Which Way Is Up?

Have you ever been in the ocean enjoying the feel of the water around you, captivated by the warm sun, maybe floating along on your raft when all of a sudden a wave knocks you upside down? You are thrust under the water in a torrent of pressure that is flipping you in all directions. In an instant you have lost your footing, you hope your swimsuit stays on and you don’t know which way is up.

That is the best way I can describe losing my husband. Swimming along the journey of life and then, in an instant, I’m underwater gasping for air and I have no idea which way is up. 

Simply surviving is priority. 

For me, it took a while to find “up” again. I had been married for 16 years, I was 38 and had 2 small children. I was a wife and a mom. My identity was set in these earthly things. Yet in an instant, the title of wife was wiped clean and replaced with “widow.” A title I neither signed up for or ever thought would happen at such a young age. 

While I was simply putting one foot in front of the other in the days, months and years to come God was showing me the way Up. He slowly stopped the swirling waves, he helped me find my footing and he taught me how to stand firm in the midst of the ocean of grief with strength and perseverance. 

In Carol Cornish’s book, The Undistracted Widow, she says:

“ The Lord enables us to hold fast to him, or we would lose our grasp. He gives us the desire to cling to him and the strength and perseverance to hold on.”

Looking back over the last 5 years of widowhood, I now see so clearly how the Lord reached  his hand down in the water where I was tumbling and pulled me up to solid ground. 

In the first year I spent so much time reading Proverbs over and over again. One line at a time because that was all my grief brain could handle. Some days all I could comprehend was one word - “hope” “strength” “kindness” “safety”. I clung to these words like a life raft. 

Over time the waves have calmed and the sea of grief has become part of my story, not the main headliner. 

I have embraced my title of widow because it is the journey the Lord has me on right now. I hated that word for so long but now I wear it proudly like a marine with his medals. It means I knew love. It means someone loved me. It means I know grief. It means I am a survivor. It means my husbands’ memory can live on through my story. I get to tell the world about him. I get to tell his children about him. And I get to thrive on this side of the grief journey.

God gives each of us the strength to grasp his hand and hold on tightly with everything we’ve got. No matter the storms that hit. No matter the joys that come. We cling to God’s hand with fury and power in the dark nights and we gently hold his hand with joy as we skip along the beautiful moments. 

God is our Up. 

He helps us stand up. 

Our job is to look up. 

He will never let us go.

The Bible tells us over and over that widows and their children have a special place in God’s heart and He will protect and provide just what we need.

So look up ladies! 

Stand up. Look up. 

There is SO MUCH GOODNESS coming your way! 

Don’t miss it.