I have come to realize that in this journey called grief there is no way around receiving a new life. It is up to me whether I embrace this new life in a positive way or reject it negatively. Either way, the reality is, when a spouse dies, we are faced with a completely new life and not necessarily of the desired above mentioned variety.
Not long ago I went to a women's retreat and met a very young and recent widow from our church. She and I exchanged hugs and tears and then she said, "I DON'T WANT A NEW LIFE!!! I WANT MY OLD LIFE BACK!!!!" I thought, "Welcome to widowhood my dear one" and we began to share deeply our mutual journeys. This is such a classic and true reaction. Our whole life has not only been changed and flipped upside down but quite frankly it is completely gone.
The recent floods in Northern Colorado have reminded me of a death of a spouse. A garden wasn't just destroyed or a fence ripped out, entire lives were ripped apart and forever altered by the raging flood waters. Catastrophic destruction is one way that I have heard this flood being described. I relate to that as our lives have experienced catastrophic destruction through the death of our beloved.
Our dear friends home backs to the Big Thompson River. Thankfully their house was spared but their precious gardens, flowers, and pasture land is all gone. It's not simply that it has been removed but the structure and layout of the land has been forever changed. I was talking with them one day and they were sharing that they don't know what they are going to do in the rebuilding process. They are thinking about doing something totally different with their land and gardens because what they had known has been totally destroyed.
This really reminded me of what we go through when we lose a spouse, a garden isn't just missing or a fence broken apart in our life but the entire layout of the land of our life has been totally and completely annihilated!
Within this total annihilation of our lives as we knew it, it is our choice whether we crawl into our houses and let the stinky mud, muck, and sewer filled river water continue to surround our home, or whether we plan an entirely new home and garden, one that we had never envisioned in our lives but one that can spring up from the ruins and destruction of the flood of death.
This is where I find myself. Many people marvel at how I've come through this. First and foremost it is the hand of God upon my life and his incredible and unexplainable grace. But on the human side, I had no choice really but to either sit in the muck of the destructive flood of death or clean up and build a new life. Sitting in the muck of a flood does NOTHING to bring the way things had been back into being. It doesn't help to cling to the photos, watch the old videos and dream of the good old days when my life wasn't flooded with mud and debris. It doesn't bring my beloved back if I do this! If it did, honey, bring on the mud because I'm going to be sitting in it waiting on my sweetie! But it doesn't do anything to sit there. He's gone, he really has gone to Heaven and is rejoicing with Jesus, our marriage is really over. This is reality. The house is gone in the flood, sitting in the stinkin mess doesn't bring it back!
So I shovel, work and sweat to clear the muck out of my life. I look at garden books, house building plans, and begin to pray about what God wants this catastrophic flood zone, called my life, to look like. The change does NOT come easy. 
The memories of my old home can haunt me. I want to go back, I want to walk into the kitchen, kiss my husband, turn the worship music on and pick up life as it had been. But I must press on........
The builders are calling and asking me if I would like a front porch and would I like the house to be painted in butter yellow? Yes, I say, pondering the loveliness of newness and realizing that never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have a butter yellow Victorian home with a delightful white porch surrounded with red antique rose bushes! I say goodbye to the builder in a dream state of joy and wonder at all that "HE" is putting together. But then reality crashes around me because right now the Victorian home is just a vision that the builder has given me. I walk around my property and see the brown bottom of a river bed that has raped my life and stripped everything from me. As I walk and cry I trip over a dead fish and look into the bleak destruction that once held such beauty.
But the builder is persistent, he needs me to sign some papers to move on with the building plans, he needs answers now and tells me that I must stop spending so much time walking through the mud of my property. I need to be spending time with HIM in redesigning my home, my life and my gardens. I can't look back at what was but I must press on to what will be. Yes, God is our great architect and builds beauty from the ruins of our lives. The only thing he requires is that we embrace the change and embrace Him. We must welcome what he is doing in our lives. If we trust him, he will move us onward into our beautiful Victorian home where there once was only the muck and stench of a catastrophic flood.
Isaiah 43:18 &19
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland!"
This was very encouraging. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteFlowerLady