Are you feeling especially lost right now? The days are so short and the weather is cold. The absolute disorienting nature of our deepest grief and loss can leave us feeling even more vulnerable and alone.
After Christmas blues can be even harder when you are working through the loss of your husband. If you somehow found the strength and courage to decorate and engage in holiday traditions and celebrations… now you need even more strength and courage to remove the sights, sounds and smells. Somehow the landscape feels even more desolate and bleak as status quo is put in place.
If you chose not to deck your halls… well, honestly it might still feel somehow unusually sad and lonely anyway. All the hype in the air is somehow released like a balloon gone flat. The dumpsters overflow with dead Christmas trees and all the flickering, colored lights and yard decorations disappear to reveal the missing leaves and barren branches found in this season.
If we’re not careful, these images become a mirror of our thoughts if we allow our focus to be drawn to the dead or barren grass and bushes lying dormant until springs sweet kiss will awaken the world once again with the promise of new birth.
The reorientation of a human being never comes from pat answers or quick fixes.
~David Powlison
Healing is needed. It’s a process… and it’s often a very slow process. It’s a process completely out of our power and control. What we can control is our willingness to submit it to our faithful Father God. It is absolutely within the scope of God’s power and plan.
Lighthouses aren’t there to bring attention to themselves… their purpose is to show someone in trouble a path to safety and help.
God is our lighthouse in this terrible life storm. Look for His light in the darkness and trust Him to navigate you back to a safe place.
If you think about it, you most likely don’t feel the same way today as you felt a month ago. Depending on how long you’ve been on this journey through grief, you can look back over time and realize your thoughts and feelings might seem perpetually in flux. The minutes may be passing in a gruelingly slow fashion… yet somehow at the same time life is speeding forward with no regard for your need to try to understand what happened and how you will live with this loss.
God shared this passage with me to focus on for 2023. It gives me comfort and hope. I pray it will do the same for you.
I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you,
instructing and guiding you along the pathway for your life.
I will advise you along the way
and lead you forth with My eyes as your guide.
So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn
when I take you where you’ve not been before.
Don’t make Me tug you and pull you along.
Just come with Me!”
Psalm 32: 8-9
We are being carried through the valley of grief one God extended mercy at a time. We will survive this with God’s help. I can assure you this long cold winter won’t last forever. You won’t feel the same way one year from now as you feel today. Spring, beautiful spring, with all its splendor and glory is right around the corner. Hold on. Look for the lighthouse beacon and swim to the light.
About Teri Miner
Teri’s dance with grief actually began over five years before she watched her beloved husband of almost 37 years take his last breath and enter Heaven’s door on October 6, 2019. A terminal degenerative neurological disease steadily and increasingly attacked nearly every major system of his body and transformed him from a vibrant, brilliant, strong and caring man to a bedfast invalid at the end. She was devoted to caring for him and doing her best to make the most of every minute they had left, to love him and pray for a miracle.
She thought she knew what her future held, but she had no idea. Losing him was the first time she experienced a close and personal loss. He was the love of her life. The onslaught of the pandemic with its reign of fear-mongering, forced isolation and separation entering the scene and disrupting or destroying whatever sense of “normal” that remained, just added insult to injury.
Her faith in God is the sustaining force keeping her fighting spirit to find and share hope in a bright future. Her heart’s desire is to walk beside her fellow widows toward a path of promise and healing. She wants to offer encouragement and hope so others can find the strength to take that next breath or next step. She recently started her own blog, https://widowwhispers.blogspot.com/, to share with other widows not only the struggles and hardships of widowhood, but the triumphs. Her hope is found in leaning on the Lord Jesus to enjoy a God inspired future anchored in expectation He will bring us to a fulfilling and meaningful life.