Moving forward doesn’t mean hating or blocking out your past. It doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean you ever stop loving. It’s just a different kind of love now. I remember this day three years ago — we went and played miniature golf at Casey Jones and had a blast, even though we both played terribly and sweated our tails off. I loved you with my whole heart while you were here with us, and I wouldn’t change that. I loved my life with you. And I love my life now, too, and the way the Lord has used the pain of losing you to grow me in to a stronger, more compassionate, more faithful follower of Christ. I carry it all to the cross.
Being a widow is hard. Being a widow at 25 adds a really messy twist. You see, it’s messy, picking up the pieces and choosing to keep moving. You can’t be a “normal” 25 year old again because at a very young age, you’ve experienced what most people don’t experience until they’re elderly. People criticize. Some refuse to acknowledge new found love and pretend that you are supposed to live the rest of your existence in the depths of depression. Others refuse to acknowledge your past and pretend it never happened and avoid talking about it at all costs. Or they make it out to be some horrible thing, your entire marriage to someone who decided to kill himself. But my whole marriage wasn’t some terrible thing. He was mentally ill. That doesn’t mean he didn’t love me or treat me well for the majority of our marriage. Regardless, you lose a lot of friends and learn the sad truth that while immediately after you’re widowed people say they’ll “be there” but there turns out to be a place very far from your side, because you haven’t heard from 90% of them since the funeral. And then there’s the internal battle… emotions contradict each other. There’s a weird feeling of having somehow fallen backward yet also leaped forward all at the same time. You can feel an intense love for someone new while still, at the same time, feeling an equal intensity of emptiness from where your last love was ripped from your life. If you’re not careful, anxiety will root itself in every corner of your life because of the trauma you experienced. I carry it all to the cross.
You can be joyous while still feeling somber and grieving. You are allowed to keep living. You are worthy of love, friendship, and fellowship. You are worthy of JOY. And you are also worthy of experiencing grief whenever it strikes without feeling guilty for having loved someone so deeply that the reality of your loss can literally bring you to your knees and strip the wind from your lungs. I carry it all to the cross.
In it all there’s one theme that always shines through — my only answers are found when I carry it to the cross.
The cross is significant. On the cross Jesus, the Son of God, innocent, was sacrificed to pay the debt of the guilty. Three days later, He was resurrected, which showed His incredible power over darkness, thereby giving us, guilty sinners, victory over all of the pain, anxiety, sickness, and darkness in this world. Guaranteeing us eternal healing and life, if only we believe in Him and His power. And so when we carry our junk to the cross, and lay it down and say “Jesus, I know you have all power over this darkness”, it dies there. Our Jesus takes on the burden that we’ve been carrying and frees us from it. He gives us victory. So we keep moving. We keep living. And we keep loving on and reminding each other about the power of Jesus on that cross.
I carry it all to the cross.
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