Monthly Archives: August 2010

A Difficult Decision

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Like most of life’s changes, new widowhood brings many mini-adjustments. Nate’s mother and my mom were both widows for well over a decade, so I got to look at that up close. But finding myself in the same category now, I’m realizing most of their day-to-day rethinking took place behind closed doors or deep in their hearts, changes that were invisible to the rest of the world.

I have several close friends who faced widowhood in their fifties, women who shared candidly with me. But the truth is, we can’t understand what it’s really like to undergo a major life-shift unless it’s us.

Hundreds of my adjustments to being a widow have taken place inside my head. Tonight my sister and brother-in-law invited us over for dinner. There were 11 of us around the dinner table, including two little ones, and the chatter was happy and animated as we ate Mary’s delicious pork chops, rice, corn-on-the-cob and fruit salad.

But I missed Nate, who had loved getting together as we did tonight to share a meal and interesting conversation. While I ate, I tried to imagine Nate’s presence at the table. The first thing that came to mind was his back pain. Absent the cancer, if he’d have been with us, he would have been suffering.

His back issues had been steadily escalating, so in reality, he probably wouldn’t have been at the dinner at all. He would have been home, lying in bed on ice packs, trying to get away from the pain. I probably wouldn’t have been at the meal, either. Although I wouldn’t have been a widow, other negative life adjustments would have been ongoing.

Nate had a multitude of back maladies: stenosis of the spine, five bulging disks, arthritis and bone spurs. He’d lost three inches in height in the last few years because of a compressed spine, and although surgery might have given him temporary relief, over the long haul the developments would have all been downhill.

Tonight as I walked out the front door by myself after our dinner together, I felt teary and frustrated. Neither scenario was any good: Nate still present but with a hurting back, or Nate out of the picture and me a widow.

I know I’m not alone in this type of dilemma, though, where the only options are unpleasant. All of us get there sooner or later, many people again and again. Fighting what we can’t control is useless, but acceptance takes work and determination.

There is an up-side to all this, though.  Whether Nate would remain with us in great pain or die of cancer, both extremely negative, it hadn’t been me who was bearing the burden of choice. I’d had no say in the matter. The burden was God’s. And he made the decision in an interesting way. Included in it was the directive that I become a widow, yes, but the other part of his choice was that Nate be released from chronic pain.

Of the two scenarios, God chose the best one.

“Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time… No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die.” (Isaiah 57:1-2)

Freshening Up

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Women love their homes. God gave each of us a nesting instinct, which translates to arranging our space to reflect our personalities and become a nourishing place.

For example, some of us love bright colors, others like muted ones. Some like formal, some informal. Some like a cleaned-off look, while others prefer something interesting on every square inch. We enjoy choosing what to display in our homes, and we like the process of putting it all together.

I remember reading the story of a family who moved virtually every year. As soon as the moving van had unloaded and pulled away, the mother picked flowers from nearby plantings (even if they were just wild flowers or weeds) and made an arrangement for the kitchen counter. To her it meant, “We’re home.”

If we women are able to choose new paint, new carpeting or new curtains, we get an extra boost. To have a freshened-up house is to feel fresh ourselves.

Here in my Michigan cottage it’s been a traumatic year, a year I hope never to repeat with its anguish and upset. Although the house was needy when we bought it a decade ago, we used it only sporadically for nine years and did nothing to improve it. We gathered there for the relationships and the beach, and taking time to fix up a run-down place wasn’t our priority.

But when Nate and I moved here full-time last summer, we walked through the house together and made a dream list of home improvements, from fresh paint to a remodeled kitchen (and a dishwasher!), new windows to replace those that were rotting, new flooring, landscaping, a shower someplace other than the basement, and many other things. But when cancer engulfed us, the wish list was set aside.

Then somewhere during the dark of winter, a few weeks after Nate’s death when the world was icy cold, Mary thought it would refresh my wilted spirit to redecorate a room. “Let’s paint the ‘library’!” she said, trying to generate the enthusiasm for both of us.

In a “regular” year, I would’ve jumped at the chance to work together on such a project. But this winter found me disturbed to the core. To add additional disturbance by removing books from shelves and making the compulsory mess to paint a room was completely debilitating. It actually made me cry.

This week, eight months later, the idea sounded better. We began with fresh ceiling paint and have decided not to stop with one room but to freshen up five. God is steadily, slowly bringing healing. I’ve been trusting him to do that all along, and today the smell of wet paint was a fresh fragrance indeed.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19)

Father Knows Best

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God is full of surprises. He doesn’t think like we do, plan like we do or respond to circumstances like we do. He has no limitations and never runs out of ideas. He never has to “rack his brain” or wonder, “What should I do?”

That’s because he’s God, in the top slot, in all categories. So it makes perfect sense, since we’re not at the top, that we don’t understand why things happen to us. With our limited point of view, we reason that if God is in control and this awful thing has happened, why didn’t he stop it?

Growing up in the 1950’s, my family didn’t watch much TV. Television was new, and there wasn’t a whole lot to look at. By 10:30 PM, the national anthem was played, and all programming ceased until morning. One show we did find to watch, though, was “Father Knows Best.”

Mary and I have sweet memories of our relationship with the Andersons, a family much like ours with two girls, one boy, a home in the suburbs and a daddy who walked in each evening wearing a hat and carrying a newspaper. Tonight we watched one of those black and white episodes from 1958. Just hearing the theme music was a thrill, and seeing our old “friends” again was a pleasure.

In tonight’s story, the father, Jim, finds himself facing Saint Peter at heaven’s pearly gates. Peter is assessing whether or not Jim ought to “get in.” When he questions him about a decision he made, Jim says, “That was an especially difficult one.”

Peter says, “Naturally it was difficult. It’s part of our master plan. We do that purposefully. We keep throwing difficult choices in your path to test you. It’s the decisions you make that shape you into what you are.”

Without realizing it, this script line had made a scriptural point. And because of God’s perfect analysis of every person and what each needs, we can believe there are exceedingly important reasons for the “difficult choices” that are “thrown” at us.

As autumn approaches, my mind back-steps to a year ago. On this date, though we knew nothing of Nate’s cancer, we were within three weeks of finding out, within nine weeks of his death. But God had already decided on the test, had put the details in place and was about to light the circumstantial fuse. The difficult choices Saint Peter mentioned were barreling toward our family.

Every day for 42 days Nate woke to new tests buried within the big cancer-test, and so did the rest of us. His trials were excruciating, both physically and emotionally, but ours also involved pain, and still do. Television-Peter was quoting the biblical-James when he said, “It’s the decisions you make that shape you into what you are.”

While we knit our brows and wrestle with the tough ones, there is a choice we can make up front that’ll facilitate all the rest: to choose to believe each test does come from an all-wise God.

Of course that means even if we don’t like our tests, we must trust that our heavenly Father really does know best.

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:12)