When something breaks, my first instinct is to fix it and make it look like it did before.
But sometimes, what’s shattered can’t be glued together the way it was. And maybe, just maybe, it’s not supposed to be.
My husband Tom died suddenly in 2019. He was 46, healthy, and we’d just had a wonderful weekend together. In the middle of the night, I woke up to him saying he didn’t feel well. Within moments, he was slurring his words. I called the paramedics, thinking everything would be ok. It wasn’t.
He had a stroke. The paramedics worked for an hour. And then they left. Tom had died.
I sat on the couch in the quiet, realizing that in one hour, I had gone from wife to widow. And an unemployed mother of eight.
The Shattering
In the months that followed, I did what you’re “supposed” to do. I went to grief groups, therapy, and church. I checked all the boxes, hoping it would make the pain smaller. It didn’t.
I remember thinking, I’m doing everything right. Why am I not better?
A Catholic therapist I met during that time kept asking, “What now, Kate? What is God calling you to?”
I didn’t have an answer. Honestly, I was angry. I told her, “I was a really good wife, and my husband died. Your turn, God.”
It was the best I could manage.
Would You Live for Me?
The second Easter after Tom’s death, I hit my lowest point. I was financially, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted.
And it wasn’t because of a lack of spiritual effort or availability. I was turning to prayer a lot. I went to daily Mass and took serious time to just sit with the Lord.
At my lowest moment though, I started begging God to just strike me dead. I felt like I was messing everything up. I wasn’t measuring up financially, I wasn’t being the kind of mom I wanted to be, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing with any of it. So, I started wondering what I was living for.
And in the quiet of that Holy Week, I heard something that changed everything. It wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable:
“Would you live for Me?”
There was only one answer. “Yes.”
That single word didn’t make everything better, but it cracked something open. It gave me a reason to take one more step, and then another. Slowly, grace started to slip in through those cracks.
The Mosaic
A few years later, I joined the CatholicPsych Mentorship Program. It gave me the space and the tools to walk with others who were suffering. I may not be able to fix every situation that comes my way, but I do know what it’s like to hold broken pieces in your hands and wonder if anything beautiful could ever come from them. And I know what it’s like to work with God to turn those broken pieces into a beautiful mosaic.
Our lives were shattered, but God was put the pieces together in a new way. Not the same. Not “fixed.” But redeemed.
Just like a mosaic, He made something beautiful from what was broken.
Now, when people come to me carrying their own shattered pieces, I can look them in the eye and say, “That’s not rubble. That’s not waste. Let’s start building.”
Advent and Hope
Advent is the season when we wait for light to break into our darkness, when we remember that God doesn’t stay far away from our pain. He steps right into it.
That’s what He did for me.
He didn’t erase the cracks. He filled them with grace.
And that’s what I want others to know: You don’t get over loss. You grow stronger carrying it. You don’t rebuild the same life. You build a new one—with God’s hands guiding yours.
So if you’re holding broken pieces today, don’t throw them away. They might just be the beginning of your own mosaic of hope.
That’s the same spiritual movement we’re all called to make when we realize our parents’ love—while real and meaningful—was also imperfect.