Nanci and I always got up early to watch Wimbledon together, as it’s a 6 a.m. start here on the Pacific coast. It was her second favorite sporting event after the Super Bowl. I cannot hear the word Wimbledon without immediately thinking of Nanci.

A year ago, I got a phone call from Operation Mobilization, an organization Nanci and I have loved for years. They asked how I felt about their naming the ship library on Logos Hope after Nanci. I was, of course, honored, and knew Nanci would be, because we absolutely loved our visit to the ship six years ago, when it was docked in Jamaica.

On March 21, I gave a 30-minute chapel message at California Baptist University. They asked me to talk about suffering and Heaven, in light of Nanci’s homegoing, so I shared about Nanci and quoted from her journal. That date I spoke was actually the one-year anniversary of the day our family of 11 gathered around her bed, and Nanci spoke powerfully into our lives. A week later, she went to be with Jesus.

In the journal she kept throughout her cancer years, Nanci wrote these reflections about the healing Jesus accomplished on the cross: “I needed, and have received in full measure, a healing from my guilt and sins. No physical healing compares to complete spiritual healing.”

My youngest daughter Angela wrote the following about her mom on September 28, the six-month anniversary of Nanci’s homegoing. March 28 marked the one-year anniversary since Nanci relocated to Heaven. This week our family has been all together—both our daughters Karina and Angela and their husbands, and all five of our grandsons.

A year ago tomorrow, on March 28, 2022, I said goodbye—for now—to my wife, Nanci, who was also my partner, soulmate, and best friend. The pilgrimage of grief, though full of learning and enrichment, is one I would gladly exchange to have my wife with me again. And yet…not really, because I recognize God’s sovereignty and love, and His perfect plan, and the fact that my wife is now happier than she has ever been.

On December 29, 2018, Nanci wrote in her journal, reflecting on the year since her diagnosis in early 2018: “Last year at this time, I was impressed in my heart that 2018 might be the best year of my life. I had few tangible reasons why I felt this way.”

In March, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years I’ve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful—and supernatural—change in those last four years.

This is a year of “firsts,” that is, the first of many things without Nanci by my side. These weeks have included three of the very hardest firsts, followed quickly by Christmas and New Year’s.