A Blessed New Year

If you are with friends tonight, take cheer and lean on their joy. If you are in a hurting place, we all here at A Widow’s Might know that awful gut pain of loss. One of our readers contacted me the other night on a particularly hard night. I thought I’d share with you what I shared with her, because if you are lonely on New Years Eve, you can take comfort that the Lord will carry you through to the new year!

God promises, you will laugh and be joyful again.

Remember that we are not put in the world to be happy at all times. God places us here to make an impact.

Sometimes, like on special days like new years, if you’re needing to take time out to grieve, it’s okay to let the grief happen. In time, the sobs feel refreshing, not draining. That’s when you know you’re healing, when you can cry about him and laugh about him at the same time and know it’s not really over. You will see him on the other side, and meanwhile, you have to finish the work God laid out for you here.

Just remember that pain is survivable. I remember long ago when my first husband left me and I was lonely and awoke at 1 in the morning with this awful pit in my gut. I couldn’t breathe and I thought this had to be the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I called my older sister and described how I felt.

She helped me through it in the oddest way. She began to describe the experience of this missionary woman who was jailed for her evangelism in a foreign country. She was isolated in a tiny cement cell with only a bench and a tiny window so high up she could only see the tiny bit of light coming through.

The loneliness that woman described after months and months of incarceration was stifling. Finally, the woman explained, she noticed a spider in the corner of the cell. She made friends with the spider, giving him a name and talking to him daily.

Still sobbing in my own despair, I got rather annoyed at my sister and her story. “What the heck does a stupid spider in a prison cell have to do with me?” I barked at her.

Simple, she said. That missionary later wrote about her experience and said this… “Loneliness is a pain. In itself, it can’t kill you. It just hurts, but no one ever really dies from loneliness.”

Somehow, the light came on for me through that story. You see, that missionary was right. I did survive that awful stifling pain I felt when my husband left me. And I also survived the anniversaries of Tom’s and my wedding, and the anniversary of his death. Those moments are awful, but I survived those awful nights, and you will too.

Father God, I know what widows feel when grief hits them on special nights like New Years Eve. I’ve been there. That awful pit in our gut that we feel when we’ve lost the one you gave to us for a time. We get so we think we should have our husbands forever. When we said “till death do we part” we kidded ourselves–that death thing–it happens to everyone else, God, not me, right?

Lord show each of these ladies that while her time here is finite, in truth, we don’t die. We live, eternally. This life is painful at times, but it’s fleeting–and You have plans for each of us. Big plans, Lord.

Comfort us widows tonight, Lord. Help us sleep. Fill that hole in our hearts this instant, please Father God. Help us know that many of us have been there. You have been there, Lord. Your Son–a manifestation of You Yourself, grieved with the pit in His stomach right there in the Garden of Gethsemane. And You grieved when Lazarus died. You know the pain. Shudder from it, just as we do.

Reach down Your loving arms and wrap them around the lady who is reading this and weeping. Cradle her, dear Father. She’s so beautiful and has so much more to live and give. Allow her to know that the pain is just pain, and she can feel it and sleep tonight and wake to a new morning knowing how Great Your Faithfulness is. Amen.

Ladies, I’ve put this video in other postings. Watch it. I’s so uplifting. Watch it and remember how faithful God is. He really loves you!

Sisters, you will get through this night! Happy New Years!

Kit