Erika Kirk: “…there is no linear blueprint for grief. One day you’re collapsed on the floor crying out the name Jesus in between labored breaths. The next you’re playing with your children in the living room, surrounded by family photos, and feeling a rush of something you can only attempt to define as divinely planted and bittersweet joy as a smile breaks through on your face.

“They say time heals. But love doesn’t ask to be healed. Love asks to be remembered. It’s humbling to realize that this magnitude of suffering didn’t steal my love for my husband. It amplified it. It crystallized it.

“I carry my Charlie in every breath, in every ache, and in every quiet act of day to day living as I attempt to relearn what that rhythm will be.

“And what I’ve realized through these past 30 days is the greater the suffering, the purer the love. And I have never loved him more than I do now.”