CHRIST IN WINTER: The
Irrelevant Observations of a Not Dead Husband—
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 a husband was standing right there. She was slightly flustered, but not really embarrassed. After all, she was telling the truth.
Barbara was born at the end of the 19th century. 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.]
As Helen has famously said, “Most men enter assisted living the day they get married.”
When Barbara’s husband died, she got a chance to live her own life. Barbara wasn’t glad her husband’s life was over. She was glad hers had started.
I saw a sign recently [online] that said, “The beginning is near.” It’s a neat reversal of the sign that usually shows up in comic strips, with some robed and sandaled guru-type proclaiming, “The end is near.”
The end-is-near signs are telling us: you’d better prepare for the end of life. The beginning-is-near sign says that we need to prepare for life to get started.
Reminds me of the story of the young man who returned from military service and was inquiring about folks in his old neighborhood… “Is Old Man Brown alive yet?” “No, not yet.”
I’m not going to say, “You’d better enjoy today because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” We 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. The beginning is near…
John Robert McFarland
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