Apparently, Life Does Not Give a Damn About Your Plans

Girl.

Where the hell do I even start?

I've sat down to write this more times than I care to admit. Every time, I convinced myself I needed to wait until I had something profound to say. Maybe I needed more time. Maybe I needed to understand what the last few months were supposed to teach me. Maybe I needed to get to the other side of it first.

Except...

I'm starting to realize there might not be an "other side."

At least not in the way I imagined it.

The last few months have taught me one thing for sure:

Life does not give a damn about your plans.

And apparently, it doesn't care about timing either.

Because while you're trying to process one thing, something else is already happening. The kids still need you. Your marriage still needs tending to. Work still expects you to show up. The house is still doing whatever houses do to become messy approximately eleven minutes after you clean them.

And in my case, I'm also growing an entire human.

So there's that.

Meanwhile, I'm grieving my daddy.

And that sentence still feels strange as hell to write.

I'm grieving my daddy.

There are moments when I can say it and understand exactly what it means. Then there are moments when my brain still seems to reject the whole concept.

He's gone.

And somehow I'm supposed to continue doing regular things.

That's probably been one of the strangest parts of grief for me.

The world didn't stop.

I know that's obvious. Of course it didn't.

But when something happens that completely changes your world, there's a tiny part of you that expects everybody else's to at least slow down for a minute.

Nope.

Morning still came.

Alarms still went off.

Kids still needed breakfast.

People still needed things from me.

Appointments still had to be made.

I still had to be somebody's mama.

Somebody's wife.

Somebody's nurse.

Somebody's friend.

And somewhere underneath all those titles was just Kam, trying to understand how the hell life could look so normal when something so important was missing from it.

Two Things Can Be True

Here's something else I've learned:

I can be devastated and happy.

At the same time.

And that confused me at first.

Because grief will have you feeling guilty as hell for having a good day.

You'll laugh — like really laugh — and for half a second everything feels normal.

Then you remember.

And sometimes there's this weird little voice that asks, Should I be this happy right now?

But what am I supposed to do?

Stop living because someone I love isn't here to live it with me?

I don't think Daddy would want that.

And if I know anything about that man, he damn sure wouldn't want everybody sitting around sad all day. He'd probably be somewhere cracking a joke about us being dramatic.

So I'm learning.

I'm learning that missing him and enjoying my life aren't opposites.

I can wish with everything in me that my daddy was still here and be excited about the baby kicking the stuffing out of me.

I can cry because he won't physically be here to meet his newest grandson and smile while imagining the chaos this child is about to add to our house.

I can have a hard morning and a beautiful afternoon.

I can be grieving and grateful.

I can be exhausted and inspired.

I can be hurting and still have hope.

Two things can be true.

Maybe that's adulthood in a nutshell.

And Then I Started Creating Again

This part surprised me.

Because somewhere in the middle of all this...

I started getting ideas again.

At first, I almost felt guilty about that too.

How am I sitting here grieving my father and thinking about logos?

How am I thinking about nursing students and workbooks and Instagram pages and business ideas when some days I still can't believe he's gone?

But eventually I stopped interrogating myself.

Maybe creating doesn't mean I'm done grieving.

Maybe laughing doesn't mean I'm done grieving.

Maybe dreaming doesn't mean I'm done grieving.

Maybe living doesn't mean I'm done grieving.

Maybe all of it gets to exist together.

And somewhere in that space, Nursing, Unfiltered started taking shape.

It feels like such a natural extension of me — nurse Kam meeting writer Kam meeting the woman who apparently cannot leave well enough alone and always has to be working on something.

And for the first time in a while, I felt that little spark again.

Not because everything was suddenly okay.

It wasn't.

It isn't.

But something in me was waking back up.

I Don't Think I'm "Back"

I've been saying I'm coming back to Life, Unfiltered.

But the more I think about it, I'm not sure that's actually true.

Because coming back implies returning to the person I was before.

And I don't think she's here anymore.

Not completely.

Losing my dad changed me.

This pregnancy has changed me.

Motherhood keeps changing me.

Marriage changes me.

Life changes me.

Some changes I've chosen.

Some I absolutely did not.

But here I am.

So maybe I'm not coming back.

Maybe I'm just showing up as the woman I am now.

A little more tired.

A little more tender.

Probably a little more impatient with bullshit.

Definitely more aware that tomorrow isn't promised.

Still funny.

Still hopeful.

Still believing God is in this somewhere, even on the days when I don't understand a thing He's doing.

Still becoming.

Apparently, That's the Plan

I wish I could end this by telling you I've figured out what the last few months were supposed to teach me.

I haven't.

I don't have a cute five-step process for getting through hard seasons.

I don't have some profound explanation for why certain things happen.

And I'm not going to sit here and tell you everything happens for a reason when sometimes I still want to look toward heaven and ask God, "But why MY daddy?"

That's where I am.

Faith and questions.

Grief and joy.

Exhaustion and excitement.

Missing what was while making room for what's coming.

Maybe that's why I needed to come back here.

Because Life, Unfiltered was never supposed to be the place where I showed up after I'd figured everything out.

It's supposed to be where I tell the truth while I'm figuring it out.

And the truth right now?

Life has kicked my ass a little.

Okay.

Maybe more than a little.

But it hasn't taken me out.

I'm still here.

Still loving my people.

Still carrying this baby.

Still missing my daddy.

Still dreaming.

Still creating.

Still laughing way too loud.

Still trusting God. Sometimes confidently, sometimes with a whole lot of questions.

Still becoming.

So no, the last few months did not go according to plan.

Apparently, life does not give a damn about my plans.

But maybe I've spent too much time trying to get life to follow the plan anyway.

Maybe right now, I don't need one.

Maybe I just need enough faith for the next step, enough grace for the days when I don't take it well, and enough sense of humor to laugh when life inevitably says:

"Girl... you thought."

And honestly?

That sounds a lot more like Life, Unfiltered anyway.

Trust the unfolding. 

-Kam