Last month I said that I thought I was ready to be a little less candid about my emotions and feelings. I guess I thought that if I talked about it less, that I would think about it less. That hasn't worked quite as well as I had hoped. Instead, I've found myself feeling worse. As I was driving to work one day last week, I found myself thinking that maybe I am in need of counseling. I think the problem is that when I stopped blogging, I no longer had an outlet for my feelings and emotions. For me, writing has been such a healing activity. Though I have written a bit for myself this past month, it's just not the same. I guess a part of me needs to be heard. A part of me needs to know that maybe, just maybe I can help another person who is on a similar journey.

At this point, I'm not struggling with the fact that Keith died. I know without a doubt that he is in such a better place. Even if the treatments had been successful, life would not have been easy for him. He was constantly plagued with fear between his first two bouts of cancer. I don't think I ever truly understood the intensity of his fear. I think it is one of those things that you can't really understand unless you experience it. Then of course, the cancer also could have come back again. He would have had to face the grueling treatments once again. Several months before Keith died, he wrote me a letter to thank me for my support. In the letter, he said that he was fighting this for me. He said that when he was trying to muster up the courage to face another treatment, he thought about me. As much as I wish he could still be here, I could not ask him to go through all of that again.

My question is no longer, "Why did Keith have to die?" My question is, "What am I supposed to do now? How do I go on living with this huge void in my life?" As I sit here and type, I will tell you that I don't have an answer. I'm doing my best. I'm really trying to give this to God, but in the back of my head there is this voice saying, "Look where that got you." While I know whose voice that is and that I shouldn't be listening to it, it is hard to resist. It is so easy to get sucked into satan's lies. It is so easy to be consumed by fear and worry.

I've been reading A Path Through Suffering by Elisabeth Elliot. In it, she says, "Faith need never ask, "But what good did this do me?" Faith already knows that everything that happens fits into a pattern for good to those who love God. . . We need never see "what good it did," or how a given trouble accomplishes anything. It is peace to leave it all with Him, asking only that He do with me anything He wants anywhere, anytime, that God may be glorified." I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not there, but it's a great place to strive for!