Surrender is an Intersection

There comes a point in every widow’s life when she must surrender her sense of identity so that who she was and what she did is stripped clean.  The time for that to happen is different in each widow’s life and no one can tell her exactly when that time is.  It’s a time that she arrives at through the wooing of the Holy Spirit.

I came to that point and am finding it to be the only way to be utterly at peace with exactly where I am now at this very moment.  I have to let God do His growth work in me so that the identity that I allow to fall away can be transformed from who I was to who I am created to be at this very time and this very moment in my life.

Is it easy to get to this point?  No. Definitely not.  I fought against it and struggled with it for long time.  In fact, I embraced the struggle wholeheartedly for it was only as I embraced it that I could totally process through it.  But, at the end of the struggle I found it necessary to come to that place of surrender in order to  begin moving towards the “new me”. Coming to that place of surrender doesn’t mean that the struggle is completely finished.  It’s not.

I find it to be sometimes a daily battle because this is not the life that I pictured – EVER.  Somehow I had it in my mind that my husband and I were going to live forever sitting together in our rockers on the front porch rocking until Jesus comes. Where do I find out who I am created to be?  There is only one place and that is the Bible.  My friendship with the Bible can take me from who I was as the wife of Bob Feathers to the woman God intended for me to be now as a widow.

My being in this place didn’t surprise God.  He knew before I was born that I would be here and He made preparations for me ahead of time to help me through the anticipatory grief, the initial shock on the day my husband died, all those feelings of betrayal, the months and months of questioning “WHY?!” and “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!”, the realization that I needed help to process through my grief, the courage to ask for that help………….so many things that I have experienced and continue to experience. Finding out who I am to be now begins with an act of obedience to simply read or listen to the Bible every day.  Only God’s Word can reveal to me who I really am and illuminate the path that God has created for me to walk. The journey ahead is far more important than the past left behind.