I
awoke recently with a thought running through my mind…The deep acceptance of your
experience! I believe God was speaking to me through this phrase. My
experience was the unexpected loss of my husband. My experience was selling
the home we had built, resigning from the job I loved, and leaving my country
life of twenty-three years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast; leaving my beloved
church family and moving closer to my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. My
experience was downsizing my home and all that it held after
thirty-four wonderful years of marriage to move into something smaller and more
convenient for a widow to manage. My experience was adjusting to a
different climate, the hustle and bustle of a larger city, and finding another
job and friends who I knew could never replace those I had left behind, or so I
thought.
My
plan was to visit my family in California for three months, which would be a
get-acquainted visit after being away
from my childhood roots for thirty-three years. I was so looking forward to
spending time with my octogenarian parents and the rest of the family who I
only saw occasionally. Now here I was in California still going through those
unexpected crying spells as I thought of my Ron and our life together, a life
which I had just sold and would never “experience” again.
Then
I awoke . . . it seemed like I dreamed it all
night…
The deep acceptance of your experience!
The deep acceptance of your experience!
I even wrote it down the next morning so
I wouldn’t forget the exact wording that God had given me. All right, Lord,
what are you trying to tell me?
Deep…okay,
not shallow; Acceptance…okay, not rejection; Experience…okay, not
sideline observation! Now what? Months
went by as I got on with my life. I bought a home in Tennessee just two miles
from my daughter and renovated it with fresh paint and new carpet.
After
visiting around for several Sundays, God planted me into a nice church, much
larger than I was used to but small for the area where I now lived. Next was a
job. Although I did submit my application to the local city government, my
heart just wasn’t in it yet. I had now been away from my ringing alarm clock
for nearly six months. I was actually enjoying my temporary retirement although
I knew returning to work would be a financial necessity.
As
I was emptying the final boxes of books onto the shelves in my home office, I
came across my handwritten reminder from God…The deep acceptance of your
experience. I hoped now I
would have time to pray and seek God for His explanation. As I contemplated what had transpired from
the time of my all-night dream in California to God putting this phrase back
into my hands in Tennessee, an answer did begin to form.
Deep, according to the Thesaurus, meant meaningful, profound. How could the loss of my husband at age fifty-six be
meaningful or profound? Oh, I knew what I told myself. “He’s not suffering
anymore, he’s not in pain or on all that medication anymore, and he doesn’t
have to deal with life’s chaos and confusion anymore!” But deep in my heart I
knew that he was a survivor—so why didn’t he survive?
I
could have asked myself, “Why didn’t I pay closer attention to his health. Why
didn’t I insist that he go to the hospital . . . why, why, why,” but I avoided
those questions because they have no answers. God comforted me by giving me the
grace to accept Ron’s passing, which brings me to acceptance.
Acceptance means acknowledgment, agreement to, recognition.
The first six months I went to work every day and came home every night to live
in my bed . . . not my bedroom but my
bed! I read the mail, I ate a TV
dinner (or whatever—health wasn’t a factor), and I watched
television—mindlessly. Sometimes I would nap before dinner and then fall asleep
afterward. I didn’t do a lot of Bible reading or prayer during this time. I was
just too numb to think or concentrate. However, God was merciful and still used
me as I prepared and spoke at our Sunday School Open Assembly.
What
brought me out of my bed was a very dear friend who had also lost her husband
three months after me. She was alone, I was alone, and we had been pew pals for
four years. Since Judy was already retired, I would go to work every day and
she would have dinner cooked every night. Then we would sit and fellowship,
sometimes praying and sometimes doing a Bible study together. Judy stayed with
me for eight months before God set her foot on another path. God faithfully
took our shared experience and brought good to both of us through it, which
brings me to experience.
Experience means to encounter, to go through
an event. I was and still am experiencing something that everyone goes
through at some time in their life . . . a LOSS! It could be the loss of a
loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of a home and hometown. I can dwell
on the loss and never move on or I can allow God to comfort me through it and
bring me out on the other side, reconciled and expectant of what He has in
store for me . . . His new
future and hope for my life.
“I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the
Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to
Me, and I will listen to you. And you
will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)
How
can we second guess what God is doing in our lives and think that we know
better than He? How can we go our own way when He knows the end from the
beginning? How can we resist His leading us and drawing us into His comfort
when we desperately need to be comforted? And how can we disobey this new call
on our lives to move out and into a new future? Why would we want to live in
the past where our despondency lies?
I
will never forget my Ron and I don’t believe anyone can or will replace him . .
. I had the best! This future and this hope I have are because God loves me and
wants to use the deep acceptance of my experience as a steppingstone for me and for others.
Are
you in a place looking backward when you should be looking forward? Are you
rejecting God’s loving, tender mercies of comfort, or are you ready to accept
deeply the experience of having His loving arms around you, comforting
you, guiding and directing your footsteps, each day moving you into His perfect
will for your life . . . right now, today!?
Won’t
you seek God to move you into deep acceptance, whatever that
experience may be for you?
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