Category Archives: Widowhood

One Year Ago: Nate’s Exit to Heaven

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People might judge our family to have too keen a focus on Nate’s death, but those of us left behind love to talk about him. Whether it’s the decision about his headstone, the reliving of a memory or a reason to be thankful, all of us are warmed in the process.

Today on the one year anniversary of Nate’s death, nearly 100% of the conversation has been about him, beginning with my children and then through emails, blog comments and snail mail from others. I am a fortunate woman to have so many caring friends, some I’ve known only through cyber space.

Many included comforting Scriptures in their messasges. Nearly all have said they were praying for our family, which I’m sure is the reason it’s been a day of blessing rather than an endurance contest of misery.

One thing mentioned by the kids today is their fresh focus on eternity. We all wonder what’s going on in that supernatural paradise. What is Nate doing? What is he seeing? Who is he talking to? Although we’ve known others who’ve been there for years, it wasn’t until Nate died that we began to seriously ponder the possibilities. Thinking about heaven seems to calm grief the way salve soothes a raw wound.

Hans and Katy’s friend Esther took the time to copy Psalm 121 into her email, the first one I opened this morning:

“[The Lord] who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches… will neither slumber nor sleep. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.”

These powerful words of promise were a positive way to start the morning. Part of their impact was in knowing they also applied to Nate. I believe the phrase “watching over your coming and going” includes our entering this world, and later exiting from it. God carefully watched over Nate’s life between his “coming” at conception and his “going” at death, right into eternity on November 3, 2009. As Nate arrived there, it became another “coming” monitored by the Lord. Cancer was Satan’s awful idea, but God used it as the vehicle to transport Nate into blissful eternity.

Today all of our children checked in with me. They’re a precious lot, and I don’t deserve the tender kindness they’ve shown. Although we couldn’t all be together, we were one in heart and mind, which greatly enriched this significant milestone.

As the day ended, I went back to Psalm 121, looking it up in Nate’s Bible. Although he didn’t often mark on the words of Scripture, he’d underlined the verses about the Lord watching over him and over his coming and going. Seeing his wavy pen lines on the page made me smile and experience a brief connection to my man.

I needn’t have worried about this important day. In place of tears, God gave us joy… all of us. Especially Nate.

“Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)

The Journal: Will it be widowhood?

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I remember the first moment the word “widow” entered my mind. It was about a year ago, just a few days before Nate and I were told he had terminal pancreatic cancer. I was sitting in a warm tub in the early morning hours after Nate had had a bad night with intense back pain. He was finally asleep, and I grabbed the chance to decompress (and think) behind closed doors.

The tub wasn’t even full before I was weeping, panicky at the unknowns in our immediately future. What if Nate really had cancer? What if he died? What if I became a widow?

Feeling isolated as a woman who’d just moved 110 miles away from her sister, her girlfriends, her prayer groups and her church, I clutched. But God, the tender Father, interrupted that downward thought-spiral by flooding my mind with a list of caring friends. These were women who would come to me if I asked, women who were faithful to God but also to me. They were people I could call at any hour, confident they would give me good counsel and be willing shoulders to cry on. In thinking of them, I knew I would make it… even if I became a widow.

When I climbed out of the tub, I felt much better than when I’d climbed in, even though our circumstances hadn’t changed. But God had spoken to my need, demonstrating again how close he was. And that’s one of the awesome things about him. He’s intimately aware of where we stand at every given moment, knowing precisely what we need. My focus, and also that of Nate and I together as a couple, had been riveted on his health issues for many months. God knew my meltdown was coming, and he knew exactly when. He was ready.

I’ve learned God is practical and that he faithfully rushes toward our needs with sufficiency. He perfectly measures out ideas and vigor to cover every situation. As a doctor matches drugs to a patient’s illness, God matches aid to his children’s crises.

A sensible daily prayer for all of us is, “Lord, prepare me for whatever’s coming, and when it gets here, show me what to do.”

And he will.

He did it during my bath-time meltdown and has repeatedly rescued me throughout the last bumpy year. I still crave and pray for his preparation, because new crises will surely come. But I’ve witnessed how superbly he answers that prayer, and I don’t ever want to be caught weeping over bad news without having first invited God to get me ready for it.

As for my God-inspired list of women supporters, as I thought about each name he’d given me, I realized how amazing his help really was. Every single one on his list was a widow.

“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.”

(2 Corinthians 3:4-5)

The Journal: His Plans or Mine?

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Toward the end of summertime a year ago, I had just finished unpacking after our move to Michigan that June. Because of Nate’s painful back, most of the shoving, rearranging and emptying of boxes had fallen to me, but we were both so pleased to be in our new peaceful setting with a smaller house that the work had been a joy.

By the end of that summer, we’d settled in and were looking toward Nate’s back surgery in September. He was working as much as his pain permitted, and I had an empty calendar, an enormous blessing after having been swamped with seven children and unnumbered volunteer commitments for the better part of our marriage.

That August (2009), my journal read: “The calendar squares of past years have had so much writing on them that some had to have flaps of paper taped on them because everything happening that day couldn’t be written tiny enough to fit on one square.”

In our new situation, I didn’t look at my calendar for days at a time, a true luxury. Life was becoming manageable: “Last week was the very last giant garbage pile in front of our cottage. This week we have only one big can and nothing standing next to it for the first time. So here I am, ready for a new phase of life.”

I had no inkling my “new phase” would be nursing a terminally ill husband, followed by getting used to life without him. At the end of that same entry I wrote a prayer: “I wait at your feet, Lord, for instructions, opportunities, your revealing of the path I’m to walk. Whatever it is, it’s all up to you. I want only to hear you clearly and make the choices that are within your will. Open my hearing to know for sure.”

I only had to wait a few days to “know for sure.” And there certainly was no ambiguity about “the path I was to walk.” But like countless other people thrown into crisis, every move we made, every decision weighed, every hour spent was with a desire to just get through it. There wasn’t time to think any more deeply than that.

But that’s the thing about following God’s lead. He’s done the thinking for us. He’s made the plans. He’s inspected the future. And according to what he’s seen there, he shows us the best way to go. We can either follow or go off on our own. It isn’t that we can’t think for ourselves or use the brain God gave us. It’s that the very best thinking we can ever do is incomplete and therefore not as good as God’s.

When my “new phase of life” arrived, it was something I never would have chosen. But God ordered my path, and so here I stand, gradually adjusting to being without Nate. It’s probably time for me to pray that same prayer again: “What’s next, Lord? What are your instructions? Your opportunities?”

The future looms, and God has already thought through my best options. Without doubt, he has important plans for me, and I intend to follow his lead.

“When you received the word of God… you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13)