Happy Birthday Momma

Even in the Empty Chairs

Tomorrow would have been Mom’s birthday.
I could fill this space with all the things I miss like her laugh, her phone calls, her prayers, but today I want to honor what still remains. Love didn’t end the day she went home to Jesus. It just changed its shape.

As I reread this chapter from Walking with God Through Grief, I realized it isn’t really about loss at all. It’s about the ways God kept showing up in small, quiet moments. In friends who mowed the grass before I came home. In the laughter of my grandkids. In the gentle peace that slowly made its way back into our house. This part of the story reminds me that grief and grace can share the same room.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18

So today, for her birthday, I’m sharing this piece as a celebration of the legacy she left behind. A legacy of faith, laughter, and unshakable love that still carries us through.

    Coming back to Oklahoma felt strange and sacred all at once. A group of friends from church had spent a few days working outside before I got back home to Oklahoma: cutting the grass, cleaning up the yard, putting things in order. They hadn’t told me what they were doing; they just showed up and did it. When I pulled in and saw the work they’d done, I stood there for a moment, quiet. I was too tired to speak, too wrung out from the long drive home, but I took it in. That small act of kindness felt like a whisper from heaven: you’re not alone. It reminded me of Mom’s church in North Carolina the way they showed love through action, through service. I smiled through tears. It made me happy to know she’d spent her last season surrounded by people who lived their faith the same way.

    We all went inside together me, Don, Elijah, and Zoie bone-tired, car-lagged, ready for rest. I can’t even remember what the house smelled like or sounded like that day, only that it felt half-finished but alive. Grief does strange things to time. It can stretch a single day into a year or make months disappear in a blink. Life, though, doesn’t stop. Laundry still piles up, bills still come, and meals still need cooking. In some ways, function becomes survival. But living really living—took time.

    Honestly, it’s only been in the last six months that life stopped feeling like a chore. Somewhere along the line, laughter started to sound normal again. There wasn’t one defining moment, more like a slow thawing. A song here, a sunrise there. A prayer that didn’t hurt to say. I brought a few of Mom’s things home with me pictures, books, a few keepsakes. Nothing extravagant, just pieces of her that made me feel close. It would take me a year to realize what I was really doing wasn’t organizing; I was rebuilding the feeling of having her near.

    Holidays were the hardest. Christmas. Thanksgiving. My birthday. Mother’s Day. Even now they carry a shadow not heavy enough to break me anymore, but enough to dim the light a little. It’s like an overcast day you can still see the sun, you just can’t quite feel its warmth. The grief isn’t that first, crushing kind anymore. It’s quieter, gentler. But it’s still there. There are still moments when I reach for my phone before I remember she won’t answer. It’s in the little things when I want to ask her opinion about a recipe, share a victory with the kids, talk about marriage, or just hear her laugh. When you lose the one person who knew your voice before the world did, silence becomes something you have to learn how to live with.

    Zoie was young, and the distance between Oklahoma and North Carolina meant she didn’t have as many close memories with Mom as my older two children. Still, she felt the loss in her own way, even if she couldn’t put it into words. Elijah, my oldest, just seemed to give up for a while. He carried a quiet heaviness that I didn’t know how to reach. Alex, caught between being a teenager and becoming a man, drifted too. He wanted to be strong, but the timing of it all left him in the middle of becoming and grieving at the same time.

     He was also mourning the loss of his wife’s grandfather a man he’d bonded with instantly, the way I had bonded with my mom. Their connection was immediate, almost divine. Those first two years of their marriage were spent learning how to build a life together under a cloud of shared grief learning how to parent while learning how to live without their mentors. It was draining. But slowly, God began to move in their hearts as they surrendered the pain to the only One who could be trusted with it.

    Part of why it was harder on my boys was because they remembered my early adult years the addiction, the instability, the seasons when their grandparents had to fill the gaps I couldn’t. That created a bond almost like parent and child, so when Mom passed, they felt it like orphans do the loss of both grandparent and anchor.

    Music became my therapy. I leaned hard on it praise songs, Christian rap, R&B, even a little Christian country. Mostly independent artists, people not polished by fame or profit, who sang from places of real struggle. They didn’t sugarcoat grace; they sang about surviving it. Music became the space where I could cry without words. There was one song “Help” by Anna Clendening that felt like it was written straight from my heart. Every line sounded like my prayers when I didn’t have the energy to pray them out loud. Another song, “Joy” by SYL Noiz and Joe Nester, shifted something deep inside me. It reminded me that healing wasn’t about pretending the pain was gone—it was about finding joy in spite of it. That’s when the writing started.

    At first, it wasn’t a book or even a plan it was me studying Scripture, searching for God in every verse, trying to understand how to live again. Walking With God Through Grief began as my survival manual. I wasn’t writing for others; I was writing to find Him in the ruins. But over time, the pages started looking less like notes and more like a roadmap a trail back toward hope. The “empty chairs” in that first year weren’t really chairs at all. They were the spaces in life that used to hold voices. In the dining room, I built a small “They Were Supposed to Be Here” wall two clocks, each set to the moment Mom and David passed, surrounded by photos and mementos. It started with David, with plans to add the others later, but remodels have delayed it. Still, that wall gives them a place in my life. It’s peace, remembrance, and belonging all in one.

    For a long time, I avoided sitting still near that wall. Grief makes stillness feel dangerous because stillness brings memory. But eventually, God filled that stillness with peace. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). That verse stopped being a quote and started becoming my reality. There were moments of unexpected joy too. The grandkids’ laughter echoing through the house, Zoie dancing in the kitchen, music filling the air again. Each moment felt like a spark of resurrection tiny but real. Sometimes I think my grandkids came when they did because God knew I’d need their joy more than they’d need my wisdom.

    If I could describe that year in one word, it would be challenging. Not just in the obvious ways, but in the quiet ones—the kind that make you choose whether to let grief rule you or refine you. That year carved one truth into me that nothing else could have: When everything else is gone every person, every comfort, every crutch God remains. Losing Mom forced me to lean on Him in a way I never had before. She had always been my safety net, my last piece of home. When she was gone, there was nothing left to hold me up but His grace. And somehow, that was enough.

    If I could sit across from her now, I know what she’d say: I’m proud of you. Keep going. The end is worth it. And I’d tell her everything she’s missed how good Zoie is doing in school, how smart her grandsons are, how deeply Keith still loves her, how even in the ache, God’s fingerprints are everywhere. Her chair may be empty, but her love is not.

    Lord, thank You for the spaces that feel empty but are never vacant of Your presence. Teach me to see the sacred even in silence. Let the memories that ache also remind me of the love that shaped me. And when I forget that You remain, whisper it again That even in the empty chairs, You are still enough.

    If Mom could peek through heaven’s window today, I think she’d smile at the noise in our house. The music. The grandkids. The life still unfolding. Her chair may be empty, but her love isn’t. Every sunrise, every answered prayer, every act of kindness feels like her gentle reminder that God is still good and still near.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”
— Lamentations 3:22–23

Happy Birthday, Mom.
You are still teaching me how to see God in every ordinary day.