It's been almost ten years since I embarked on a new season called widowhood. I was fifty-two when the unwanted journey began. Instantly I felt old, afraid, and alone. The previous tweny-four years of my life had been spent attempting to keep our daughter alive with never a thought of someone else in our family succumbing to poor health. Then one knot found under my husband's arm ended our known life and sent us spiraling into an unexpected battle against Melanoma...a battle we lost in August of 2003. In a sense, I completed that battle and entered another one....widowhood. The grief was hard and there were days I thought I couldn't keep living. I'd longed to be a wife and mother and grandmother but the widowhood club was not one I'd ever expected to join...at least not in my fifties. I made mistakes in my quest for healing but gradually I learned to accept my new role and flourish in it. Singleness was not what I'd expected but it was what I had.
This fall will mark the tenth year anniversary of that club entrance. As the anniversary approaches, I must share that I've learned a lot. I am now happily remarried and wear the title 'wife' again but I will always be a widow who has remarried. The pain and lessons learned are woven into this tapestry called life.
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About Me
- Pam
- I grew up in Southern Mississippi, and at eleven years of age I invited Jesus Christ into my life. Several years later, I married a young man from Oklahoma and we eventually moved to his home state. There we welcomed our first child, a beautiful baby boy. Four and a half years later, our daughter was born and unfortunately tragedy struck. Our daughter suffered brain damage during open heart surgery. In the years that followed, I was her care-giver. I've been stretched and remolded as I've journeyed through many trials. I was widowed in 2003 and as my husband was dying, he said for him one of the most difficult things was knowing that I would probably bury our daughter without him. I told him should that occur, when she died I would picture in my heart him seeing her walk and talk for the first time and that would bring me strength and joy. I can truly say that it did. His death started me on this journey as "a single wife." The first eight years of blogging are as a grieving, healing widow. Now the posts are as a newly remarried who has found life after widowhood.
1 comment:
We're a huge fellowship, we widows. Each of us journeys a lonely road, but the signposts are very similar for many. I trust the Lord continues to uphold you daily. God bless you, Pam!
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