Category Archives: Widowhood

Cast your bread.

Posted on by

I cut my spiritual teeth on the old King James Version of the Bible, so most of my memorizing as a youngster was done in old English. I related best to the many word pictures in Scripture, and one of them I still recite goes like this: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”

Mom explained it this way: “You should throw your bread on the water, and eventually it’ll come back to you… buttered.”

That didn’t clarify a whole lot for me, but I figured if God could smear butter on wet, soggy bread and send it back, he must be an incredible guy.

I was close.

The bread-verse is simply God’s unique way of saying if we let go of something we want to control, willingly putting it into his care, he’ll eventually put it into better condition than it was when we let it go. And today I had a buttered-bread-back experience related to this little blog site.

After the Lord prompted me to start posting 3 years ago, he morphed the site into a blog that encouraged widows, then caused a widow-friend to tell another widow about it, who contacted me about writing a book. She “happened” to have influence at a publishing company and put me in touch with an editor, who coaxed me to ask for endorsements, which put me in touch with Nancy Leigh DeMoss, who today recorded a week’s worth of radio programs (with me), challenging widows to seek encouragement through my little book and offering it as the resource on her radio broadcast, “Revive Our Hearts.”

Nancy Leigh has a global listening audience of multiple thousands, which means widows all over the place will be encouraged, and suddenly I understood about the buttered-bread. Embarking on widowhood was a project I never wanted, but as the above chain of events began to unfold, my nervousness pushed me to hand the whole lot over to God (i.e. casting it on the waters), knowing that if I didn’t, I would surely make a mess.

And so it became his blog, his book, his broadcast, his everything. In my ineptness, I knew I could trust God to take care of the things I knew I couldn’t. And as he always does, he followed through exactly as he said.

The Lord is teaching me to put whatever I “have” into his care, without hesitating. But so often I waver. How come? It’s probably because I want to retain control. Of course none of us has the control we think we do, whether it’s our schedules, our investments, our influence, our children, our husbands, or anything else. We don’t control them today, and won’t tomorrow.

Maybe the smartest thing to do, then, is to throw it all on the waters and trust that the God of buttered bread will do the rest.

“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” (Ecclesiastes 11:1)

The Widow-Word

Posted on by

I remember the first time I ever seriously considered the word “widow.” Of course I knew what it meant and defined it by the many elderly ladies I knew who were widows. But no definition of the word widow would be complete without its emotional component.

When my friend Carole lost her husband Reggie to melanoma cancer, the full force of the word began to register. After he died, I flew from Chicago to Asheville, North Carolina, to be with my good friend.

The day I arrived, she and I, along with her 7 children, drove to the funeral home to see Reggie one last time. His service was to take place the next day, so this was their final goodbye. It was a difficult hour, especially for the kids, but the room was filled with loving words and touches, a testimony to the good father and husband he was.

As we left the funeral home, Carole leaned over and whispered, “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the widow-word.”

And that’s the instant when its meaning came to life. This was my pal, a buddy through college years, teaching years, our weddings, and many babies. Her Reggie and my Nate were strong friends, and the future looked bright.

But a widow? How could we be a foursome without Reggie?

The widow-word ultimately settled in on Carole and she coped valiantly with it, but today, I no longer tag her that way. Though she’s still a widow, more so she is “my friend Carole.” She’s the same spunky person I’ve always known and is just as involved in the lives of others as she’s always been.

Now that Nate has been gone for 2½ years I can honestly say I’ve gotten used to the widow-word, too. In the beginning I hid behind it, craving time alone. Later, I worked to accept it.  Eventually the widow-word wrapped itself around me like a cozy cloak as I gratefully accepted the help and love others gave.

But these days, something else is happening. Although I’ll probably be a widow for the duration, the widow-word has relocated itself to a mental back burner. Other words are bubbling up in front of it: grandma, writer, pray-er… and daughter of God.

Though I’ve been God’s child for many years, it was widowhood that made me cling to him in new, practical ways. He is aware of each of our identity crises. He knows radical change is traumatic at best, but as always, he offers a solution: instead of identifying with the labels of this life, simply identify with him. Scripture describes (in over 200 references) what it means to be “in Christ,” and it’s all good.

Both Carole and I know, if the choice is the “widow-word” or the label “in Christ,” there’s no contest.

 “In Christ… you have been brought to fullness.” (Colossians 2:10)

Willingly Wooed? (…from yesterday)

Posted on by

God’s Word is detailed and practical. Whatever the question, he has the answer. In my consideration of whether or not to marry again some day, Scripture offered clear counsel. I learned that widows are free to choose another husband, but before they do, the Lord wants them to know the happier choice would be to remain single.

In my few years of widowhood, I’ve missed being married. But Nate and I grew up together as many married couples do, and our couple-history, if written down, would fill many volumes. A second husband’s history would fill a different set of books. Although second spouses could work at telling each other about first ones, most of that history would remain unshared and unappreciated. Of course a new couple-story would start when a new marriage began, but the inside jokes and warm remembrances of years gone by would be absent.

The greater problem, though, would be the grown children. Scripture is clear that a husband should trump children in the heart of a wife. Since Nate’s been gone, the fellowship of my adult children and children-in-law has been sweeter and richer than ever, with the grandchildren being an extension of that.

Remarriage sounds like squeezing a new husband into the existing picture rather than putting him on top of the heap. And of course the same squeeze would have to happen on his side. Maybe the biblical Paul, though unmarried himself, could see the sticky situations that would follow remarriage, so he counseled against it.

We all know couples who’ve remarried after widowhood. The relationships that work best are those that grew out of friendships established well before the deaths, four adults who knew each other and raised their children together, who all had relationships beforehand.

So what happens to those of us who take the biblical advice and remain single? Scripture gives an excellent example of a widow-champion. Anna (of Luke 2) had a husband who died after only 7 years of marriage. If she married around 15, common in that day, she was a widow for 62 years, since Scripture says she was 84 when she “met” the newborn Jesus.

Anna was spiritually favored, having been given the role of a prophetess. That meant she was a go-between linking God to the Jews. She made sure Jehovah was #1 in her life, even to the point of living in the temple full time. She is a good model for all of us widows, and we can lead fulfilling lives if we, too, devote ourselves to whatever God has planned for us.

She showed us how to count on the Lord to be all the Man any of us would ever need.

“A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is.” (1 Corinthians 7:39-40)