Sarah (pron. Say `Ruh) (n) def: Queen of Lynchburg, Tetris Master, Diva, Dreamer.

I found these pictures while going through my memory cards....great memories.

It is 12:24am. Shannon would've been 35 today.

Its been such a strange month. I feel like I've lived most of it in a haze. When I thought I was making progress, all of the sudden I have another Lazarus-Shannon dream. I am sitting on the couch with him and he isn't sick yet. He's just smiling at me...then he's dead. But in my dream Ryan is trying to convince me that he is getting better, even though he's dead.

How odd.

Tonight was definitely a test of my faith. Even though I'm technically single and not trying for a baby anymore, it still hurts to feel the sting of infertility and finding out other people are pregnant. God is definitely going to have to help my heart get through that part. Its one thing to battle infertility or to go through losing a loved one, but to face both seems like an unsurmountable mountain to face...God give me the strength to face the mountain. I see it all in perspective now...the whole battle with infertility. It was never a battle to begin with, it was all apart of God's bigger plan. How blessed I am to not have gotten pregnant, only to lose my husband and become a single mom. It still hurts, but in knowing God's plan for me, it hurts a whole lot less.

I think that God is also awakening to new passion for the outdoors. I want to do awesome stuff that I have never really thought about --- base jumping, mountain climbing, swimming with the manatees, canoeing, etc. I feel a need to live and to really make my life count. I want to make goals and plans and live my life to the fullest, free of fear.

Its also weird too now when I have to put my status...single, married, other, complicated...I want to put married, even though I'm technically single. When I fill out applications I get thrown off by what to put...its so strange to go from being happily married to being a widow. Its weird. Its really really really weird. To be connected to a person and then all of the sudden to be completely free again. Its really the weirdest feeling I've ever had.

God give me some more peace...

How odd to become so much of an adult in a year.

After my house’s birthday yesterday, I thought about how much had transpired in the last 12 months. How much of an “adult” I had to become.

When we started the home buying process, everyone at work kept making the comments that now I was an adult. Having the responsibility of owning your own home comes with the title of being an adult. After we bought the house, Shannon and I prepared the house for our children we were to have. We painted the “baby’s room” and started collecting baby items. We worked to organize, clean, and make our house a beautiful, inviting home.

Then comes October. My Dr. tells us that he can’t help us anymore and we need to see the specialist. I’ve written about this several times…we couldn’t afford the specialist and mentally we couldn’t deal with the emotional stress of not being able to conceive. I had to become more of an adult and accept the fact that I may never be a mother.

Then comes February 24th. I didn’t hear from my husband for hours, so I called his best friend to see where they were. He muttered the words I dreaded hearing “we’re at the emergency room, he’s sick again…with the pancreatitis”. Initially I thought that it was a mild case and that Shannon would get better quick and then be on the way home, but as February 25th rolled around, I knew that wasn’t the case. As I walked into his ICU room I knew something was oddly worse about this particular case. He was breathing so rapidly and looked extremely disoriented. He never even realized I was there with him. Eventually he lost consciousness and they felt like putting him on a ventilator would protect his body from just giving out.

Each day we waited, we prayed. Each Dr. consultation we were given hope and then given worse news. He had developed a serious complication called DIC, which I later read on Wikipedia is nicknamed, “Death is Coming”. I sat in his room on Thursday, encouraged by the fact that he seemed to be getting better, when all of the sudden the dialysis nurse looked at the other nurse and said “why is his blood pressure going up so fast?” It was approximately 350/200 and within seconds it was 70/20. I was watching the beginning of the end. After they had stabilized him, I walked into the room and knew that my husband was gone. I could look at him and tell that he was with the Lord. The first thought I had was “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”. All I saw was the shell of a great life that was lived and was now slowly dying.

When the Dr came in for that final consult I knew at that moment I was once again becoming an adult. My husband had bled into his brain and he was essentially dead. The machines were keeping him alive. How odd to be in a room hearing these harsh truths, and yet being comforted by a great peace. The peace of God. I rushed out of the consult room and went into Shannon’s room, shut the curtain and just began to thank God for the life we had together and for the person Shannon had become and for the husband he had been to me.

My husband died with me hugging him and kissing his face. Up until this point, I have not talked about how he died. He died in my arms with me trying to remember every smell and every feeling of his face. His ears, his nose, his mouth, his eyebrow. Trying to remember every minute detail of his face. I remember watching the machines as his vital signs slowly went down. I remember the minute that his heart rate clicked to 0 and his blood pressure stopped. I remember looking at him and thanking God that I knew where my husband was at that moment.

I walked out of that room an adult. A Widow at 25. A Barren Widow at 25.

More adult decisions – funeral arrangements, legal hassles, death certificates.

So here I am desperately clinging to the hope of a life restored. Shannon always talked about how much like Job he was. Losing everything but still clinging to God. I feel like Job. It feels like I have lost it all and been tried. I feel like God has said “this is my servant Sarah, she has been found righteous…go ahead throw what you have at her”. I have lost my children, my husband, my life. But I refuse to not praise God. I refuse to look at this situation and indulge in self-pity. I will stand and fight. Because I know that I have a God that has promised that the things I considered lost, He will restore.

So I stand at this crossroads of life. A Barren, 25 year old Widow. All I can do is cling tight to the promises of God…

Today I celebrate my first year of living in my house. A year ago we closed on our little castle (appropriately re-named "Lindor Manor"). So today I celebrate by : cleaning your yard cutting your grass, fixing your fence, and sweeping your sidewalk.

In other news...my newest odd thing...I keep getting hives. Everywhere. Ithy, swollen hives...maybe from the stress? Possibly..who knows.

My day was rough to say the least. Racing to the church, trying my hardest to not cry or kill someone...hands shaking and cold from the blood that drained out of them...

After all this, here comes the calvary with a pack of Camel cigarettes (haha) and a Super Nintendo just for me.

God must have a serious sense of humor for giving me such wonderful family and friends that know me so well...

I noticed starting Wednesday that I was functioning alot more normal, and less "zombie-like". Up until this point it felt like the clock was going in slow motion, and yet the next day it felt like the previous day had flown by. Then I had my first non-Lazarus Shannon dream.

Yesterday, I went and talked to a Christian Counselor. He pulls out his grief counselling booklet and starts asking me a bunch of questions that I had already asked myself. I explained to him about going through infertility treatments and the knowledge I had gained from that experience, and then I explained all the wonderful things that came out of this situation -all the miracles God performed. Then I told him about the confirmations that God had given me on my life being in His complete control and how God was going to use me in this situation. After all was said and done, the counsellor said that he felt like I was doing good...that I was knowledgeable on the grieving process and he just reminded to watch for certain things. Even when he wrote down the stages of grief (numbness, denial, anger, depression, grieving) he said he didn't know which one I was in...I think that I am stuck in between depression and grieving. Most people take months to get through each one, but I can tell you the day that I went through each...There are days that I hit some of these over and over, but for the most part I think God is healing my heart and my mind now, and I'm starting to grieve.

Then last night, I had another dream. A dream where I was fully aware that Shannon was dead and my dream was me living life. I think that was my signal that my brain was finally saying goodbye...a dream where Shannon wasn't sick or coming back from the dead, but this dream I was fully aware that he was dead and not coming back.

I know there will be good days and bad days on his road ahead. But God has made it very clear to me in so many ways, to lean on Him, because He's the one directing my paths.

Last night I had my first official non-Lazarus-Shannon dream. He wasn't sick, he wasn't coming back from the dead. He kissed me and then went to the studio.

It was probably the best dream I've had in a month...

And the dreams go on...like clockwork every other night I'm dreaming about Shannon and different outcomes that I wish could happen.

Three nights ago I dreamed that Shannon was sent to an Amish hospital and he was getting better. I remember going into his room and him talking and smiling and e tlling him all about the wonderful things that had happened while he was in the hospital, like his nephews visiting and his son coming to see him. Most of all I was able to say "I love you" and hear it back with a smile.

Last night I dreamed that Shannon had been dead for a couple of days and he was still in the hospital room. I accidentally nudged his head with my foot and he started breathing very slowly. I looked at the Drs and asked them if that was just a muscle reaction and they said that it was, and then Shannon opened his eyes and said something like, "I'm really breathing!"... they went into action putting him into the bed and giving him some oxygen. And again I looked at him and I said "I love you" and he said it back to me with a smile. The rest of the dream were people visiting him and looking at him in awe of his Lazarus experience.

The most recurrent thing I'm feeling is that my subconscious or God or something is having Dream-Shannon tell me he loves me. I think its either because I need to hear it or its because the last thing my husband and I exchanged over the phone before, the very last thing he responded to me about, was me complaining about the dog pooping on the floor and getting very angry. I wish to God that when I got to the hospital, Shannon had been conscious enough that I could've at least told him I loved him and he could've understood what I was saying.

My mind is a rollercoaster. I'm functioning okay one minute and then the next I just want to crumple on the floor and not get up. I keep asking myself if Shannon can see me, what would he want me to be doing? Then I tell myself that Shannon is in heaven, fishing with Jesus and his Grandfather and that he's not sick, not mentally unbalanced, and he's happy.

But my heart still isn't happy. I miss my best friend.

Oh and a few posts back when I talked about the whole baby thing and the irony of dates. I figured out that when Shannon died we had been trying for a baby for 34 almost 35 months, and Shannon would've been 35 in a few weeks. Thats God's sense of humor giving me one last thing to "laugh" at about the whole baby thing.

I need some prayer. Specifically that God would help me to be content through all this and to find joy in life. Even though its hard to imagine life without Shannon.

Its 2:43am and I am suffering from vivid dreaming followed by intense insomnia. I cannot sleep. I cannot get comfortable enough to sleep. I just sit with my eyes wide open.

The dreams I had were incredibly vivid. I first dreamed that Shannon was home from the hospital, but he still had all the tubes attached to him. I dreamed he looked at me and said "after my shower I'm going down to the snack bar". I touched his face and I said to him "its nice being with Jesus, right?" and he just smiled really big and nodded, so I started removing the tubes and ventilator from him one by one and I just remember him smiling really big and closing his eyes. Then I dreamed that the Dr was saying they were going to remove him from the ventilator and I would be able to experience it with him...they hooked the machine up through me and I remember feeling Shannon's heart beating and slowing down and eventually coming to a stop. The Drs said, "Sarah, his heart has stopped, but you have a strong heart and you will keep going".

I think I needed that first dream just for me to see his face one more time and for me to see him smiling. But now its hitting me just how much I miss him. I sat here in my insomnia induced thinking wishing I could feel him kiss me one more time and thinking how much I just want to feel hold me one more time. I feel like my heart is absolutely breaking and I can't do a thing about it.

I will probably step back from blogging for a bit. Without Shannon there's not much to blog about. Unless you are interested in the healing process...haha.

Thanks for all your words of prayer and encouragement. It has really meant alot to me.

LOVE,Sarah (Jovi and Sampson)