Letting the unorganized post begin …. Don’t run away they won’t all be this long or heavy. I do hope what I share today blesses you in some way.
19 February 2009
Today I stop waiting for my life to begin again . . . stop continually longing for where I was and try harder to embrace where I am.
As crazy as it sounds, I feel at times as if I’m in an alter reality. Reading a journal entry from October 28, 2008, the one year anniversary of Karen’s passing, I wrote down three times:
I AM A WIDOWER
I AM A WIDOWER
I AM A WIDOWER
A note below that read:
HELLO, it’s been a year you should know that by now!!!
Back to the present, it’s now been 480 days that I’ve been a widower and I embrace it fully today. Today I choose to completely accept my life as it is right now. I’ve written these words down and placed them where I will see them with each new day. I pray they will serve as a reminder to persevere.
Honestly reflecting over the time since Karen’s passing, I see where I’ve just been hanging out waiting for a wife to complete me again so my life could begin again. I’m not living the life I was before she passed. I love to entertain people in my home, love to travel, work in my yard, play hard with my children and help others. I’ve done very little of that.
I don’t hunt, fish, golf, watch sports but I do thoroughly enjoy working in the yard. To get the stresses of life to wash away I just need to go play in the yard.
A few years ago, I installed a picture window above the sink in the kitchen. My favorite view was walking up to that window to look in at Karen. She loved to bake so she was often in the kitchen. Looking in and having her look up and flash a smile was always a highlight for me. I realized the other day as I looked out over the yard (in major disrepair) I was on the wrong side of the window. Going outside to look in hurt and made me realize that it wasn’t because I didn’t have the time to go play in the yard, I didn’t want to because when I looked back in she would not be there to smile back at me.
Well, that led to more introspection. I am half of a whole. Strange because I was whole before marriage and after marriage I became one flesh with Karen; one half of a larger whole. In Karen’s absence the pain is having the whole ripped in half, leaving gaping wounds and sorrow with seemingly only fleeting moments of joy. I’ve not been seeking to heal and move forward from where I am, rather seeking ways to heal and get back to a whole again.
I know my relationship to God is more important than any other however it is functioning as half of a whole that has consumed an unhealthy portion of my life since Karen’s passing. As fallen sinners we tend to allow all sorts of things to enter our hearts to fill those empty spaces. It could be drugs, alcohol, food, affairs and now I add longing for the past to be again. No I don’t feel I’m sinning by allowing Karen’s memory to fill empty spaces but if I don’t keep it in perspective in light of eternity then I believe I could and that would be as wrong as filling up the voids in my life with any other destructive behavior.
I do long to be and believe I will someday marry again, but I am a fool if I think marriage again is what will bring back “my life”. Just imagine my second wife’s road to hold if I don’t allow God to heal me into a whole again before I marry if that (marriage) is to happen at all.
Of course I will painfully miss my truest and dearest friend at times going forward and I still will stop and enjoy trips down memory lane. The difference now is I will endeavor to spend more of my “thinking time” on what God has in store for me right now, where I am now, as opposed to where I was or where I want to be tomorrow.
Today, I am a widower, a single parent of five children and I’m choosing to stop passively waiting for "my life” to begin again … this is my life … and it is a wonderful life.
4 comments:
I also lost my wife to breast cancer about 18 months ago, and was left with 3 sons. Although older then your kids (teens), I share your thought how they are a lot of work, yet give back so much in their own way.
Thanks for blogging...I will be back to read more of your earlier posts....please continue.
Thank you for what you have shared. I know it was my mom that I lost and not my mate but I relate to the feelings of living in the past and even only wanting that. It was hard to accept where the Lord had me and our family (without Mom). It also took me alot longer to accept life fully as it is. ( I think I'm still working on it.) Watching you and the kids is such an encouragement and challenge to me. Praise the Lord for the hope of eternity with Him. It makes even life now more enjoyable.
Rebekah Miller
SO VERY GOOD TO READ YOUR WORDS...I CAN TRULY SAY I HAVE WALKED IN YOUR SHOES...I HAVE BLOGGED TO U A FEW TIMES...MY HUBBY PASSED IN '98 AND HAD KIDDOS 12,11 AND 4....NOW 23,22 AND 15...THEY GOT ME THRU MY ROUGHEST TIMES AND MY BEST OF TIMES TOO..I DID MY BEST TO GET OFF THE SIDELINES AND EMBRACE MY LIFE...NOW MORE THAN 10 YRS LATER I HAVE FOUND TRUE LOVE AGAIN IN MY LIFE....NOT THE SAME LOVE, AS ALL LOVES ARE DIFFERENT....BUT SOMEONE I CAN SHARE THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH THAT I LOVE DEARLY....AND MY CHILDREN DO TOO....ONE STEP AT A TIME AND LEANING ON THE LORD YOU WILL CONTINUE TO STAY OFF THE SIDELINES AND BE IN THE "GAME" OF LIFE....HE DOTH PROVIDE !!!! HAVE A BLESSED DAY AND KEEP ON WRITING....IT IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL....WITH CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP, AN ANGEL OF PRAYER IN KC, MO......JEN MILLER :)
Healing is inevitable if you want to live life as God would have you to do. Healing is not forgetting or leaving your love behind. There will always be a scab...occasionally it will be knocked off and the pain will be fresh again. But it scabs over again. And life goes on. When our 10 yr. old son died, I thought my life was over, and often wanted it to be. But God, in His own time, gently led me forward. I had to learn that it was okay to go forward again. Joy does come in the morning...
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