A few days after my husband died, I found this small card inside his little travel Bible. It felt like a comforting message from him. “I entrust you to God and the promise of His grace that is able to build you up. Acts 20:32.”
God’s word says that he gives us grace sufficient for each day (2 Cor 12:9). Grace is a gift. What is it? Most often it’s defined as “undeserved mercy; unmerited favor.” The Greek and Aramaic translation is “care and caring; the empowering presence of Christ within us.” God cares for us and takes care of us as a loving parent. This is encouraging and comforting to me as a widow.
I don’t know how I could have made it through the twists and turns, ups and downs, nights of tears and days of weariness, loneliness and that empty space inside without God’s grace. Over the years, the grief remains but my life has grown around it. I can deal with it better even though I’m still on the journey.
Many widows, even those of us who are believers in Christ, feel lost and wandering following the death of our spouse. It’s as if we are searching for something, but we don’t quite know what it is. For me, the first few months it was as if I was looking for my husband, even though I knew he had died. When he left this earth, i felt as if a part of me went with him. I think I was searching for the “me” that no longer exists. I was trying to find some kind of meaning to why he was gone and I was still here, and what do I do from here on?
Our lives change, we change, when the person we love with our heart and soul is no longer here. It takes awhile for our brain to process what has happened. Those who have not experienced it firsthand cannot understand. This lost and searching feeling is common among widows; even those of us who believe our husbands live on in joyful spirit and we will be with him again when our time here has ended. This wandering and lost feeling is a normal part of grief and healing.
Over time we emerge from this fog. We come face-to-face with the reality of life without him. We are no longer the same person as before, even if we remain in the same house, job, or environment. We enter a time of asking, ” who am I,” on my own no longer a couple. It is not easy. In fact, being a widow is harder than we could have imagined. Our husband who we shared a loving life with remains a part of our memory, our heart, and our soul. The gift of grace that God offers helps us discover who we are without our life-partner and gives us strength beyond our own for this journey.
About Carmen Myrtis-Garcia
Carmen Myrtis-Garcia has faced her fears head-on while snorkeling the Great Blue Hole of Belize despite her phobia of the ocean, ziplining above a jungle canopy even though she is afraid of heights, walking barefoot across red-hot coals at a firewalking event, or moving alone to a foreign country. She does not consider herself brave, just curious.
The hardest challenge she faced was the suffering and death of her husband, Michael, to pancreatic cancer. Faith, prayer, and community got them through three stays in the hospital in a Third World country 3000 miles from family. Michael died in 2015 following an emergency trip back to Colorado just 3 years after they began living their long-planned for Dream on a little Caribbean Island.
Carmen is a published fiction and non-fiction writer. She is a contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul and author of Land of Grief; Hope for the Widow’s Journey (devotional; release spring 2025). She is founder of Hope for the Widow’s Journey (private FB group) and Faith-Filled Widows (public FB), and her blog Thoughts-in-Grief. Her mission is to assist over one million widows to live life forward with hope, faith, and healing through her writings, podcasts, workshops, and grief mentoring.
She is the proud mother of two sons and a daughter-in-law and “neena” to two adorable grandchildren. She resides in Colorado and Belize and wanders at times when her gypsy spirit tugs at her.