Day 97

DIARY OF AN UNWILLING WIDOW

Sept. 10, 2013

Day 97

My husband is dead.  Oh, dear God – he is dead.  He is never, ever coming back.  Never.  He is gone.

Not exactly a news flash, I know.  For three months I’ve dealt with this reality and done the things a widow must do.  I bought a casket, a plot, and a gravestone,  planned a funeral, picked out my husband’s final outfit, stoically greeted guests at his visitation and made it through the funeral without collapsing.  I’ve deleted his name off all our shared accounts, figured out the finances, and reorganized his files.  I’ve gone through most of his belongings and am contemplating removing my wedding ring.  I’ve slept alone for 97 nights.  I’ve comforted my weeping children and clumsily attempted to point them to the One who wants to carry their deep hurt. For months I’ve walked around, dazed, clinging tightly to the only thing that made sense – an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-good God.

My head has known Paul is dead, but it is finally piercing my innermost self.  Now, my heart is realizing he is dead, too.  The grief is shattering as my heart attempts to accept the reality.  I feel like this leaden weight inside my chest has suddenly exploded, hurtling shards of grief into every corner of my body.  I cannot bear it.  He is dead.  He is gone.  There is no more Paul.  I have no husband – no lover, no friend, no protector.  I am quite sure I cannot bear this pain.  It will kill me before I survive.

But yet, I know that somehow, I  will survive.  And then what?  What remains? 

Love.

Our love.  The love that began when we were two 19 year old freshmen at Bible College.  The love that blossomed across the miles as we wrote letter after letter to each other, heartsick and missing one another.  The love the eventually joined us together at the altar and into newly married life. The love that produced five children and made room for two more.  The love that endured through trials and heartbreak and disappointment. The love that stretched thin at times, and sometimes seemed ready to break and not quite enough for what we thought was needed.  The love that continued to bind us together as we grew, tighter and tighter, until at times it seemed we were no longer two separate people but a single unit.

The love that could not be buried one June afternoon.

God is Love.  He remains.  Through every trial, every heartbreak – even this heartbreak, He remains steady, pure, and compassionate.  He holds me close when my legs falter and I want nothing more than to escape into a black nothingness.  When I don’t understand and I want to demand answers, He doesn’t disappear, but quietly remains.  He is all I have. He must be enough.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

 

 

 

Shattered, and so very, very broken tonight.  But not without hope – never without hope.