Two months ago...

Two months ago, God called Pete home….June 22^nd. Eight and a half weeks ago. Will there ever come a time when I don’t know exactly how long he has been gone? Two months of missing his smile, his hugs, and his laughter, two months of wanting to tell him everything that is going on, two months of wondering what he is seeing now while I go on seeing everything just as we have together all these years, two months of wondering what his life is like while we try to keep taking the next step down here, two months of waking up each morning and remembering all over again that he is not here. I have had widows and widowers who have told me recently that not a day goes by without them thinking of their loved one and all their memories. Right now, I am thinking of Pete constantly…He is always on my mind.

Our whole family is missing him. Between us, Pete and I have three very special children. They all have families of their own but they have always been “the kids” to us! The two older ones, Peter and Allison, are his by birth and the younger one, Brantley, is mine by birth but we both felt like they all three belonged to both of us! What a blessing God gave us in blending our two families. It is so funny but each one called Pete by a different name! To Peter, he was Pop; to Allison, he was Dad; to Brantley, he was Popsie! So when he would write all three of them an email, he would sign it Pop/Dad/Popsie! Allison is the only one so far who has had a birthday since Pete went home. It was a very hard day for her. Even though she did not always see her Dad on her birthday, he always called and talked to her. Each of them have had their moments when they are filled with the more than usual sadness about missing their dad/stepdad. Brantley told me the other day that even though we all know we have to go on and learn to live without Pete, she sometimes wanted to just cry out, “But I don’t want to learn to live without Popsie! I just wish he was still here!” We all feel that way! We are trying our best to be there for each other and encourage each other as we walk through this valley.

 

This new role of being a widow has made me think of things I haven’t ever had to think about before.  Some of these thoughts have been reinforced by other widows….some of them have just been new thoughts I now have to consider.

Ø  Please don’t stop talking about our spouses to us. I had one friend tell me that she was so surprised that some of her husband’s best friends quit talking to her about him after his death. It made her so sad.  I love when people share a memory of Pete or tell me something they were thinking about him. Sure, it might make me tear up sometimes but that is ok! I want to talk about him! The memories are very real and important…share them with us!

Ø   Thankfully, Pete and I had prepared our wills and our health care power of attorney (living wills) long, long ago. We had discussed what we wanted the other one to do in case of emergency and in case of a bad health situation. We had discussed whether we wanted to be buried or cremated. We had decided that we wanted the burial to just be for family and to be before the service in order for our family and friends to concentrate on celebrating our life, not dwelling on our death. We had even discussed that we didn’t want anyone but the family to view us in the casket. We had talked about having a Celebration Service and not a funeral! I cannot tell you how important it was to me that we had already had these talks when the time came for decisions to be made. It is such an emotional time when you lose your spouse and to already know his/her wishes helps make the decisions so much easier. I am sharing all this with the hope of motivating you if you have not done this with each other. It doesn’t matter how old you are…don’t wait…do it now!

Ø  Invite us to sit with you and do things with you! One widow told me it is so hard to go somewhere when there are mostly couples present because she doesn’t know where to sit. Make that effort…reach out and invite a widow to join you. For me personally, I have found it makes me sad when I walk to my car alone after church is over! Church was always so important to Pete and me…we loved going, we loved being there and we loved coming home together! Pete would reach out and take my hand as we walked between the car and church…now it seems like that walk is a million miles long! So if you see me heading to my car after church alone – know that I would love for you to walk with me and keep me company! You don’t have to hold my hand (ha!) but it would help if you hold my heart while we walk!

Ø  Your notes and cards mean a lot! I love opening my mail or email and reading that someone was thinking about me and praying for me! Thank you! I am working on finishing up all the thank you notes to everyone who has given to Pete’s Mission Scholarship Fund as well as everyone who ministered to us during those weeks. I wanted to handwrite each note so it is taking a long time…but I will get it done because it is important to me for you to know how much we appreciate your love and your thoughtfulness! In the past when I have received a thank you note from a grieving spouse a long time after the service, I wondered why it took so long. Well, now I know! There is a lot we are having to process emotionally, physically, and mentally as we take care of all the things that have to be handled when a loved one passes away. So forgive the time it takes....and know those of us who grieve appreciate your love and we will get those thank you notes written! When God prompts you to pray for anyone in sorrow, take a moment to let us know…it means so much to us!

Jim Elliot was one of five missionary men who were killed by the Auca (Waodani) Indians in Ecuador in 1956. They were seeking to make first contact with them in hopes of telling them about God and Jesus. All of them were young married men with small children. The Edge of the Spear is a movie that was made about their lives. I recently reread Through Gates of Splendor  written by his wife, Elisabeth Elliott, right after it happened. It was an incredible story of the journey God led these couples on to reach this people group, and then how these widows trusted God in the midst of the storm. Elisabeth and another widow actually went back and continued to reach out to the same people who killed their husbands! They finally made contact and some of the killers not only became Christians, they became good friends! Elisabeth said, “God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will and that will is infinitely, immeasurable, unspeakable beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.”  Wow! That spoke volumes to me! It all goes back to whether we believe God is God no matter what. It is about yielding my will to His, about granting Him the freedom to teach me even when it hurts, to guide me through this valley, to show me how He can use me in the midst of this storm.

“Death has a way of causing us to face our absolute powerlessness. Humans would prefer to pretend that we are powerful. After all, we can send rockets to the moon…But the truth is, we have no more power over death than we do the wind. We are helpless in the face of death, and many of us rail against that helplessness. We want to do something. We want to make the pain stop. We want to make God answer the question, ‘Why?’…We are each called upon to come to peace with our own feelings of helplessness. No one can do it for us….It is a battle for peace that can only be fought on our knees.” (Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love by Mitsch and Brookside)

 Fighting the battle on my knees….

and believing that God is God no matter what!