My last day of peace, true peace, was December 25, 2021. I’m currently residing in hell, and I don’t know if my faith is strong enough to push me out.

Let me backtrack.

Christmas 2021 was the perfect holiday. I’m talking Hallmark-Christmas-movie-plot perfect. My now-husband managed to pull off the best proposal designed for us with the help of our closest family and friends after 15 years of friendship and five years of a thriving relationship.

After the proposal and celebration, he and I pulled off a fantastic Christmas with his two teenage daughters. There was plenty of cheer wherever we went. Everyone got spoiled with gifts and love. I was on an actual vacation during the holiday season, which was rare. Our money was right. I felt loved, complete. It was perfect. No, it was more than perfect. It was peaceful.

However, that Christmas taught me the difference between contentment and peace. Contentment really isn’t that hard to achieve. It’s just a series of fun, relatively predictable days with minimal fuss and maybe some rest.

Yet, peace is more than contentment. I remember telling my husband (then fiancé) on Christmas night before bed that my mind was quiet for the first time in my existence.

There weren’t any intrusive thoughts, no questions that didn’t deserve answers, no obnoxious “what ifs” or self-doubts—just blissful silence, and I loved it. If this is what God’s peace that surpasses all understanding was like, then yes—all the yes. Sign me up for every Bible study and prayer circle. The level of satisfaction and happiness I had during Christmas 2021 was the peace I had chased my entire life.  

Everything changed two days later.

I woke up on December 27^th a bit feverish and weak. Ah, hell. It was either the flu or Covid. Surprise! It was my first round of Covid.

Though I had spent the week around loved ones, I was the only one in the group to get sick. I worked from home and never went out in public unprotected. So, yeah, Covid was a surprise.

What wasn’t surprising was my Honeybunny getting sick after caring for me for a couple of days. We brought in the new year with high fevers, the worst body aches ever, and a hacking cough that lingered with me for months. Plus, we lost a collective 50 pounds, although that loss took a couple of weeks to amass.

He got better before me, which I expected after I got hit with a Covid-bronchitis combo. Yay me. But all things considered, things could’ve been much worse.

Throughout our entire recovery, I kept feeling like he and I got sick for a reason. It was a sense of being glad we were sick because we needed to get the infection out of the way now, or it would be worse later. It didn’t make sense. Who would want to be sick like that? Still, it was an unshakeable feeling, almost like a warning.

My intuition was spot on. Honeybunny developed a debilitating headache a week before Valentine’s Day, which wasn’t unusual with his medical history. What was unusual, though, was his description of the pressure in his head and neck.

He was officially diagnosed with brain cancer two days before Valentine’s Day.

I won’t go into all the details now because emotions are still too raw. What I will say is that I had the best-worst 13 months of my life starting from that day.

In a matter of days, everything I knew flipped on its head. Instead of planning our wedding and taking calls from family and friends celebrating our engagement after years of loving each other, we were calling loved ones about his diagnosis and consoling each other. After a month, Honeybunny’s health seemed to deteriorate overnight.

I went from being elated to sick to worried to strong before needing to seek help from his parents and prayers from my mom. All in a matter of days.

We skipped the wedding and quietly got married under the most cliché conditions: in a park surrounded by violently green trees in their springtime glory, with the sky a sea of unnaturally bright blue and a breeze occasionally caressing whatever bare skin it could find. The big wedding would come later. At that moment in time, all we wanted to do was solidify our love, commitment, and companionship in the presence of our parents.

Overnight, I became a wife, mother, daughter-in-law, caregiver, and many more titles I can describe but not name.

Through it all—the health declines, the plateaus, and the surprise improvements—Honeybunny stayed true to himself. He took his chemo treatment like a champ, but the other drugs had a noticeable effect on his emotions, appetite, sleep, and body. Still, he maintained his humor, love, compassion, and wisdom, making him the kind of man you’d feel blessed to know.

Honeybunny knew no strangers. Even at the hospital, he was making friends with patients and nurses. He never failed to tell people about his writer wife, artist daughter, or eldest daughter, the natural leader who takes no bull.

He had his moments, of course. He often woke up feeling extra sentimental, thanks to our plight and his medication, but I was always there to wipe the tears and help him smile. My growing relationship with the Lord helped me a lot with that. I can only attribute my strength to Him because it damn sure wasn’t coming from me.

I prayed so much. My daily routine was surrounded by caring for everyone. However, my first actions of each day involved getting Honeybunny situated with love, breakfast, and meds before going before the Lord to meditate, pray, and learn scripture.

Through my immediate family’s ongoing battles with physical and mental health issues—and there were several occurring simultaneously—I had achieved a level of intimacy with the Lord that my mother had always wanted me to reach.

Speaking of my mom, she was always right there with me. Every day, she kept me lifted and encouraged me over the phone. We lived hundreds of miles apart, but she made her presence known daily. We always talked about the Word and God’s messages for us. My new mother-in-law is also a God-fearing woman with the most patience I’ve ever seen in a person. She, too, would send me motivational emails daily, consisting of scripture and messages of faith and perseverance.

I knew all the back-to-back setbacks my family and I experienced on all fronts were one of the universe’s life-altering tests, with Honeybunny’s health at the center of it all. Yet, with God on my side, I felt renewed and up to the challenge.

But as things do, they went left.

It was like a light switch went off in Honeybunny. The remarkable improvements we witnessed seemed to fade overnight. One minute, the tumor was shrinking. The next, he had multiple tumors, bigger than before. Honeybunny went from smiling, talking, eating, driving, and doing all the things we take for granted to a shell of his former self.

To say I was unprepared was an understatement. Instead of acknowledging the reality of our situation, I kept praying, kept speaking life over him. We would wake up and pray together until the cancer robbed him of his beautiful voice. We didn’t let that hold us back, though. We quickly developed a communication system so we could still “talk.”

My faith and connection to God showed me so many things at that time. Literally. During his treatment and even after he went into in-home palliative care, I would see him walking into the hospital and shocking people with his improvement. I could see him turning his cancer into a testimony. With his condition, the option to improve was almost non-existent. Yet, he was in the best condition to make the most of his illness, and I saw it. I knew it. My visions were always the same, and I couldn’t wait for God to turn our situation around. I knew he would.

I saw Honeybunny fighting for his life every day. I witnessed him doing things that someone in his condition can’t and shouldn’t do. I was right there by his side 24 hours a day, seven days a week, watching him improve in the spiritual and the natural, which we discussed openly.

My faith was so strong regarding his improvement that I couldn’t accept it when things got worse. Sure, I was frustrated, overwhelmed, overworked, and tired out my ass, but I held on. Positive vibes only here.

Then he died. On some level, I think I knew it was coming, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. The day it happened, everything was going alright. It wasn’t peaceful, but things were calm. We were okay. But…he died.

I’ve never screamed, cried, begged the way I did that day. My only saving grace was knowing his children were with other parent figures when I got the call. My grief was unmanageable. How was I going to help them when I couldn’t help myself?

The days following Honeybunny’s passing were weird. Amid all the phone calls I had to make, people were coming in and out of our home, including our long-time best friend and a new friend who did their best to make things easier for me and the girls at home. Plans were being made. Tears were being shed.

Naturally, some people showed their asses at that time. If my grandfather’s passing in 2016 taught me anything, it taught me to expect people to show their asses.

Cursing or denouncing God wasn’t an option despite my grief and overwhelming depression. I didn’t just lose Honeybunny. So many changes and setbacks were happening one right after the other. I felt like I was going crazy. Still, I had to put on a brave face and handle my business as a mom, a daughter, and now a widow.

Without Honeybunny to care for, my morning routine changed. No longer was I getting up before the butt crack of dawn to prepare his medicine and pray. Instead, mornings became a daily cycle of tears and mindless scrolling on social media to distract myself from the fact that I had lost my partner. My favorite person. My person.

I would think of God and try to pray, but the words never came. It wasn’t until I had a conversation with Honeybunny’s surrogate sister that I could at least TALK to Him. She said, “It’s okay to tell God you’re disappointed. Saying you’re disappointed is not questioning Him or his will.”

Those words clicked for me. Acknowledging my disappointment that Honeybunny and I can’t grow old together was simply that. An acknowledgment. One I needed to make to Him and myself.

Soon after, a social media friend reached out to check on me and the family. She offered prayer and weekly Bible studies to help me find my way back, which I gladly accepted. Getting in the Word and talking with someone excited about it felt good. Still, I struggled to rekindle my relationship with God before Honeybunny left here.

My line of thinking at the time was closer to “If I prayed, read the Word, fasted, and did everything I was supposed to, why did Honeybunny die? Did I not pray enough? Were the prayers too late? Was my faith superseded by worry over Honeybunny’s health and my family’s happiness?”

After more conversations with my support system, I realized I wasn’t grieving Honeybunny. I was just coasting day by day. Yet, I was slowly learning.

I learned that my connection to God was never severed despite my thinking it was damaged due to my change in prayer habits. Also, Honeybunny actually did everything I saw in my visions. He just didn’t do them how I expected.

I decreed that he would walk into the hospital and show everyone his improvement instead of sitting quietly in a wheelchair during his treatments. Much to the shock and awe of numerous doctors, nurses, and aids, Honeybunny left that wheelchair and walked unassisted around for several months.

I decreed that he would regain vision in both eyes after learning his tumor was pressing on an optic nerve. The last day I saw him, both eyes were open. But even before that, I would catch him peeking from his bad eye. For a while, we didn’t have to tease him playfully by calling him “One Eye Willie.”

I decreed that he would get back to himself. Again, he did. After a slump following his first round of treatment, this man was back to driving, shopping, laughing, baking cakes, and so much more.

I decreed that we would have a good marriage. We did have a good marriage for 11 whole months, though it’s safe to say we had already been each other’s partner for life years before officially saying “I do.”

I decreed that he would beat his cancer. He passed after a 13-month-long fight. The thing is, people with his condition usually last three to six months. All the medical professionals we encountered were shocked he didn’t succumb to his illness immediately.

Hindsight 20/20: Honeybunny should have only lasted a month based on how everything was going initially. He might not have survived the cancer, but he beat it in his own way. Such a Honeybunny thing to do.

The other thing I learned is that my grief and guilt had me thinking I spent months being delusional about our situation instead of acting out of faith. It was faith. It is faith.

Faith is what gave me the strength to be my husband’s rock during the last 13 months of his life. It’s what enabled me to juggle our youngest daughter’s senior year, my work, mental health issues, medication schedules, weekly doctor visits, financial troubles, depression, fatigue, and much more without losing my mind in the process. That same faith is what’s currently giving me the strength I need to be a mom to two beautiful, vibrant young women who will continue Honeybunny’s legacy.

I wrote the beginning of this blog two months after Honeybunny’s passing. It’s now a year since his death. Am I okay? Absolutely not. But I’m not in hell or delusional enough to believe my faith won’t help me through this new, uncertain phase of life.

It will. God and Honeybunny have me covered.