(Photo by Lindsay O’Neil)

Excerpts

By Sarah Komisky

A few years ago Andrea Yim never expected to be in the place she was. Married with two kids (one who was an infant at the time) and the wife of vibrant, twenty-something pastor, Andrea received the news that her husband was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer. Becoming a widow at twenty-eight, she would face the unthinkable. These are her emotions. Thoughts. Reflections. Memories. Dreams. Story, pulled from excerpts of her blog.

May you be encouraged.

I never thought I could be where I am NOW emotionally and mentally because I’ve been a hot messy mess. We could not have done this without either side of our families. There have been so many sacrifices for us and I’m sure I don’t even know all of them.

(Her thoughts on letting others help)

Some of it can be pride because you want to prove to people you can do it. You want to prove the world that you’re able to do. But when you get to a point where everyone wants to help and wants to do something I think you rob people of the joy of helping and giving when you don’t allow them to. It’s really just humbling yourself and saying I need help, I really just do and I’m not supermom and I can’t be supermom. I lost my husband and I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I think I blog mostly because I want people to understand certain things, for the uncompassionate to be passionate, for the hurting, to allow the pain to be put to rest in its perfect season and time.

I never blogged before. Honestly, I started writing because I was so emotional and so it was an outlet for me personally. I wanted to blog because of the fact that Brent was in the light and a lot of people knew us and everyone was praying for us. With that is a blessing but also with what that it could be a curse because everyone has opinions: ‘Don’t worry you’ll get married again.’ ‘Don’t worry you guys will are going be fine’ or ‘The boys will be fine,’ and it just got overwhelming. You know that in your head but part of you is like, you don’t understand that there might be a time when my kids might not be okay. I know how some people think and with that I thought you know what? I want people to know exactly what I am thinking. You get opinions. So I think having such a big audience of people watching our life, I want people to know this journey of grief. Its not as easy as 1-2-3, there are so many difficulties. Even now we are doing okay but then there are days when I am single parenting and its exhausting and people don’t realize that. So I think with the blogging, it’s just giving a different perspective in your shoes.

I can truly say that I want to honor Brent’s life by LIVING. I know he would want that and he actually told me that very concept.

I think one of the biggest things was for our kids is that they would have a happy life. Living is God’s will. I can’t live my life like Brent’s coming back, I can’t. I have to take one day at a time and just get up and live. That doesn’t mean your not going to be sad or not going to have hard days. I think with Brent, he just wanted us to do what God wanted us to do.

Words cannot express life without Brent. But I am thankful I got to be his wife. I now look forward, even through the hard days, to what God has for us in the next three years.

I think its living with no regrets. I have to constantly remind myself that life is so precious, so short. Obviously there’s going to be little fights but its about appreciating people because one day we may not have those people. Having that constant mentality takes a strong person. We don’t know how much time we have on this earth. Things could be rocky but we don’t want to live with regrets.

To read more of Andrea’s story, check out her blog at: brentyim.com/andreas-blog and look for the published compilation of Brent and Andrea’s blog posts coming soon.