our everyday conversation and we make great effort to keep his memory alive. While the missing gets easier, I know it will never fully go away. He was my best friend and love for over 30 years and will forever be a part of me. A couple weeks after he died, I wrote a post listing some of the things I loved about him and I want to share it again today. I still love all these things and the remembrances always bring a smile to my face.

May 17, 2021
When you lose someone you love you have this desire within you to try to help others understand what that person was to you. You want to share all the special things about them so maybe others will have even a small glimpse of how special they were. Or at least that’s how I feel anyway. So bear with me while I share some of the things that I loved most about Justin. They aren’t necessarily deep things, but things that made him mine.

~I love that he would dance with me in the kitchen.
~I love that he had pet names/phrases for his girls.
~I love that he would watch romantic movies with me and listen to Air Supply.
~I love that his favorite movie was Braveheart because it taught integrity.
~I love that he constantly told his kids he loved them.
~I love that he could make me laugh harder than anyone else in this world.
~I love that I could be the size I was when we got married or 9 months pregnant with #6 and still feel like he thought I was the most beautiful woman in the world.
~I love that he was the best story teller on planet earth.
~I love that he absolutely adored me and I could feel it.
~I love how he had a movie quote for almost every situation.
~I love that he loved Christmas.
~I love how he loved babies.
~I love how he would sing all the wrong words to a song with complete confidence.
~I love that he could double tie a cherry stem with his tongue (and I love what they say about that ability meaning you’re a good kisser- I can vouch for the truth of that. 😉)
~I love that he loved my family as his own.
~I love how he loved his mom.
~I love how the older he got the more he would get teary at commercials.
~I love how he looked at his grandson.
~I love that he taught his boys to be gentlemen and showed them how to truly love a woman. ~I love that he would participate in all my many holiday traditions.
~I love how encouraging and supportive he was of me when I became a Realtor and always told me how proud he was of me regardless of what kind of year I had.
~I love how he loved our kid’s friends.
~I love how he would tell me I still took his breath away when I walked into a room.
~I love how we would sing Bon Jovi together at the top of our lungs.
~I love how he kept perfecting his famous peanut sauce.
~I love how he would rest his hand on my shoulder each night while he went to sleep and I played on my phone.
~I love that he still sang love songs to me, even just a few weeks ago.
~I love that he would do absolutely whatever he had to do to provide for his family.
~I love that he trusted me with his insecurities.
~I love that I could trust him with mine.

These are just a few of the many things I loved about the man God blessed me with. I am so thankful he was mine.