widowhood thoughts

A sweet and lovely widow friend of mine has a deep love for Jesus and such a way with words!  She wrote these beautiful notes to me below and I just so love them so much I wanted to share them: 

🏔

This grief journey is like a drive up a steep and winding mountain during a snow storm. You don’t want to, it’s rough, scary, daunting, you feel like you’re gonna die, you feel so dizzy from the snow blowing against the windshield you don’t know which way is up or even if you’re moving forward at all, it’s intense, and sometimes all you can do and think of is the road ahead of you, your steering, and what’s coming next. You’re gripping the wheel you don’t and can’t know how far you’ve gone, all you are is consumed with getting through. So much so that you don’t even realize when the snow has subsided and that you’re now on level ground. But one day, you’ll realize that you “made it”. You’ll look through your rear view mirror at the mountain range you’ve just driven through and you’ll see nothing but how awesome and beautiful it all is and it never could have been done without God. 

I was thinking that if we knew how much God helped us in our everyday, we may just get fat and lazy. I wonder if this is why He sometimes seems so far away. I mean, I know that with all the things that the children are required to do, I do over and beyond what they do. My stuff is more Big Picture stuff, but it’s all stuff we need to survive. Cleaning a room seems daunting to some of them, but if their responsibility was to collect the money for the mortgage, they would never make it! I think in the same way, God provides for us. With and in all things, but sometimes, we’re required to “clean our room” while He takes care of “the mortgage”. 

I’m not sure what I’d do without Jesus. I am so heartbroken for people without Him. How do they manage?! I used to wonder at the pattern I noticed amongst widows. How they all seemed to either be bitter and stuck in their grief or re-married inside of two years. There didn’t seem to much of a middle ground there. I was really afraid. As I’ve travelled through it though, I realize for myself that this thing is no joke!! I mean, the intense feelings of loneliness, despair, hopelessness, confusion, and sorrow. I mean, we feel these things. They are all there. The feelings, the THOUGHTS(!!), are way too real!...... but then, Jesus. And even though the feelings may not subside, they may be just as intense as they’ve always been, we have a reason to hope. We have the trust in our Father who knows exactly how much we can take. And we take it. Because we know we have a brighter future. We know that life is on the way. Or it is here now. In our midst. We just maybe can’t see it through the tears. The sun is shining 365 days a year. Sometimes we cannot see it for the clouds, but it’s always sunny! 

trail beginning of a recent hike