Why Faith Changes Everything in Our Widowhood
Christian Widowhood: Why Faith Changes It All
When your husband dies, everything changes, and you see the world (and perhaps more of eternity) with a spiritual lens. Because you are faced with the reality and implications of death. It is so in-your-face that it is (if we're honest and open to it) a time of real spiritual questioning, struggle, reflection, and hopefully, growth.
Whether you are a Christian widow or a widow exploring the area of faith, you are welcome here.
I want to be clear that I write from my convictions, my heart, my knowledge of the Bible, and my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And to me, that relationship means everything.
Faith has changed everything about my life, and I believe it changes everything about our widowhood.
Widowhood Makes Us Face Death and Eternity
There is a problem that happens when we take God, faith, and our spirituality out of our process and healing after losing our husband.
Because the Lord—and eternity—changes everything about our widowhood:
The way that we grieve
That we rebuild
The life that we live during, in the middle of, and after all of this pain
As widows, we are faced with death in a way that most of us have never experienced before. Sitting at the front row of your husband's funeral, and figuring out life afterward, will do that to you.
We are having to look right at eternal realities:
What happens when we die?
Where do we go?
Am I going to see him again?
What do I believe about that?
What's really true?
These aren't small questions, and I encourage you to explore those areas.
When we become numb to those things and distracted by all the other things of life—even the good things—we can miss what's of eternal importance. Because there is more than just this life.
It is so important to really consider those things when we are faced with death and eternity, even in a time of pain. In fact, our faith can actually become an anchor into hope, purpose, and comfort that gets us through widowhood.
Faith: Questions, Wrestle & Change
If you have struggled in your faith (whether you consider yourself Christian or not) I want to encourage you that the spiritual wrestle and questions after he has died are so very normal. Actually, there can be pain from how things went before he passed also.
Maybe you were praying for healing, or an outcome that did not get answered the way you were asking.
I experienced this, even though my loss was by suicide.
In the last year of my late husband's life, things were getting out of control as he became a different person behind closed doors, related to undiagnosed mental health struggles and an escalating addiction.
And I prayed. And prayed. And prayed that the Lord would remove a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26)—to my late husband, and to myself.
I asked for healing, for redemption of our marriage, for restoration...
And what happened was that I lost him by suicide.
That brought a lot of questions and struggles. My relationship with the Lord had to get very real.
Maybe you prayed for healing that didn't come. Or perhaps you're wondering how this could happen to you with the way that you lived life, or the way that your late husband walked out his faith.
There are hard questions that we wrestle with as widows, and we don't want to turn away from those hard realities.
God can handle those things, all the anger, all the sadness... all of it.
You can approach Him honestly, safely. ❤️
Don't Fear the Hard Questions
There are Christian widows I have known who have been so afraid to "question God," or who are already biased against the idea of deconstruction, believing that it is the loss of faith.
But I want to offer this:
Sometimes our faith needs to be deconstructed so that it can be reconstructed.
Maybe our view of God, of eternity, of purpose, of our life and purpose here, was too small. Maybe what we believed had to happen—and what our lives needed to look like—was too limited.
And when it doesn't happen that way, it can actually become an opportunity to grasp in a deeper way how big God is. It can become an opportunity to see with spiritual eyes something bigger than we could see with our limited view when we believed it had to go a certain way.
Pressing into the Lord and asking real questions isn't something you should be afraid of. He welcomes you there.
And I believe the Holy Spirit will help you expand your view of God—to know the Lord more deeply through this tragedy, and to know some things about redemption and resurrection power that only come through death. To experience a deeper spiritual anchoring.
Don't be afraid to lean into Christ and bring all of your real, raw feelings, anger, and questions to Him. Because He doesn't reject you. And He won't turn away from you.
Spiritual Healing in Widowhood
It is also so important for us to engage in the area of our spirituality because I believe in widowhood we need healing holistically in all areas.
That includes:
physically
mentally
emotionally
spiritually
Yes, we are spiritual beings.
Now, that can mean a lot of different things these days.
But there is, for the vast majority of humanity—for those who are willing to be honest about something beyond just life here—all the evidence that points to things that are so much greater and something beyond.
And we need to engage in that area, in healing spiritually, in finding faith-based community and companionship. This deepens what we really believe and how we are going to walk that out in widowhood and also our life beyond it.
So don't shy away from this area in your healing; it will not serve you to do so.
Widowhood Looks Different With God in It
Here's another way that widowhood looks different if you take God out of it versus keeping the Lord in it: our convictions don't look like the world.
They don't look like the world when we were living with our husband, most likely, and they don't look the same in widowhood, either.
There are a couple of areas I have commonly seen in a worldly way of widowing that are really detrimental to goodness, to healing, to health, to rebuilding, and to wholeness.
1) Grieving With HOPE vs. Without
One of them is grieving without hope.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Paul talks about how the world—those who don't know Christ, those who don't believe in the Lord, who have no faith—don't have that same hope when they/their loved ones pass away.
Consider realistically where this view leads:
If it's just over when you die....
You don't see them again.
There's no greater purpose or meaning beyond earthly life and survival.
There's no redemptive good that can come through this.
It's the end.
It's just loss.
It's just hopeless.
But in Christ, we grieve with hope, because those things are not true!
Because those in Christ will come together with Him and with one another again. And there is such hope and comfort in knowing that we are going to be reunited.
That changes the way we grieve.
2) How We Find Relief in Our Pain
Another way that widowhood looks different is in the area of convictions with purity, and also where we go to relieve pain.
I see so often in secular areas of widowhood, people embracing and even celebrating what they call a “widowhoe era.” This seems to mean, "I am free to express and explore my sexuality in any and every way without judgement/consequence in widowhood."
It addresses struggles like widow's fire—a deep longing for a sexual connection—and gets its needs met by sexual encounters outside of the commitment of marriage without moral consideration.
To be clear, I am not referencing how widows who love the Lord sin or fail in this area, and fight for repentance and healing. There is so much grace in Christ, sister!
We may also seek to find relief from pain and comfort by coping through the use of substances and other addictions. And we know that trying to satisfy the flesh with things that are not healthy—addiction—is actually destructive.
Giving your heart away to different people through sex, getting tied to things like alcohol, drugs, food, and all sorts of things are not going to serve us in healing, in finding purpose, and becoming who we could be through these things.
Again, there is so much grace where we fail. But in Christ, the Spirit in us fights to seek Him and turn back to Him, not willfully repeat sin unchecked and unfought.
What we engage in to find relief can be harmful, and sin is always followed by regret, guilt, shame, more pain and heartbreak. And the Lord wants more for us than these things. That is why He offers something better: Himself.
And that is why there are boundaries—good boundaries and limitations—to protect us. Following the Holy Spirit's convictions in our lives as Christians actually guards our heart, body and mind in the very vulnerable time of widowhood.
Knowing Christ Changes Everything
Knowing Christ changes everything about our life, our eternity, and yes, it changes everything about our widowhood grief here.
Sister, He loves you!
He wants you to know that He hears you and sees you.
He is happy to be with you right where you are.
And He can do something about where you are.
He has so much good ahead of you.
You can be confident that you will see His goodness in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13)—which you are still in.
Your story is not over yet.
And He wants to walk this with you.
You Don't Have to Walk Widowhood Alone
If this has been an encouragement to you, I would love to walk this widowhood journey with you.
I offer personalized, high-touch support through one-to-one coaching (Learn more HERE), and that also includes my beautiful Christian widow community (the best, I have to say!) where we laugh, cry, and pray together.
We grieve with hope.
We're healing deeper.
We're rebuilding by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I pour into that space, and it is a precious space to be alongside other widow sisters who love Jesus, who want to walk this by faith, and who get the struggle.
If you're looking for Christian widow support and a community where you can walk this journey with other widows who love Jesus, The HOPE Stronghold is the place you belong.
Learn more about this private, virtual widow community here:
With you,
Rachel
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