Nicole Venzke Peterson - Follow Me, I Dont Know Where Im Going: Reflections on Love, Loss, and Life by a Too-Young Widow

Follow Me,
I Dont Know Where Im Going

Reflections on Love, Loss, and
Life by a Too-Young Widow

NICOLE VENZKE PETERSON

Copyright 2019 Nicole Venzke Peterson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-6591-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-6592-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-6590-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019907593

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/3/2019

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE
Road Trip, Anyone?

As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. - Acts 4:20

Im just a girl. An ordinary girl thats lived a pretty ordinary life, if there is such a thing. I have no formal credentials, no degrees or certifications that make me an expert per se, no grief counseling or life coaching experience, no long list of published writings, nothing of that nature. In fact, as I stand here prepared to tell our story, I feel really underqualified in the eyes of this world. But maybe, just maybe, thats exactly why our story matters.

The cross. Its rough and weathered wood. Its lowly nature. It, too, looks underqualified. Underqualified to be something miraculous. Something life changing. Something globally and timelessly significant. But as I gaze upon it in church or in my imagination, it never fails to bring the hot sting of tears to my eyes. For that cross is for me. For Tim. For Greg. For my sweet kiddos. For everyone ordinary and rough and weathered and lowly. And since our story began, I feel undeniably drawn to that cross. Undeniably compelled to haphazardly kneel at its foot, come as I am in my ripped up jeans, favorite old sweatshirt, and hair in a messy pony, risking getting my knees and hands and face dirty. For the cross is the tangible thing here, that more than ever, connects me to my Heaven. Connects me to my Timmy. Connects me to my Jesus who made Heaven mine and Timmys in the first place. Connects me to my Heaven that holds a place for my Gabby, my Sam, my Sidney, my Parker, my Grady, my Greg, my everyone on some day, from some place, via some path we cannot know. But nevermind that right now. Its that rough and weathered and lowly cross that lifts me and my dirty knees up, that raises my beat up chin to look upwards, and tells my dusty underqualified hands to type out our story for you to read at some time in some place I cannot know.

But my hope, my almost frantic prayer, is that this story can draw you to the foot of that rough and weathered and lowly cross, too. To draw you to my Jesus. To draw you to His hope and peace and love. To draw you to His Heaven that is yours despite your dirty knees and beat up chin and dusty hands. It is yours, even if you have no idea how to get there. Its ok.

Follow me, I dont know where Im going.

PART 1
The Backroads

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:9

O h my goodness, the rain. Maybe the grass and trees and lakes and streams will benefit from it, but seriously, this is truly unpleasant. Its September 2016 in Minnesota and its wet and its cold and it, quite simply, is a horrendous day for a soccer game. I love my kids and all, but I will not sit in a chintzy lawn chair in sideways rain in my work clothes with a cheap umbrella that will not cooperate with the wind to watch them, along with my 12-year-old-at-heart husband and another similarly aged coach, run up and down the field in a scrimmage that simply does not matter. Ill sit in the parking lot in my warm truck watching through a wet windshield, thank you very much. The other team had the right idea when they decided it was too wet to play and headed home. I admire the commitment and free-spiritedness of these kiddos and coaches who decided an intra team scrimmage was the best way to deal with the rain, but Ill show my support from dry sidelines.

I love this soccer team. Its a sweet little team from a sweet little Lutheran school made up of sweet little 4 th through 8 th graders, both boys and girls this year, who are coached by two sweet and quirky dads who love this sweet little team also. It just so happens that two of the players on this team are my oldest son, 13-year-old Sam, and his younger sister, my 11-year-old Sidney, and the sweet and quirky assistant coach is their dad, my husband, 45-year-old Tim. Our youngest son, seven-year-old Grady, and me, Nicki, young and hip mom and wife whose age shall remain unimportant (Im 41 if you just must know), are the ones smartly planted in our family-movin SUV. My Sidney, one of just four girls brave enough to join the co-ed team (co-ed just this year as they had a player shortage on the typically all-boys team) is holding her own as a scrappy little blonde ponytailed defender out there against pubescent boys and her annoying dad who thinks its fun to play her extra hard because he can. This opportunity doesnt happen everyday, that a brother and sister, two years and a gender apart, get to play on the same competitive team coached by their dad. Although Im not enthused enough today to be sitting out in the chilly fall rain, I think this is pretty cool. Its just not likely they will have the opportunity to be part of the same team again.

Thirty minutes of sloppy and fun-filled play ends and even this tough team and its coaches decide enough is enough. Dripping wet and smiling from ear to ear, the players run off the field and pile into family vehicles to head home for a hot shower and something warm to eat. My Sam and Sidney carelessly climb into my truck not minding that it and we are dry and clean and they are managing to spread their cold mess everywhere. After complaints from Grady and annoyed instructions from me, we settle in for the drive home. Tim, my handsome and fit husband of almost fifteen years, jogs up to my window, leans in for a quick kiss that makes me giggle and push his wet and sweaty self away. Little Grady, Tims shadow, opts to ride with Daddy and they run off together toward Tims pick-up, sprinting as though they can keep from getting soaked even though Tim is already drenched.