Blessing of Love

As Valentines Day looms before us, the media channels, commercials, and shops are all decorated with hearts and cupids while they play endless love songs. Couples everywhere are planning romantic outings and preparing gifts to express their love to one another. This can be very difficult and heartbreaking for widows who miss their husbands. Memories flood our minds as we remember our beloved and the celebrations we once had.

This can be a very trying time for new widows, and even for some of us who are further down the road in our grief process. The truth is, we all need to feel loved. Our marriage gave us a covenant relationship with someone who was the closest to us. We shared everything with him. Missing him is hard enough on normal days, but when we come to holidays, anniversaries, and special occasions like Valentine’s Day—it can be so much harder. Couples usually find a special way to celebrate their love together and the memories can be bittersweet. Now it magnifies the fact our special someone is not here to share the day with.

You are dearly loved. God wants you to know this with confidence. He wants you to know this right now, while you miss your beloved husband and the love you shared together. He sees you and understands the hurt in your heart. He is right there with you and wraps His arms around you to comfort you and draw you to Himself to bring healing to all the brokenness and heartache.

Most people think of love as an emotion. It is, in the sense of the feelings we have with the most important people in our lives, such as our husband, children, and family. Real love goes far deeper than a feeling. Love is really a choice. God chose to love us when He created us. He loves us, not because of anything we did, or will do, but simply as a choice of His grace toward us. We also choose who we want to love and invest our time with.

What is love? Love plays a central and critical role in our lives. The Bible teaches us God is love. The 1828 Edition of the Webster’s Dictionary refers to 1 John 4 when describing this and defines love as benevolence and good will.

The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.

1 John 4: 8 TPT

And…

We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love He has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them.

1 John 4: 16 TPT

God showed His great love for us by sending His own Son to die in our place so we could be forgiven of our sins. He created us to be in relationship with Him. He is just and holy. If we sin, it separates us from God. He wants us to choose to be in relationship with Him. Giving us a choice means we can choose to sin, doing things that go against what God tells us we need to do to be in holy relationship with Him. He knew He would need to give us a way to find redemption when we make the wrong choice. He chose to give up His own Son as a sacrifice for us before He ever created the first person.

For here is the way God loved the world—He gave His only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in Him will never perish but experience everlasting life.

John 3: 16 TPT

God is love. No human mind can truly comprehend God. If God is incomprehensible, then so is His love. We try to describe His love, but we can never fathom it, because it is divine love, as different from our love as His being is different from our being. God’s love is loyal. God’s love is perfect. His love never changes and He doesn’t stop loving. God’s love is so amazing and enduring there is an entire poem enthusiastically celebrating God’s love in Psalm 118. It opens with thanking God for His goodness. It declares His love is tender, constant and lasting forever. It’s worth reading because it describes so many ways God shows us His love as we journey through this earthly life. His love for us began before we were even conceived and reaches out to us to respond to His love by loving Him back with all our might.

But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly! And there is still much more to say of His unfailing love for us! For through the blood of Jesus we heard the powerful declaration, “You are now righteous in My sight.” And because of the sacrifice of Jesus, you will never experience the wrath of God. So if while we were still enemies, God fully reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son, then something greater than friendship is ours. Now that we are at peace with God, and because we share in His resurrection life, how much more we will be rescued from sin’s dominion! And even more than that, we overflow with triumphant joy in our new relationship of living reconciled to God—all because of Jesus Christ!

Romans 5: 8-11 TPT

What is perfect love? The Bible defines it with wonderful clarity in 1 Corinthians 13. It goes way beyond the superficial qualities the world uses to describe it. The world’s definition is selfish and fleeting. It focuses on outward appearance and what someone can do for you. It places the emphasis on things that are expensive and change in value by the world’s standards. The world seeks to enhance what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears. Let’s see what God says.

Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 TPT

That’s certainly the kind of love I want to experience. I was blessed with a loving husband who chose to see the best in me, even when I fell very short of my best. He took God’s Word to heart and did his best to follow these ideals. I miss that a lot.

God is demonstrating His love in special ways to reach and fill the holes in my heart that came when my husband moved to Heaven. He is surrounding me with friends and family members who show their love and support. He gives me opportunities to share His love with others I encounter. His peace fills me when I encounter situations where I am uncomfortable or would tend to yield to fear. He shows me His unwavering love and compassion. He answers my prayers. He is teaching me so much about how to pray effectively and stand on His promises. All His promises are part of His outpouring of love He is eager to share with all His children.

When Jesus came to live on earth, He showed God’s love to everyone He met and everywhere He went. He told us several times He only does and says what His Father, God, tells Him to. God wants us to know how much He loves us, and Jesus showed us what that looks like as we live here on earth.

He demonstrated it with His disciples, being very patient with them as they learned from Him things they never heard before. Jesus knew some of the things He said seemed in direct conflict with what His disciples were taught all their lives. He was telling them many of the religious rituals and many of the religious practices that were added by men to try to fulfill the laws God gave were not what God had in mind. Many of these ideas and practices missed God’s heart. Just as God told the Israelites in the Old Testament…

I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know Me more than I want burnt offerings.

Hosea 6: 6 NLT

Jesus spoke to the religious leaders while He lived on earth and told them the same thing. They were always looking for reasons to call Jesus out. When Jesus and His disciples picked a few handfuls of grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry, the Pharisees objected, accusing them of harvesting. Jesus quoted the words from Hosea.

If only you could learn the meaning of the words ‘I want compassion more than a sacrifice,’ you wouldn’t be condemning my innocent disciples.

Matthew 12: 7 TPT

Jesus came to share the love of God. He is God, and lives in perfect harmony with His Father and the Holy Spirit. He showed His love to His followers in His actions and His words. He taught them how God shows His love by being patient, kind, and forgiving. He always considered what was best for the people He encountered. He healed, listened, and showed compassion to everyone, no matter who they were.

We get a clear idea of God’s love for us when we look at the example Jesus gave us by how He lived His life. It gives me so much comfort to read how Jesus lived. There are so many stories of His compassion in the Gospels. Before He died on the cross for us, He commanded His followers to use Him as their guide to go into the world and treat the people we encounter with the same love He showed others.

“So I give you now a new commandment: Love each other just as much as I loved you. For when you demonstrate the same love I have for you by loving one another, everyone will know you’re My true followers.”

John 13: 34-35 TPT

We may not have our husband here to love this Valentine’s Day, but we will never lose God’s love for us. This truth can help us embrace the life we have and pursue the plans and purposes God created us to do. We can open our eyes to the people around us who also love us. We can pour our love into our family and friends.

There is no blueprint or service manual for getting through grief. Loneliness and sadness linger and show up whenever they are triggered. Even though we can’t physically spend this Valentine’s Day with our spouse, they are always with us in our heart. They live on in our memories, children, and hearts.

It is my prayer we can all experience God’s love and invite Him to minister to us. He is the most trusted Source of comfort you’ll ever receive.

Precious Father, we seek Your presence amid the deep sorrow and pain accompanying the loss of our spouse. Bring Your comforting presence to surround and embrace the widows in our midst. You are the God of all comfort. You hold the brokenhearted close and offer solace in distress. Father, I lift these precious widows to Your loving care, knowing You are near those who are hurting. Lighten the weight of their loss. May Your gentle touch soothe their hearts and heal their wounded spirits. May Your abiding presence be a constant source of comfort as You guide them through the darkest valleys and fill their souls with a peace beyond all understanding. Please grant them respite from their sorrow, ease their burdens, and surround them with serenity amid life’s storms. Help them make Your resting place of love the source and root of their life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Then, by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life. Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!

Ephesians 3: 17-19 TPT

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.