Two friends of mine have experienced death lately. One lost her father, the other her husband. As I’ve been praying for them, I’ve been revisiting the process of grieving. Of death and life.

“I will hold on to the hand of my Savior, And I will hold on with all my might, I will hold loosely to things that are fleeting, And hold onto Jesus, I will hold onto Jesus for life” (“Hold onto Jesus” by Steven Curtis Chapman). This could have been my theme song when I was a widow. I didn’t know why my husband had died suddenly at the age of 29, but I knew God still loved me and that He had not allowed this for the purpose of causing me pain. So I clung to God with everything I had in me. He was the only ‘life’ I had left.

And yes, I had derived a great deal of my ‘life’ from my first husband. He was the first person that I felt loved me for who I was with no strings attached. My sense of worth and acceptance came from him. Subconsiously I knew a large part of my ‘life’ came from my husband because my greatest fear is that he would die and I would be left alone. My husband had health issues (nothing life-threatening) and I would tell him offhandedly, “Don’t you dare die on me.”, but it was a real fear deep down inside.

I think any kind of traumatic event forces a person to choose a side. Either you run TO God or you run AWAY from God; there is no sitting on the fence when it comes to facing death.

Letting go is important. It reminds me of when I gave birth to my first child. I was induced which means that labour is more intense, and I was waiting for the epidural (which would not come for 2 ½ hours). I did not know how long this process would last before I actually gave birth. It was excrutiatingly painful. I accepted this and focused on breathing through the pain. I did not fight what was happening inside me and that made it much better than if I had fought against it.

It’s like when you get drunk and the room starts to spin. Trying to fight off that spinning feeling will only get you to the porcelain throne faster. By accepting it and not fighting, the feeling will pass, and you won’t necessarily get sick.

When my husband died, I did not wallow in guilt and run through all the ‘what ifs’ - I believe this was a gift from God because anyone who knows me know that I blame myself for a great many things both large and small. I should have been absolutely crushed under suffocating guilt that I should have done more, acted faster, that somehow I should have been able to save my husband’s life. But I didn’t go down that road (miraculously). I accepted that my husband’s death happened for a reason, and that it was beyond my control. As painful as it was, I believe the grieving process would have been even more painful if I not done this.

My life is not my own. Another gift from God. Just as God gives us the faith to believe, He gives us other gifts as well. As the paramedics were trying to revive my husband and I was pleading desperately with God to bring him back, there was a moment where time seemed to stand still. It was like I was in the eye of the storm where everything became still and calm. And in that moment I gave my life and the lives of my children into God’s hand. I said to God “You are God and I place EVERYTHING in Your hands.” I laid my life down and accepted whatever was going to happen (whether it was what I wanted or not). I believe God supernaturally enabled me to say those words. And it was different that just saying something but not really meaning it, still holding on to some hope of getting my way. This was letting go of MY will for my life and surrendering completely to God’s will for my life in what would happen to my husband and what would happen to us as a result.

My life is not my own. When we can lay down our lives God can do so much more than we would ever expect. But it takes a whole lot of faith and a whole lot of trust to do that when everything seems to be so horribly wrong.

At the point in my life when my husband passed away, I was at a place where I could trust God more than I had ever done before. Previously I had walked through some things where I wrestled with God and my faith was tested. Through that wrestling, I grew closer to God. My understanding of who He is deepened. And things that I believed that were false were exposed and I was able to believe more of the Truth.

The summer of 1993. I was 20 years old. My boyfriend (who would become my first husband) was in B.C. working for the entire summer. The church in the city I was attending closed down. This was the first church where I felt like I belonged to a ‘family’; I felt a part of a group, not just an outsider lurking on the fringe. And that ‘family’ was gone. After I left home for college, I had vowed (yes, vowed) that I would never live with my parents again. And here I was, stuck living at home for the summer, working at a job I didn’t enjoy (a restaurant in the next town over), with my boyfriend and church family out of the picture – isolated and feeling very alone. I threw a temper tantrum at God that summer. My soul screamed out, “If You really love me, prove it!” I felt like God was punishing me for what, I didn’t know. I did not feel His love, I did not know His love, but I desperately wanted to know that what the Bible said about Him was true – that God loves me.

On a side note, I think it’s perfectly ok to have temper tantrums at God – if you’re expressing what you’re really thinking and feeling. I think God wants our honesty more than us trying to act like what we’ve been told a Christian is supposed to act like. We’re all weak human beings. If we don’t ‘let out’ our true feelings and thoughts to God, He can never bring healing and freedom in those areas (because we pretend like they’re not there). That’s what I’ve experienced anyways.

Back to my story – I threw a temper tantrum at God. After the summer was over, I was mentored by a friend who challenged me to face the unforgiveness in my life. When I chose to forgive, God was able to reveal His love for me. I experienced it; I understood God’s love in a way I had never been able to before.

Fast-forward to 1998. Our first son was 2, I was working at a gym, and my husband was taking courses to become a computer network administrator. I had my life all planned out. My husband would complete his course, get a great-paying job, and I would stay at home and raise our children. But that didn’t happen. My husband did not complete his course – school was always difficult for him and he couldn’t pass the course. Which meant I would have to keep working. My husband had no post-secondary schooling and holding down a job was not easy for him. I would not be able to stay at home to raise our children. This was very hard for me to process because I believed God had created all mothers to stay at home and raise their kids. That’s what I desired. Wasn’t that a good desire? Why was God doing this to us? Why would He give me a desire for something and then make it impossible for that desire to be fulfilled? Did He hate us? Was He a mean, nasty ogre, who would punish a person as soon as they took one step off the path? Was He mad at us? I couldn’t understand why this was happening. It didn’t fit in the framework of who I believed God was.

It was a very dark time for me. My faith was rocked and my foundation was cracked. There was a period of time when in church or care group, the people would be singing in worship and I would not sing. I told God that I couldn’t sing. It was so opposite to how I was feeling. I couldn’t praise Him when I didn’t even know who He was. I couldn’t pretend everything was ok, because it wasn’t!

I don’t know how God brought me out of that dark time, but He did. I came to accept that God still loves me even though everything seems to be going wrong. That the bad things that happen in life are not because God is cruel or mean. That even though I can’t understand the circumstance, I can still know that God loves me and has good intentions for me.

This brings me to 2002 when my husband passed away. I knew that his death was not the result of a cruel God. And I knew that God loved me and because He loved me I could trust Him to take care of me and my children. As hard as walking the path of loss and grief was, I have experienced so much blessing and spiritual growth in my life coming out of it.

It is true that God brings life out of death – if we let Him. It goes back to the surrendering piece. I believe that God was able to bring about more blessing in my life because I surrendered my life to Him instead of ‘fighting’ the bad circumstances in my life. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24). If we try to ‘save’ what we expect our lives to be, it’s not going to work. And when bad circumstances come our way, we’ll be left disillusioned and angry. But if we ‘lose’ our lives and accept what God has for us, we will gain ‘life’ and healing from our pain.

I still have much to learn and surrender and there are many areas where I am weak and fall down. As I watch people in their pain, I struggle because I want to help but I don’t know what I can do. I realize everyone’s journey is different, but I’ve shared my thoughts about what I’ve experienced. Perhaps it will bring some comfort and hope.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Faith, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.