They’d be 14.

I think about them. I guess it’s more like wonder about them, at least once a day.

I knew the date today. And yet it took a text from someone who remembers them every year for me to “remember” the day.

Two of our three would be 14 today.

It is always interesting, and kind of weird, how grief shows up. How it morphs. Changes shape. Never ever ever goes away or gets better.

I’ve been caught off guard a couple times this year, especially with the building of @monarchmeadowsretreat. People ask so many times how come we haven’t taken more photos and videos of the restoration. Usually my answer is that we are too busy and too exhausted to think about it. And then one day, the grief hit me out of nowhere. They’d be old enough to help us with this. To help carry that vintage couch to the perfect spot. To shoot the footage for social media. They’d be old enough to help. And yet would we even be here if they were? I suppose we will never know. And we don’t need to.

Then came the nudge to move to where we are building. God reminding us He told us to build. And we’ve never had to move for a school district. Build there. Make the impossible look possible. Florissant is our version of a school district.

So in the middle of so many battles, we are moving…eventually.

It is only because of them that this is our legacy. I don’t know if I will ever understand the mystery of it. The gift of them and the loss of them made us into the happiest, healthiest, most courageous people, building something so much bigger than us, out of the ashes we chose to heal from. To grow from. To build from.

Today they’d be 14.