Thy Will, My Sacrifice.

This time a year ago, I started this blog to publicly share things I had been feeling, learning, and growing in through my grief and healing journey. To acknowledge and celebrate this one-year anniversary, I’ve made some changes to my website! Take a look around, we have some new and pretty colors schemes, and some powerful new images throughout the site. In addition to the website upgrades, Thy Will, My Sacrifice. has also made its debut onto the social scene! You can now follow me on Instagram (@thywillmysacrifice) and Facebook, where I will aim to share more frequent flashes of content to encourage those who may be experiencing grief and looking for ways to navigate it. I also hope for IG and Facebook to be spaces in which I can engage more with people directly. The blog website itself will still be active and populated with fresh content as well. This will continue to be a space in which I share my thoughts, feelings, and all that I am learning as I remain partnered with Christ to disrupt the stronghold of grief in my own life and aim to empower others to do the same!

While the image above publicly represents the celebration of one year for my blog, I wanted to also share that it privately has represented the one-year anniversary of William’s passing – as that is when this photo of Malia and I was taken. May 2020 marked one year since the love of my life passed away. It felt like a huge internal countdown leading up to one year for me. It was for sure the hardest year of my life, and I think that I had subconsciously convinced myself that the one-year mark would be significant. If I could just make it one year, everything would be ok.

Leading up to the actual date of the one-year anniversary, I just kept trying to keep my mind busy. I told myself it would be a regular work day – because that’s what William would have told me to do. But that day came and I couldn’t do it. I laid in bed till the last minute before I had to clock in for work, and dejectedly texted my boss asking to take a personal day. I watched Malia sleep peacefully and reevaluated, I could not let today be “just another day” for her sake. It can’t be a depressing day or a gloomy day either because she deserves to continue remembering her Dad with joy in her heart and a smile on her face. As difficult as it was for me, I pulled myself out of the bed and we went to Will’s parents’ house as we typically would before work. We made a plan. I would take the morning for myself, and then pick his parents and Malia up to visit the cemetery with flowers, and then go for a walk somewhere. When I got back home, I put on Elevation Worship’s latest album Graves Into Gardens and hopped into the shower. The entire album replayed as I stood in the shower weeping for a good two hours.

Reflecting on the past year made my heart sink. My mind and emotions were right back at that starting place. Over the year of grieving, I had finally found some words that depict what William’s death felt like for me. I’ve said before that I feared Malia feeling like she lost both parents when William died. This is why – because I honestly felt like I died with him. My love for William has always been very deep. William and I did everything together. We spent formative adult years together learning of ourselves, growing in our relationship, planning and building our life together. In his death, I felt like I died with him – my dreams and hopes for the life we planned all died with him. But what is crazy is, at the time, actually dying would have felt better than what I was experiencing. In actual death, I wouldn’t feel the heartache and the literal physical pain that accompanied my grief. Instead, only my favorite parts of myself died. And the rest of me was tortured to continue living – empty, broken, and lonely.

Initially, those were the feelings consuming me as I stood in the shower weeping. Until they weren’t. I don’t have a specific moment or reference point, but eventually, my tears turned from weeping in agony to weeping in joy. Obviously, not in joy of his death. But in joy of knowing that we have been so dearly loved and cared for in that year. That what felt like would be the death to my happy life had turned into the foundation of an even more beautiful life, filled with a greater love than I could imagine. I don’t know why William died in an untimely manner, I don’t know why it had to be our family, or why my daughter doesn’t get to grow up with her dad. But I know that my God doesn’t waste anything. And if He has brought us to this impossible situation, He has already equipped us to make it through it. At that point, reflecting on how God had shown up in my life, heavy, over the previous year made me feel special. It made me feel important and valuable to Him.

Looking back at it all, I remembered how empty I had felt in the moments learning of William’s death, to then experience the chain of events and encounters with God that had brought me to a place of fullness. In hindsight, I would say that the day of the one-year anniversary of William’s passing mimicked that year entirely – waking up in heartache and ending it with my heart full with love and joy. So yeah, one year is very much significant. And I am happy to celebrate this monumental step in my purpose to using my story for God’s glory!

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Darcela Maignan (@thywillmysacrifice) • Instagram photos and videos