Slowly all of a sudden … part I

God has answered my deepest and most often prayed prayer. I know I will again have a best friend, help meet and the children will have a mother who will love them as if she gave birth to them herself. Once I laid down all my expectations, absolutes and opened my heart, God met my doubting Thomas and gave me the neon light I needed.

WOW – This is the first I’ve heard. That’s quick isn’t it?

No and yes. Let me take you back to the beginning.

January 10, 2008 – March 7, 2009

I’m going to ask everyone to strap in for the updates that will follow. The first date above reflects when I met a lady named Melissa and began a friendship. The dash in between the dates is the time we spent building our friendship. The last date is the day I met Melissa and knew this was the woman with whom I was to spend the rest of my life. If you are confused, hopefully it will become clearer as you read on.

Who is Melissa?

I can’t really find the words to do Melissa justice but she is an awesome mother of three precious children who has spent nearly 3 years as a widow. She loves the Lord, lives in Maine and is just crazy enough to be my friend.

I’m certain some will read this and the updates that follow and think yeah right, “just friends”, but that is exactly what we were when the Isherwood family headed north to finally meet the Hill family in March.

How did you meet her?

You better sit down for this explanation, especially those who really know my tortoise “Steady Eddy” somewhat boring predictable personality. As you’ll read in a later post my remarrying became a topic of conversation shortly after Karen’s passing. The children wanted to know how I would meet someone, how would I know, what is courting and how long would that take? At one point I remember telling them there isn’t a “mommy store” that I can go to and just pick a mother up and bring her home.

A friend of mine from work who also lost his wife and best friend just a few months before Karen passed encouraged me to try about eHarmony. Initially I laughed out loud at the thought all the while thinking to myself there is no way I’m going to do that! Then I learned that a couple from church met that way and the ick factor dropped a bit.

I spent some weeks praying about it and felt released to join eHarmony for one month only. I did just that. I learned so much about so many things in that one month. It was a safe place to get to know like minded people all the while asking questions that would normally take a great deal of relationship building in order to accomplish. I was grieved with how many hurting people there are in our society due to divorce but that’s a topic for another venue.

My time on eHarmony allowed me to form “the list”. I had a list before Karen but I was young, still finding my place and career, had no children and everything I owned fit in the trunk of my car with room to spare. The list grew by the day. On some levels it was frustrating because the list severely limited the relationships I could freely (in good conscience) pursue but mostly it was comforting.

I was blessed to meet some really wonderful Christian ladies. I explored those friendships and despite some mistakes on my part (emotionally) I'm thankful to be able to remain friends with them. I never had true peace that these friendships could become something more and should have done a better job listening to God.

The profile that really sent me to my knees was that of a widow in Maine. I instantly identified with her on many levels. I have her permission to share some of the information in her profile that immediately spoke to my heart. A widow at 30 years old with 3 precious children who at over 1,500 miles away was way off “the list” (due to the distance), even still because of one statement in her profile I felt like I just had to get to know her.

“Joy is a conscious decision I make everyday.”

Knowing the pain I was feeling and imagined she was feeling at the loss of her husband that statement really grabbed my attention.

Just 19 days after I met her my membership was coming to end and I sent her this letter.

Dear Melissa,

As you know, I signed up for eHarmony for one month. I wanted to see where people my age (or near my age) were in life. EHarmony has done exactly what I hoped. It has helped me to clearly define what I’m looking for in a mate and emboldened me to ask direct questions I wouldn’t have normally asked a single woman.

The month will be over on January 29, 2008 and I will not renew. Thank you for spending your time allowing me to get know you a little better. I’m praying about how and if to continue communicating with you, the miles between us and our extremely busy lives. I want to know you so much deeper than I do now. At the same time, I’m going to continue to pray that God will bring a Christian man after His own heart into your life granting you the desires of your heart.

To that end, please don’t take my leaving eHarmony to signal I think you should. Please stay at the feet of God and do what you feel led to do. If its God’s will, I will meet you there.

Your brother in Christ,
Darren

A short time later we were speaking on the phone and agreed to continue our relationship at a friend level to simply be our own support group and encourage each other through phone calls, emails and letters. That is exactly what we did for the next 13 months.

Our families prayed for one another, Melissa and I laughed and cried together about the walk of widow/er hood and all that entails. Talking together in our “cone of safety” where we could rage, sorrow, encourage and be encouraged. We discussed the desires of our heart in marrying again, children, child rearing, exchanged small family gifts and bits and pieces of ourselves that no one else could truly get unless they’ve walked the road we’re on. We had and have our own little club.

Again, you may not believe this given what you will read in the posts to come but we were simply really good friends who had never met each other in person but were living largely parallel lives over 1,500 miles apart.

I’m deeply grateful to God for putting Melissa in my life 14 months ago. I look forward to a lifetime with her. When I first met her (online) 1,500 miles seemed like the end of the earth, when I actually met her (in person) 1,500 miles seemed like next door.

I will continue our story soon.

Sorry for the time that has passed since the last posting. I didn’t intend to leave you hanging but my computer got a worm on April 1 and let me tell you there was no (April fools) joke about it! I’m just now getting it back up and running and catching up on paying bills, etcetera. I will post tomorrow.

It absolutely amazes me as to what God will do with a completely willing vessel and moldable clay. My last post was a reflection of where my heart had been arriving for many months, laying down my life to what God wants for me and the children rather than how I think it should all work out. As a planner, I don’t always handle ambiguity well. As a doubting Thomas, sometimes I need God to virtually walk up and knock me over the head with proof as to why I should go where He is leading me.

So much has happened in my life since I last posted that my obsessive compulsive brain has struggled as to how to share it. I still plan to be sporadic with the posts with no absolute discernible order or at least as sporadic as I can wrap my brain around, but what I want to communicate today is God has answered my deepest and most often prayed prayer. I know I will again have a best friend, help meet and the children will have a mother who will love them as if she gave birth to them herself. Once I laid down all my expectations, absolutes and opened my heart, God met my doubting Thomas and gave me the neon light I needed. I look forward to sharing the many stories that brought me there in future posts.

Even as my heart brims over with hope and feelings I never thought I would have again the heaviness of life still swirls around me and those I love. I’ve watched as a beloved neighbor and friend who has prostate cancer has gone from having the ability to mow his lawn to struggling to walk. I learned that a friend from work who along with a team of others tirelessly raised money to fight cancer and gave generously to our family during our times of greatest need has herself been diagnosed with breast cancer. I am deeply grieved and hopeful simultaneously. I don’t know what the future holds for either of these friends but as Christians I know the story of their lives, however long or short, will end in streets of gold.

I want to close this post by sharing a simple song with you about John 3:16. It was written by a grieving husband who lost his wife. This song has ministered many times to me during my walk as a widower. Yes life is heavy at times for all of us and from our perspective bad things happen for inexplicable reasons. As we walk through the valleys of life it is critical to keep an eternal perspective. The worst thing that could happen to any of us is death without salvation from the penalty of sin.

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Getting off the sidelines of life ...

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.

Dear Family and Friends,

A quick note to say the children and I are well. I’m officially giving up trying to post to the blog in a sequential order of our lives since Karen’s passing. To all who know me well enough you realize what a huge change that is for me. I like extreme order around me and struggle when something gets out of sync.

I’m learning to live in organized chaos and the blog should be no different. As I shared in an earlier post, I lost the device that held my sequentially organized thoughts to be shared on the blog. I realize now if I wait until I get it all organized again it may not happen. So it’s unorganized post or no post.

Going forward you can expect to see regular (a least 2 times a month) updates to the blog but they won’t necessarily be in any discernable order. I’m just going to post on the fly. Even as I type that it sends shivers down my spine.

Let the unorganized posts begin!

Darren

How are you doing?

Thank you to all who have written me regarding my most recent post, it is very encouraging to know how many still think of my family often and pray for us. I feel compelled to speak to those who have contacted me concerned for my mental and emotional health.

How are you doing?

I’ve learned that there are two answers to that question sometimes. The truth and what people expect to hear. Most people we come in touch with are looking for “I’m fine” and bug out a bit if you give anything but that answer.

Don’t worry! Pray! I am fine, not hopeless, not going off the deep end. I know God is control.

HOWEVER

I am sad, heartbroken and struggling with what now Lord? How now Lord? Just being honest with how I FEEL. How I feel and the actions I take are very opposite things right now. I don’t feel like getting out of the bed, interacting with others, shaving, showering, washing clothes, making my bed, paying the bills, you name it. If it involves anything other than staying in my little hole emotionally I’m not interested.

My ACTIONS however come from what I know to be good and right regardless of how I feel. So do not worry, I’m okay but I could use your prayers though and if my honest post encouraged that then it was worth all the worried looks and emails I’m getting.

I’d like to share a song in the link below that somewhat describes the season of grief and struggle that I am in right now and how I’m attempting to lead my heart to sing anyway …

What’s up with no posts?

This post is in the reply to the very frank question, I received. What’s up with no posts?

My loss of interest and desire to continue posting as I planned came when the removable drive I had been journaling on was lost or I think more accurately stolen. It represented hours of work as I was transferring thoughts I wrote in my journal into something understandable to post. Thankfully most of it still exists in the pages of my journal but for the most part would only be discernible to me. I’ve begun the task of converting the information again and ask for prayer that I would find the time and energy to go through the process again, if only for my children to have a record of this time in our lives.

Then came Thanksgiving and Christmas the second without Karen and I thought I would breeze through them. WRONG! As I plan to share in future posts (unless another drive disappears or I get called Home – no complaints about the latter) it was tough. Not as tough as the previous but it wasn’t a walk in the park emotionally.

After Christmas, I allowed myself to really wallow in being a widower and all the responsibilities that demand my attention. I threw myself a great big pity party as Karen would say about that space we all get in at times where we feel the world and all that is in it goes against us and everything we attempt. Instead of it being a few hours though, or even a day or two, I’ve allowed it to continue for weeks.

Don’t misunderstand, I still go to work and do a pretty good job, the children are well fed, educated and the house is clean, well for the most part. It’s just that I feel so lonely and sad and the world around me feels so gray.

Not to be too hard on myself I know the hours I work, sleep patterns, and the pressures of single parenting have taken their toll. But if I’m honest the fact that I’ve just let myself go emotionally has put me where I am today. I have allowed (even encouraged) my heart to sorrow.

So there you have it, a whiney not very uplifting but honest outpouring of emotion I am bearing up and hanging on to at this time. I know it will pass if I will allow it. The cold gray will give way to warm color again.