"Life begins when your husband dies"

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter… ©

Helen and I were chatting with Barbara after church. Well, it was mostly Helen and Barbara chatting, with me standing there.

“Life doesn’t really begin until your husband dies,” Barbara said.

Then she remembered that I was right there. She was slightly flustered, but not really embarrassed. After all, she was telling the truth.

As Helen has famously said, “Most men enter assisted living the day they get married.”

Barbara was born almost a century ago. She spent most of her life assisting her husband’s life. That’s what women did then. [That’s what a lot of them do now.] When Barbara’s husband died, she got a chance to live her own life. She wasn’t glad her husband’s life was over. She was glad hers had started.

I saw a sign on the street recently [via Facebook]. It said, “The beginning is near.”

I’m not going to say, “You’d better enjoy today because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” We all already know that. But whatever tomorrow brings, it won’t be just a loss, just an ending. It will also be a beginning.

It might not be the beginning we want, but it will be the one we have.

Mourn the losses. They are real. They deserve grief. But live the new life, too.

John Robert McFarland

jmcfarland1721@charter.net

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even in the summer!

You don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.

I tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.