CHRISTIAN WIDOW'S GUIDE PART 1

CHRISTIAN WIDOW'S GUIDE PART 1

When I first became a widow, I kind of thought that I had an insider's guide to being one. After all, both my dad and one of my brothers lost their first spouses. They had given me a run down of things that I might experience; the first time you think you catch a glimpse of your deceased spouse in a crowd, when you think you hear his voice, when you dream about them. Don't get me wrong, all their advice was welcomed and appreciated. But I learned, like we all do, that grief and widowhood looks different to everyone.
There is somewhat of a widow's survival guide in the Bible. If you don't know the Bible, there's an entire book dedicated to a couple of widows. Their names are Naomi and Ruth. In the book of Ruth, it tells their story. Naomi and her husband had to move from Israel to a foreign country because of the draught that was going on in Israel at the time. Naomi and her husband had two son who married two girls from this country. As life passed, so did Naomi's husband and both of her sons. As you can imagine, she was devastated. But, Naomi had one thing on her side; God. She told both women to go back to their original families. They were young and could start over. Naomi just wanted to go back to her country, her family, where there was safety and I'm sure some security. Someone there would help take care of her.
One daughter in law left, the other was determined to stay with her because Ruth had experienced a God changed life. I'm sure Naomi and Ruth were grateful for the loyalty they had for each other, the shared grief that shattered them both. And as they looked around their once happy home, now devoid of four family members, I bet their grief was a heart-wrenching scene. For me, after Greg died, I would walk around my home and cry looking at all the pictures of him, remembering amazing times and sobbing over what was lost. The raw grief that comes from the depth of your soul when someone you love is taken away is obsessive. Your mind feeds on it all day, dreams about it at night. Some of the darkest, cruelest moments are dreaming of them and then waking up to the reality that they are truly gone.
The women walk about a week to get back to Naomi's country and when they get there, the people could barely recognize Naomi. Her grief had either aged her, or hardened her, but they knew she had been through a rough time. Now this is the worst. No one likes aging, but it does happen on a quicker scale when you grieve. Poor Naomi. Just what she needed to hear - "Don't you look awful, er, different, dear. Sorry for your loss."🙄 She was so upset over everything, she was ready to change her name. Naomi means pleasant, but she didn't FEEL pleasant anymore. What she felt was BITTER and she wanted to change her name to Bitter so that everyone knew she knew they knew...she was bitter. And this is why we should never be allowed to make big decisions while in a crisis.😂 She said to her friends, "Don't call me Naomi; call me Mara (Bitter), for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?" Ruth 1:20-21
I don't judge Naomi. There were times when I needed to be held back from my bitter wrath. I remember one time going to a store with my oldest son right after Greg's funeral and there were people out front trying to raise money for children's cancer. That is a great cause and (now) I can appreciate what they were doing. However, as we passed by without stopping, the woman who had been advertising for donations said loudly to me, "If you don't donate, who will?" It's a good thing Jake was there with me. He must have seen my face and he took hold of my arm to continue guiding me into the store, because had I been able to make a full stop in front of her, she would have gotten my wrath with both barrels firing at her. How dare she say something like that to me? She doesn't know me, doesn't know the amount of money that was paid to a different disease that also needs a cure! The gull of her lecturing me on helping others when I had spent the last two years of my life dedicated to helping someone else live, literally serving him in every capacity of life. There is a moral to the story here, if you are someone looking to raise awareness or funds: you never know what someone else is going through or has gone through. Great lesson for us all to keep in mind.
Naomi and her bitterness speak to me. I struggled with this for a long time, and it can still creep into my heart. In my mind, I have lived Cinderella's life...only backwards. I had the handsome prince, adorable kids and lived in my dream castle, God having blessed in so many areas of my life. But now, it feels like I'm in the dark attic with no prospects, living in obscurity. Just me and my bitterness. Always longing for what I had; continuously seeing what I don't.
After two years of living in my bitter grief, I had finally had enough. Everything in my life seemed to be spiraling out of control. I was done being bitter and wanted to be better; wanted my kids to be better. This is where my therapist friend, Jen, was able to knock some much needed sense into me. And thank goodness for these types of friends who don't just give you the Bible verse and say "God's got this" (my tagline for when Greg was dying) because I know. I KNOW. I wrote about how God has this all the time!! And God does have this. It wasn't lack of faith that drove me to this point in my life. I let bitterness, resentment, anger, confusion and fear take root in my life making me almost hopeless. Jen did bring me back to scripture with Jeremiah 29:11 where God says to Israel (but I also think He means us today) that He knows what is happening in your life today. HE KNOWS. He knows I know... He knows. He has a plan, but what's more, He has a future. God has a future for me. I said it and then I said it again. She sent me home with homework to not forget the past, but to try and live in the present so that one day, I could see a future.
Ugh, this is hard. The bitterness sometimes feels like a protective shield when welded right. I packed up pictures of Greg, the ones that especially triggered those deep grief pains and focused on living that day, each morning praying to God for help. I tried to enjoying what my kids were doing and made it a priority to make dinner and eat it with them most nights. I tried to consciously ask about what was going on in my friend's lives and that helped take the focus off of me. I purposefully went into the holidays deciding to be happy, to enjoy focusing on the day with my kids and family and not focus on the past, which I know would put me in despair. All of these things, with God's help, made such a huge difference. Even if nobody else noticed, I noticed. There was a relief in living in the present, like a weight had been lifted. Hope is such a powerful force.
This, of course, does not mean I don't battle with my grief or the bitterness of what I perceived as having been lost in my life. Those are sometimes a daily surrender to God. The future is not clear to me, but I do have the hope of a future that God promised to me even living in my beautifully broken life.