The following is part of a blog series called “All Things New: Learning to Flourish After Loss.” I am sharing this month about my journey learning to flourish after my husband’s death in 2014. Be sure to check out some of the other posts in the series, including a few by guest writers.
Whenever I ride in a car with my dad, he hooks up his trusty GPS. He doesn’t use his smartphone. He uses one of the old school GPS gadgets that talks to you. In that signature nasal voice, the GPS lady tells us where and when to turn. She directs us to stay in a specific lane on the freeway. Every once in a while, Dad will make a wrong turn or take a different route. The GPS lady promptly starts repeating, “Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating….” until she adjusts and finds a new route to send us on.
The beginning of the year is a time when we all naturally start to recalculate. We choose what to say no to and what to commit to in a new season. We adjust our compasses with new goals in mind. We establish new rhythms in our homes and our hearts.
After my husband died from cancer in 2014, I entered an intense season of recalculating. Suddenly, I found myself navigating a host of new responsibilities and searching for a new normal. My family had to adjust to a new existence without my husband, whose gregarious personality and encouraging voice was a strong presence in our community.
On a daily basis, I was suddenly in charge of tasks I had depended on my husband for, like taking out the trash, doing all the dishes, getting the oil changed on the cars, and locking up the doors at night. I had to manage all the finances, which required wading through piles of medical bills, pursuing insurance claims and setting up social security accounts. Each task felt hard and heavy.
Not only had I lost my soulmate and best friend, but I also was without my partner in parenting. As the solo parent, I had to attend the school parent conferences on my own, get the kids to all their extra-curricular activities and make the final decisions about discipline. I had to find rhythms for our bedtime routine with three daughters who desperately wanted my individual attention. I was one exhausted mama trying to navigate the grief journey for all of us.
Letting dreams die
However, the hardest work I had to face was not completing all these new tasks. The hardest work happened deep in my heart as I was forced to adjust my hopes and dreams. When a loss occurs in a person’s life, it requires recalculating. We must discover a new path and sometimes even find a new destination. In some cases, we have to let our dreams die to make space for new ones to grow.
I made the hard decision to step down from my role helping direct a non-profit my husband and I had started in Haiti. I was also the director of a social goods business that provided jobs for women making jewelry in Haiti. I stepped away from this calling so I could focus on my daughters and our grief.
I am grateful for the friends and leaders who stepped up to fill my husband and my roles. Although I felt sure I was making the right decision, the greatest loss was the close-knit relationships. I would not see my friends in Haiti as much. The volunteers and interns I trained here in the U.S. were no longer under my care. It was painful to say goodbye to the things I had built with my husband and the dreams we had cultivated together.
Ann Voskamp writes in her book The Broken Way: “There is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound – no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of deeper growth.”
Although I was broken, I believed God could nourish my family and do a new thing in me as He promised in Isaiah 43:18-19. I just didn’t know exactly what it would look like.
Tuning my heart
When I was younger, I used to play piano. The piano is one of those instruments that needs to be tuned periodically. I remember watching (or rather listening) to a man tune our piano one time. He used a lever or “hammer” to turn the tuning pins inside the piano, which increases or decreases the tension of the strings.
A good piano tuning is two things: accurate (in tune) and stable (stays in tune).
After my husband’s death, I started to pray for God to tune my heart to the new plans He had for the girls and me. I surrendered to the Master Tuner and let Him lead me in an accurate direction. He was the only one who could provide stability for my heart without my husband.
In the darkness of grief, I reached out for God. Each morning I woke up before my children and poured over His Word on the big red couch in our front room. I felt like I needed these words to breathe. I prayed for God to give me strength and manna just for that day, to help me hear the new song He was composing just for me.
Some days I stumbled over the notes. Other days I started to hear a few measures of music, and I found myself humming a tune. This was the work He was doing to tune me on the inside. God grew courage and faith in me in that season of waiting and dependence.
Cultivating new dreams
From that red couch in our front room, I had a view of the Japanese maple tree in the front yard. I watched as the leaves turned into a slow waltz of reds, greens and golds. The leaves floated to the ground and frost covered the trunk. Some days fog swirled in. Then one surprising day tiny green shoots appeared on the branches. New leaves, new life emerged and covered the tree.
God began to reveal new dreams to me. After a process of grieving the decision to leave Haiti, God began to open my eyes and heart to Fresno and the Central San Joaquin Valley as my home. I started receiving invitations to share my story around the valley. I was invited to speak at a women’s retreat for another church in northern California.
I started a project writing my story as a Bible study in hopes of encouraging others. I began a picture book project for younger kids to help them journey through grief – something I hadn’t really found for my own girls.
God was cultivating in me a new sense of purpose. I found myself following dreams of publishing and speaking, buying a new house and traveling more. I watched my girls gain new confidence and courage at school. Our story began to feel less like a book with a tragic ending and more like a work-in-progress about overcoming. He was, indeed, making all things new.
In Revelation 21, there is a vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth that I often cling to when I’m dreaming about the future. It says this:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
I want to challenge you with two questions I have often asked myself:
Are you allowing God to help you recalibrate your heart after loss? Are you giving Him permission to tune your heart to new dreams?
No matter what tragedy you have endured, no matter the difficult path before you, He is in the process of making all things new.
**This post is part of a January series called “All Things New.” Check out the other stories in the series and my new Bible study, Flourishing Together:
“All Things New: Learning to Flourish After Loss” – an introduction to the series by Dorina Lazo Gilmore, including why she chose “All Things New”
“All Things New: My New Normal” – a guest post by Danell teNyenhuis about finding a new life with her daughters after her husband’s tragic death
“All Things New: Life Beyond the Hospital Doors” – a guest post by Danielle Comer about life for a young widow after her husband died of cancer
“All Things New: Learning to Breathe Again” – a guest post by Tara Dickson about learning to breathe again and lift her eyes to God after her husband’s cancer journey
Flourishing Together is a new 6-week Bible study just released on Amazon. If you are interested in delving deeper into this topic of how God grows beautiful things out of the ashes and dirt of our life, please check out the study:
Beautifully written Dorina! I’m so glad God has brought you through this journey to encourage so many women!!
Thank you for that encouragement! It means so much! It’s hard to write about sometimes but I know other women need to know they’re not alone.
Thank you for reading, sweet friend! Grateful for your encouraging words on the journey!