I’m asked a lot these days, “How you doing?” I’m not sure if people want the standard answer or the real answer. I’m not even sure I know the answer. Trying to get through another day without my husband is pure agony. I still can’t believe he’s gone or that I’ll never again hear his familiar, “What’s up!” coming through the door at the end of a work day.

As a staff pastor and the financial administrator at the church where he ministered and worked, he was somewhere in the building anytime I arrived there. If he wasn’t waiting for me, I could always find him. Trinity Church is and always will be associated with Mike in my heart and mind and it’s difficult for me to be there right now, because he’s not.

Five Friday’s have come and gone since the evening he died. Friday was Mike’s day off. Our ‘date day’. Jon’s caregiver would come to the house in the early afternoon and we would leave for the day; go shopping, see a movie, eat out, spend time together. Our date days have ended. I don’t like Friday anymore.

I have no ability to categorize any of this right now. It all swirls around in my head and becomes a wrecking ball of pain and sorrow for my heart. I try to fill up my days with tasks clamoring for my attention, those that used to be his and those that have always been mine. Evenings and nights stretch eternal and each morning sunrise is another reminder that I’ll live another day without him.

I’m being told by so many I’m not alone. God is with me. I’m aware of this completely. He’s here in the middle of it all. I’ve sensed Him in my deepest sorrow, have not blamed Him for any of it and in some unexplainable way, I trust Him.

But I still wear skin. My spirit exists in a physical body and world, one that involves taste, touch, sound and sight. I long for my partner with skin on, a man I could see, hear, touch, whose presence filled up my life and years.

When God made the first human he said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). He was right. It’s not.

Yes, God is here. I’m not alone.

But Mike is not and I’m so lonely.

Just another life contradiction I don’t understand.