💗 Because Love Came First

Bonny Boice
4 days ago
2 min read

I had it all … Faith, Love, Family, Peace.”

A dear friend recently handed me a book by Donna Ashworth, Wild Hope: Healing Words to Find Light on Dark Days.Inside, I found a poem called “Love Came First.”

✨ Love Came First

You don’t move on after loss, but you must move with.You must shake hands with grief, welcome her in, for she lives with you now.Pull her a chair at the table and offer her comfort.She is not the monster you first thought her to be. She is love.

And she will walk with you now, stay with you now, peacefully, if you let her.And on the days when your anger is high, remember why she came, remember who she represents. Remember.

Grief came to you, my friend, because love came first.Love came first.

Those words have stayed with me as I’ve walked through these past months of loss and remembrance.

A Year of Learning Love

This entire year has been, in many ways, a study of love.In January, I began with Kripalu’s 30 Days of Love Journal Prompts — quiet reflections that helped me explore how love lives in everyday life.

From there, an affirmation took root:

I am here to connect with love.

At first, that meant noticing the simple moments — laughter with friends, sunlight on water, Harley curled by the fire.But when my mom died this fall, love began teaching me on a deeper level.

Love revealed itself as something far beyond emotion — as a thread connecting body, mind, and spirit.It became the bridge between what is seen and what is remembered.

At Her Resting Place

This week, I visited my mom’s resting place.Her headstone reads:

I had it all … Faith, Love, Family, Peace.

Beside it stands a statue of St. Francis — her favorite saint, and the prayer that guided her life:

Make me an instrument of your peace.

St. Francis embodied a way of living that my mom quietly practiced — humility, kindness, and a deep reverence for all of creation.She loved her garden and her birds, the rhythm of the seasons, and the quiet joy of caring for others.Her faith wasn’t loud or showy; it was woven into the way she moved through the world — gentle, steady, and generous.

Standing there beside that statue, surrounded by trees and the sound of wind moving through them, I understood more fully what her love of St. Francis had taught me:that peace isn’t found by escaping sorrow, but by meeting it with tenderness.

Moving With Grief

I’m learning not to move on, but to move with.To set a place for grief at the table.To let her remind me that love is vast enough to hold both sorrow and peace.

Because love came first — in faith, in family, in every quiet act that endures long after goodbye.