Through the Fog with Love

We Know Each Other By Heart

Tag: faith

  • The Questions That Hurt 

    Today I sat in a sterile room, staring at the glow of a screen, waiting for answers. The scan didn’t show the same alarming growth as before. There were things there, yes, but not the kind that immediately demanded removal. Still, I asked for a biopsy. I needed certainty.

    Afterwards, I found myself asking the registrar questions most people don’t want to say out loud. If the biopsy is positive and I choose not to go through another surgery, what then? What does life expectancy look like? Would it be painful if nothing more was done?

    Those questions hung in the air, heavy and sharp. They weren’t easy to ask, but they mattered.

    I realised in that moment something about myself: I don’t shy away from truth. Even when it’s raw, even when it hurts, I want it laid bare in front of me. Knowledge steadies me, gives me ground under my feet. Yet in that same space, I saw my shadow. The need for answers is also fear disguised. The fear of being wrong, fear of carrying regret, and fear of making the wrong call for someone who cannot choose for themselves.

    There is a coldness in this role too. Talking about life and pain as if they were numbers on a page. Sometimes, I wonder if my pursuit of clarity strips away tenderness, makes me sound more like a decision-maker than a wife. But then I remember: both are true. I am the one who has to ask the hard questions, and I am the one who will lie awake at night replaying them.

    This is love in its most complex form. It is both fierce and fragile at once. Love that doesn’t always mean fighting for more time, but choosing peace, dignity, and comfort. Love that walks into the hard questions because avoiding them would be easier, but far less kind.

    In the end, I can’t control the story’s ending. All I can do is walk through it with honesty and love, even when love feels cruel.

  • The Life I Thought I’d Have

    Seven years ago, I began stepping back.

    Not all at once but just enough to adjust. I started reducing hours, working from home, taking on smaller jobs that gave me space to be with him. To soak up the time while his memory was still intact. I told myself: Let’s make good memories now, while we can. For the harder days ahead.

    I kept juggling multiple roles, short hours, different hats. I was still me, just a scaled-back version. Still contributing. Still in control.

    But gradually, the letting-go began. One job at a time. Quiet resignations. Little decisions that felt necessary, not dramatic. And then his memory loss worsened. The confusion deepened. The anger surfaced, not at me, really, but at what was being lost.

    At the same time, I started losing confidence in myself. I wasn’t performing at the level I once did. I missed things. I got reminders for tasks I forgot or did late. And I felt it: the sting of shame, the sense that I was failing—not just him, but everything. The multitasker in me, the professional, the woman who once thrived on structure and sharpness… she felt like she was slipping away too.

    Eventually, I stepped back further. Not because I stopped caring—but because I couldn’t keep pretending I could do it all. The roles needed more than what I had left to give.

    And with that came fear.
    Fear of the future.
    Fear of not having enough —financially, emotionally, mentally — when this chapter ends and I’m left to begin again. Fear of facing that future alone.

    This isn’t the life I imagined.

    But it’s the life I’ve quietly stitched together, threaded with duty, love, exhaustion, and grief. I gave up those jobs one by one, not because I was weak but because I was holding someone else’s life together.

    And somewhere in the middle of all that letting go… I forgot to hold onto myself.

  • Trapped Inside His Mind

    I don’t know what dementia feels like from the inside. I can only speak from where I stand—next to him, watching, listening, guessing at what it must be like for him.

    There are times he tries to speak and I can tell—he knows what he wants to say. I can see it in his eyes, that familiar spark of clarity. But then, the words come out wrong. Or not at all. And he knows it. You can see the flicker of frustration, like he’s just missed a step he’s taken his whole life.

    It’s not just forgetting. It’s like the mind is trying to work, but something misfires—like a wire has come loose and the message just can’t get through.

    And I think: how must that feel?
    To still know… but not be able to say.
    To try… but not have the right pieces fall into place.
    To see the world carry on around you while you stand in the fog, waving, hoping someone still sees you.

    It’s heartbreaking. Not just for him—but for me, too. Because I remember how sharp, how witty, how precise he used to be. And now, he’s still all those things in spirit… but the bridge between us is harder to cross.

    I don’t claim to understand it fully. I just know what I see. And I know the ache of standing next to someone you love as they fade in and out of clarity. Sometimes I get glimpses of the him I’ve always known. Other times, it feels like he’s slipping through my fingers.

    Dementia doesn’t steal everything all at once. It unravels. Slowly. Cruelly. And somewhere in that unraveling, I try to hold the thread.

    So I listen differently now. I pay attention to tone, to gestures, to the way he looks at me when the words fail him. Because even when the words are wrong, the meaning is often still there. I just have to reach for it.

    And in those moments, I remind myself—and him—that he’s still here. Still him. Still loved.

    We may have to meet in the fog sometimes. But love… love always finds its way through.

  • When It Doesn’t All Make Sense

    There are days when I can write with clarity, when my reflections feel whole. But this isn’t one of those. This is me—still in the middle. Still uncertain. Still asking if I’m enough.

    Like so many of my days since caregiving began, this piece isn’t wrapped in resolution. It’s just the next step in the fog.

    I wish I could say I’ve made peace with all the parts of me. But the truth is—I haven’t.

    Some days I feel strong. Other days I question everything.

    Some moments I’m filled with faith. Others, I feel like I’m slipping. I believe in grace, but I also wonder if I’ve used it up. I try to do what’s right, but I still carry the weight of what I’ve done wrong.

    There are no clean lines in my life. No neat resolution. Only contradictions I don’t always know how to live with. Only the ache of wanting to be better and the knowledge that I haven’t always been.

    And yet… I keep going. Not because I have it all figured out. But because something in me refuses to give up.
    Because even in the mess, I still long for goodness. Because I still pray, even when I’m not sure how to begin.

    I don’t have a perfect faith. I have a cracked one – a faith that limps, but keeps showing up. And maybe that’s what God sees. Not the polished story I wish I had. But the real one—the torn pages, the questions, the conflict.

    And maybe… just maybe… that’s enough for Him.

  • Letting Go, Trusting Grace

    Three weeks after the surgery, we now know more. The growth was superficial — for that, I give thanks. But it was high-grade, and that word brings its own weight.

    The doctors gave us options: another surgery soon to clear anything left behind, or wait three months and see if it returns.

    I’ve chosen to wait.

    It was not an easy decision. On one hand, the tumour demands swift action. On the other, the dementia quietly worsens with each disruption. The first surgery already pushed his memory further from reach and the days after were harder than I let on. Another procedure so soon could unravel even more. And I can’t put him through that. Not when the risk is still only a “maybe.”

    I found myself weighing one urgency against another — and wondering, what would we rather hold on to? The answer wasn’t simple. Both paths carry risk. Both feel unfinished. But we’ve done what we could. The growth is out. We took the right steps, asked the questions, listened closely. And now, I place what remains in God’s hands.

    There comes a moment when we must step back — not in surrender, but in reverence — and allow an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

    I believe He already knows the road ahead. I’ve always asked for the wisdom to choose well, and now I ask for grace — grace to live with this choice, and peace to accept whatever it brings.

    I’m not asking for miracles. Just strength. Just enough light for the next step. I want to preserve what we still have — the moments still within our reach — rather than chase after certainty and lose more of him in the process.

    I trust that God will give us what we need, when we need it.

    And for now, that is enough.

  • Faith Carries Me Through

    There are days when simply making it to nightfall feels like a quiet triumph. Days when I find myself at the edge of exhaustion—worn down by the constant demands of caring for my husband whose world is slowly unravelling. As his dementia deepens, so too do the challenges. And yet, in the quietest, most difficult moments, the vows I once spoke— for better or worse, in sickness and in health — don’t fade into memory. They rise within me, steady and clear, asking to be lived out once more.

    I don’t always have the strength. Truthfully, there are moments I want to stop, to step away from the weight of it all. But I never truly can, because something greater keeps lifting me.

    That something is God. It is not my own willpower that keeps me going—it is grace. God meets me at the edge of my endurance and gently carries me further. When I’m overwhelmed and feel as though I can’t take another step, He becomes my strength. When I am lost in the fog of weariness and worry, He reminds me that I am not walking alone.

    I’ve always known, deep down, that I’m not here just for myself. That life was never meant to be lived only inward. Love — especially the kind that stays through hardship — asks me to give, to bend, to hold on. It’s not about grand gestures. It’s in the quiet, daily choosing to show up. And sometimes, when I’m sitting with the weight of it all, I think of that verse—”Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for a friend.” Not as something I strive for, but as something I’ve come to live in my own quiet way.

    These vows I honour are no longer just about marriage—they have become a sacred calling. Each day I choose to love, not out of obligation, but because of the grace I receive. I cry, I stumble, I grow tired. But then something quiet rises within me again: a stillness, a strength, a whisper from God that says, “You are not alone.”

    And so I carry on. Not because I always feel strong. But because I believe—deeply, humbly—that God walks with me. He holds me up when I can no longer stand. God is beside me, every step of the way.