Monthly Archives: May 2012

Accepting Widowhood

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As of today, I’ve been a widow for 2½ years, though it feels like it’s been much longer than that, maybe a decade longer. Most widows agree. That might be because of all the tears cried or maybe just the many radical life changes. It could simply be the fatiguing nature of deep grief. Whatever the reason for feeling like a long-term widow, I can still identify quite a few positives coming out of those same 2½ years.

Widowhood was God’s choice for me in exactly the way and time it came. I can view it as a crisis sent from him or the result of living in a fallen world. Or I can take a completely different approach and see it as the reason I expanded my dependency on the Lord to a depth I would never have known without becoming a widow.

Women with husbands have this same opportunity to lean hard on God day to day, hour to hour, but taking advantage of it isn’t the driving force it is for a widow. When widowhood hits, extreme neediness forces a quest to find a new system of support and guidance.

Some women hold back, mad at God for taking their men. Others try to go on “as always,” but of course that doesn’t work. The Lord patiently stands at-the-ready, waiting with open arms and unlimited resources to step into the increased role we need from him.

If we don’t pull in close to him right away, it’s comforting to know he’ll wait until we’re ready. His offer of kindness, strength, and provision is open-ended, for always. The more desperate we become, the greater his rescue.

I’ll always miss Nate. We met when we were both 21, having officially left childhood behind, and were eager to start adulthood together. My entire adult life was spent in partnership with him, and although we had the usual marital disagreements, I’ll never forget the happiness we shared.

Since widowhood, with God’s steady encouragement and provision, the painful parts of our separation are mostly behind me. I can even think through the details of Nate’s cancer, his last hours, and his funeral without crying, which is exactly what other widows told me would eventually happen.

Although I never would have requested widowhood, as I pass the 2½ year mark, my memories are sweet, and the future, though undefined, is not a threat. I’ve found God’s ears open to my cries and his promises spot-on. And I’m confident that what’s been true of him during these past few years will continue to be true into the distant future.

And part of that future will always be to tell the story of how good he’s been to me.

“The widow who is really in need… puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help.” (1 Timothy 5:5)

Something to Crow About

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Three year old Skylar lives in a country-like neighborhood with lots of natural wildlife, including a flock of crows. Sometimes they swoop around in a group or congregate in one tree. When that happens Skylar says, “Today they’re having a meeting.”

Recently a crow flew overhead with a “Caw! Caw!”

“Wow!” I said. “Did you see that giant black bird?”

“That’s a macaw,” she said.

“Really?” I said, watching the crow disappear over the trees. “I thought macaws had bright colors.”

“No. They’re black.”

Then she said, “And I speak their language.”

“Impressive,” I said. “How’d you learn that?”

“Oh, I always knew it,” she said. “Actually, I taught it to the macaws.”

Learning languages is tricky. Teaching them is more so. Most of us have struggled to learn the ins and outs of a foreign language during school years, from Latin to French to Spanish and beyond. Biblical scholars work at Hebrew and Greek, and toddlers work to be understood by anyone.

Gary Chapman wrote THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES, explaining how to communicate best with those we love most. Not only do different generations speak differently, different decades do, too. But that’s not all. There are male-female variations and personality-type distinctions. It’s almost too complicated to figure out, so why bother?

We bother because of love.

When we love someone, we want to understand them better, including foreigners. Despite not understanding at first, it’s good to keep trying. God, the Great Communicator, is hoping we will. His desire is that we all become members of his family, and part of having harmonious relationships is communicating effectively. If we can’t understand each other, we are, in a way, foreigners living together in frustration. The Lord wants us all to “click,” and like all good fathers, he’s hoping his children will get to the place of communicating blessing to each other.

He also wants us to come to him for conversation. The biblical David put it well: “My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.” (Psalm 27:8) I’ll never get over the fact that God Almighty has an interest in our communication with each other, and even personally, him with me. My longing is to talk to others and to him in a way that will please him, and to accurately understand his language back to me.

And so I’ll keep trying.

I’m also trying to communicate with the crow-macaws as well as Skylar does. Yesterday we were playing in her driveway when she said, “I can ride my bike as fast as the birds fly. And when I yell up to ’em in bird language, they fly where I tell ’em to go.”

Flawless communication, to be sure.

”There are many different languages in the world, and every language has meaning. But if I don’t understand a language, I will be a foreigner to someone who speaks it, and the one who speaks it will be a foreigner to me.” (1 Corinthians 14:10-11)