BW 075: The 10 gifts for widowhood
Dec 22, 2023Watch the video here or on YouTube; listen anywhere podcasts are played (Apple, Spotify, Google…)
The Transcript is below.
Today I'm going to share with you 10 gifts about being a widow since this is our Christmas episode. And I want to clarify that these 10 things don't diminish What happened to you? They don't lessen the pain and the trauma, and this isn't my way of saying, well, yeah, something bad happened to you, but at least you have all these gifts now, right?
I believe that there are bad things that happen. period. Losing your spouse is a bad thing that happened. No, at least no. Oh, buts period. And I also believe that good things can come out of bad things. Brave widow was one of those things that was born. It's something that never would have been created had I not Become a widow.
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''when you lose a spouse, all of a sudden, your back is no longer to death. 'You realize how fragile Life really is how quickly it can be taken away from you. And how quickly that can disrupt every little thing around you, everything about your day, everything about your routine, everything. It also helps you prioritize one out of necessity. ''
''life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. And I think as widows, we have this very bittersweet, but beautiful opportunity to rebuild our lives with this new perspective and with these other gifts and to become so much.''
''widowhood also can help give us a sense of purpose. And even if that initial purpose is Oh, I was recently widowed, but I can help the person that was just widowed last week. I can help the person who's struggling more than I am right now. I can help speak encouragement and hope. And a future into someone else. So they don't feel that life is hopeless and pointless. ''
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The Brave Widow Community is a place where you can connect with other widows, find hope and healing, and begin to dream again for the future. Learn more at bravewidow.com.
Hey guys, I’m Emily Jones
I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary. Nathan and I have four beautiful children together. My world was turned completely upside down when I lost him. With faith, community, and wisdom from others, I’ve been able to find hope, joy, and dream again for the future. I want to help others do the same, too!
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transcript:
Audio
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Emily: [00:00:00] Hey, Hey, and welcome to episode number 75 of the brave widow show. Today is our Christmas episode. So this podcast will be published a few days before Christmas, or you might be looking for something to do on Christmas and be watching or listening to me on the actual holiday. If so, Merry Christmas. And today I'm going to talk to you about the 10 gifts of widowhood.
Now, before you roll your eyes. Before you close the video, before you stop the podcast, I know what some of you are thinking, which is. There are no gifts about being a widow. There's nothing good about being a widow. It all sucks. It's all terrible and I don't even know why this is a topic for a show episode, but I want to share with you a little story when I was.
Trying to think of the name for Brave Widow. I was [00:01:00] really struggling because I didn't want my brand or my website to have a sad name. I didn't want it to be like the Weeping Widow or to say like brokenhearts. com. I really. Wanted to focus on something positive. I wanted to focus on something that would instill hope and instill confidence, but I could not come up with a name that wasn't already taken or that really resonated with me.
So I posted it in a few different Facebook groups and I asked people to describe themselves now as a widow or describe a positive. About being a widow with an adjective, like, how would they describe themselves or what was something good that happened? Because I was really looking for some. Positive association words.
I was really looking for a way to [00:02:00] phrase, you know, what I had come up with. And there were all kinds of responses. I was really surprised how many people responded and said things like I learned so much. I learned that I can handle more than I ever thought I could. Things like resilience, things like grit.
And beauty and the ability to learn and adapt and pivot and strength and the word that stood out to me the most was brave and I thought about how much bravery it takes. To be a widow, and to take on all of the things that we have to take on, and to learn all of those new things, to build a new life, to potentially love someone again, to have to learn new skills, to have to go meet new people, just, all of these things require bravery, and bravery isn't a lack of fear, but [00:03:00] it's moving forward in spite of fear, and Just as soon as I saw the word brave, immediately I was drawn to it and that's how the name for brave widow was born.
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Emily Jones: Welcome to The Brave Widow Podcast. I'm your host, Emily Jones. We help young widows heal their heart, find hope, and dream again for the future.
Emily: So, today I'm going to share with you 10 gifts about being a widow since this is our Christmas episode. And I want to clarify that these 10 things don't diminish What happened to you? They don't lessen the pain and the trauma, and this isn't my way of saying, well, yeah, something bad happened to you, but at least you have all these gifts now, right?[00:04:00]
I believe that there are bad things that happen. period. Losing your spouse is a bad thing that happened. No, at least no. Oh, buts period. And I also believe that good things can come out of bad things. Brave widow was one of those things that was born. It's something that never would have been created had I not Become a widow.
Had I not had that experience doesn't diminish what happened? It doesn't make me think. Well, yeah, it's sad that Nathan's gone, but at least I have brave widow. And at least I'm helping other widows. No, it's something good. That was born out of something bad and tragic and hard and difficult. And these other gifts are [00:05:00] also true.
Things that are born out of having lost your spouse. So, think of it in that way. Now, before I dive in to the very first gift, I want to make sure that you're aware of some things that are going to be happening here in the very near future.
Brave widow was born in the fall of last year. And the 1st brave widow show episode aired in November of 2022. So I've had a little over a year now of. Developing brave widow of developing the courses of coaching widows of hosting calls of talking to hundreds and hundreds and thousands of widows and just some really incredible experiences.
And so, as I'm learning, as I'm interacting, as I'm trying to help and support other widows and what benefits them the most, I continue to make adjustments. I continue to pivot. I continue [00:06:00] to enhance. I continue to build things that are helpful for you. So I really am excited about some things that are coming up in 2024.
I've got new content that I've never taught before. And I'm going to be offering a, I'll say an enhanced level of approach. So currently we have the Brave Widow membership. And we have live calls. We have coaching. We have forums. We have courses. We have all the things and all the ways to stay connected.
And I love the community and it's amazing. And. In 2024, I want to take a more hand in hand approach to tactically helping people rebuild their lives, achieve their goals, dream new dreams, and make those dreams become a reality. A new [00:07:00] reality, and I'll talk about this a little bit more in the New Year's episode, but I want to give you a teaser because there's going to be some really interesting and exciting things that are coming up for people that are part of the brave little membership community.
And I want you to have the first opportunity to hear about it, to be a part of it. And the best way that you can do that is by being part of my email list. And you can sign up for that by going to brave widow. com slash free. I send out emails to my email list a few times a week. And if there's something, if there are a lot of things happening, it may be every day, but I really try to keep communication open.
I share stories of things that have happened to me and ways that I've overcome some. Personal challenges in an effort to make that helpful for you and I talk about what live events are coming up, what podcast episodes have come out and what opportunities you [00:08:00] have to engage with the membership community or to join the community.
So. Bravewidow. com slash free, be part of the email list and be among the first to know when these new events and new opportunities and series are happening. It's really, really going to be exciting. And I think ultimately super helpful for you and. What I wanted what I wanted as a widow trying to get her feet underneath her again, trying to move from this state of, okay, I'm trying to come out of survival mode, but it's weird building new dreams.
It's weird thinking about the future without Nathan. I, I, I want to do it because that's how I always think about the future, but it's just strange. So, yeah. Anyway, I think that it will be just an [00:09:00] amazing opportunity for you and for other widows. And I would love to see you as some founding members of those things as they start coming out.
So, okay, no more teasers on this episode. All right, 10 gifts of widowhood. The first one is a new perspective. And this surprised me a bit, but when your spouse dies, you are no longer naive or blind to death. I heard a saying once that, you know, culturally as Americans, we live with our backs turned to death until it comes around and Slaps us in the face, basically.
Paraphrasing heavily there. But, essentially, we don't like to think about it. We don't like to plan funerals. We don't like to talk about what would happen in our will or our trust. A lot of people may not even have a will or a [00:10:00] trust. And we kind of have this mindset that we're just going to live forever.
That we're going to be immortal and even though people will say the only two things in life that are certain are death and taxes, we kind of just try to ignore death and shove it under a rug and hope that it never happens to us for the most part. But when you lose a spouse, all of a sudden, your back is no longer to death.
You realize how fragile Life really is how quickly it can be taken away from you. And how quickly that can disrupt every little thing around you, everything about your day, everything about your routine, everything. It also helps you prioritize one out of necessity. So initially you're in survival mode and you can only do what you can do.
You can't do everything that you were doing before. And at some [00:11:00] point. Hopefully you stop trying to do everything that you were doing before and you give yourself grace because we're not operating at the same way during grief that we were before losing our spouse. So this new perspective, this gift of a new perspective helps us with setting priorities of what is actually important.
It helps us let go of the things that are more frivolous, the things that are more, you know, I used to get really worked up about how the living room was arranged with the furniture or what color paint I wanted or what kind of countertops or, you know, how, you know, my stuff on my side of the sink was a certain way I didn't want it touched or moved.
Uh, there were a lot of things that I was wound up pretty tight about, like really adamant about wanting things a certain way. And after Nathan died, I just really stopped caring. You know, yeah, it might be nice to [00:12:00] have a house a certain way. It might be nice to have the paint a certain color doesn't at the end of the day.
None of that matters. It's nice, but it shouldn't have been as much of a priority or as much of a frustration for me at times as it was. This new perspective also helps us with having the confidence to set boundaries, and the boundaries could be whether or not you feel like responding to someone, it could be, how people are used to relying on you, or it's not really, I wouldn't say taking advantage of you, but they're used to you fulfilling a certain role.
So we had our role as a wife, you may have had your role as a mother, But you also have a role with different members of your family and within your social circle and your friends. And in many cases, you may not be able to still fulfill that role, especially not the way that you did [00:13:00] before and but people may still expect that.
So this helps us to set more boundaries. Um, it may be. You don't take calls after a certain time. You don't respond to text messages as quickly as you did before. You don't host all the events that you did before, and it doesn't really bother you if people get upset because again, it's about priorities and the priority isn't being able to host every holiday and do everything the way that you did before.
The priority is surviving, healing, thriving. This new perspective also gives us the opportunity to have. Less stress and to be less anxious about things. Now, I'm a perfectionist and a high achiever. If you didn't already know that about me, I've talked about that a few times, but going through this whole process has really helped me not be so anxious about everything being perfect about every email being perfect about every spreadsheet, every [00:14:00] presentation, every.
Live event that I do every podcast episode. In fact, somebody asked me the other day, do I go back and listen to these podcasts? Do I edit them? Do I, you know, worry over every little thing? And no, I don't. Not saying I haven't before, but I haven't spot checked them or listen to pieces of them, but I don't go back because.
I'm letting it go. We don't have to be perfect. It's about providing value. It's about doing the best that we can with what we have, where we are, and having this new perspective, this, this number 1 gift. Here is that I'm less anxious about those things. I care less if, you know, I don't want things to have typos.
I don't want things to have errors. I don't want the edits to be a little jumpy. But at the end of the day, if there's one in there, okay, it's not the end of the world. And 99 percent of people aren't [00:15:00] even going to notice. So you get all worked up for nothing. All right. The widowhood is self discovery.
This is really tricky, at least it was for me in the beginning of I felt like I just didn't know who I was anymore. Many, many, many widows that I speak to say that they're not the same person they were before. They feel like they've been reborn or that they're like a phoenix coming out of the ashes.
They don't like the same things they used to like. They don't have the same hobbies. They don't have the same friends and the same social circle. They are doing things that maybe they've never done before. Maybe they never would have had the opportunity to do before because their spouse. Didn't like that or didn't want to participate or they didn't have the time, whatever it is.
There's so much that we learn about ourselves and who we are and having this new perspective helps us weigh that against our priorities [00:16:00] and our values. What is truly important to us will help dictate where we spend our time, how we spend our time, what we focus on. And, you know, it helps us. Feel more confident about trying new things to see what we like and what we don't like and what our life The rest of our life could potentially look like there's a lot of self discovery in grief and widowhood and for many of us, we don't know who we are without our spouse You know, it's strange at times.
People say that the Bible says that two shall become one. You become one flesh. Two people essentially merge together. And I don't know that it's felt anymore. Then when you lose your person and you sit back and go, wow, I really feel like I feel like I have lost an entire half of myself. I feel like there's just a gaping hole inside of me.[00:17:00]
And I don't even know who I am on my own. I've been married to Nathan right at 20 years and I'd been with him more than half of my life at that time. So all of my adult life, I'd been married and we had built dreams together. We had. Done activities together. We had gone on adventures together and then all of a sudden I had to reevaluate it and say, well, if it's just me, do I still want those things?
Some? Yes. Some? No. And that can be a very strange and fragile place to be. It can feel. I often say that it, for me, felt like I was in the midst of this huge ocean with these big waves that just kept hitting me from all sides. And I just felt like I was drifting, like I wasn't anchored to anything.
Everything I knew was gone or different. The rug had been pulled out from under me and I didn't know where I was [00:18:00] going, how I was going to get there. What, what could that possibly look like? So there is a lot of self discovery, but. That's also a beautiful thing about widowhood. You learn so much about yourself.
You learn things that you enjoy, things you don't enjoy, what new visions and plans for the future you could potentially have for yourself. And you can have, take the time to really get clear on Who you are and what you want. Now, one of my favorite quotes that I used to have in my office said, life is not about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself. And I think as widows, we have this very bittersweet, but beautiful opportunity to rebuild our lives with this new perspective and with these other gifts and to become so much more. So [00:19:00] much more of who we were, so much more of many of these things that I'm going to go through.
All right, gift number three is stronger relationships, and this one is a little tricky because Sometimes in many cases, we lose our relationships with friends or family, we lose our social circle, or it looks very different, or it's just awkward. You know, you're kind of the third wheel now. It feels like, uh, you have a group of couples that used to go out together all the time.
They don't know whether or not to invite you. You'rewide.
Your relationships and your friends, maybe they used to karaoke every Thursday night, and you don't want to do that anymore. It's not really you're not. You just don't enjoy it anymore. Maybe now you want to take an art class or do something completely different, and that's perfectly fine. The flip side of that is that you can form such [00:20:00] strong relationships with people who show up for you over and over and over.
And people who are consistently There for you, their boots on the ground, helping you, they're rolling up their sleeves. They're inviting you. They're including you. They're showing you all of their love, or you meet new people and you're building up your social circle and you form really strong relationships with those people again, having this new perspective on life.
Can help you build stronger relationships because you have this new lens now that you're seeing through right? So things that used to might have annoyed me that might have gotten on my nerves That, um, I would not have appreciated about people. I overlook so much more of that now. I tolerate so many more things that were just nothing important or huge, just little annoying things that people do.[00:21:00]
I'm much more accepting of that. It doesn't really bother me anymore because I have that new perspective and I have that lens of what is really important at the end of the day. I don't get caught up in all the little nuances and who said what and, you know, who. War, what and how they responded or how they rolled their eyes or whatever it is, right?
How this friend never responds to text messages, whatever it is, just much more accepting and forgiving and I overlook a lot of things and that really wouldn't have happened unless I have this new perspective. So, the 3rd gift here being that you have the ability to build stronger relationships is important.
Number 4 is compassion. This really ties into what I just talked about, which is I have so much more compassion for other people, for people who are struggling with things I don't understand, people that are [00:22:00] struggling with loss or grief or just having a tough time. You ever met someone or interacted with someone and it's just like everything that can go wrong will and they're just having a tough time.
It's not that I was not compassionate before. It's not that I didn't care, but I'm so much more compassionate and more thoughtful about how I can try to help support that person, how I can tactically help them, how I can. Be there for them and show up for them in a way that lets them know that I care, but isn't intrusive.
I just feel a much, a stronger sense of compassion for other people, especially for people who are misunderstood or for people who are struggling something. I know I can't understand. I haven't gone through it. I haven't experienced it. I don't know what it's like, but I know what it's like when other people can't understand what I've gone through.
So I'm able to be more compassionate there.
Number five, the [00:23:00] gift of widowhood is personal growth. And wow, this is a big one. This is like five golden rings. And that song days of Christmas, you know, where they pause and they're like,
yeah, this is like personal growth on a level that. It's hard to describe unless you've gone through it, but I look back over this past year and over these past 2, almost 2 and a half years now, and it's really amazing how much I've grown, how much I've learned, how much I've taken on, how much. more easily it is for me to do things, uh, things that I never did before.
And it's just really incredible to see how far I've grown. I look back and I can see how much I've grown from a life coach perspective, from a certified grief recovery specialist perspective, how much [00:24:00] more I know and understand about grief and helping others and what it really takes to move through that healing process is really.
profound. And it's exciting to feel that I've grown and I've been able to take on all of these things and to be resilient in that aspect. So this one definitely feels like growing pains. You're definitely through widowhood, going to feel stretched, going to feel pulled, going to feel like, Oh, I don't know if I could take on any one more thing.
But then you're also able to look back and think, wow, that felt really, really hard at the time. Now I can do it like no sweat. So I'll give you one example. I have a Blackstone grill, which is like a griddle grill that uses propane outside that we sometimes cook food on. Nathan always liked them.
I never had really used it. By the time I tried to use it, it was all [00:25:00] rusty. So I ended up having to order a new one. It took A good 8 to 10 hours to put this thing together. Listen, it has drawers and cabinets and all of that and the directions. I'm sorry, Blackstone, we're very confusing. So it took a really long time, my son and I, to put it together.
And the first time or two that I would use it, it was like reading the instructions, looking it up on YouTube. You know, everybody had different instructions on YouTube, so then it was confusing about what's the appropriate way to season the grill versus not season the grill and to actually use it. And it really just felt like it took forever to Get comfortable with the steps to use it to clean it to season it to do all of those things and I just went out there the other day and made chicken fried rice and It was hibachi style and it felt So simple and so easy and I remember standing out there, even [00:26:00] though it was freezing cold, standing out there in the cold and, you know, pouring in the veggies, getting those going, pouring on the eggs and the rice and sprinkling on all the seasonings and thinking, why did I ever think this was hard?
Like, this is so easy. This is so simple, but it's because I'd never done it before. And it didn't help that I also had grief brain, but yeah. It all just felt so overwhelming at the time, and it felt like it took hours to do something that took me less than 30 minutes to do the other night. So that's a very oversimplified example of how we experience personal growth, but.
That is one of the gifts that we're given through widowhood is the ability to grow and expand and to learn and to do things that maybe we thought we would never do or never want to do.
I've shared before that Nathan was the family cook. He was an amazing cook. He never really followed any [00:27:00] recipes. He just kind of threw a bunch of stuff together and tasted it until he got it right. And it was awesome. I'm the kind of person that if I tried to cook. On the rare occasions that I did, that I would step by step follow the recipe.
I would perfectly measure everything out and it would just never taste right. Like it was just not great. It wasn't awful, just wasn't great. And it definitely never could compare to him or his mom or anyone else. And so I felt so bad for my family. When I was going to have to start cooking everything for them, all the meals, and I became besties with my crock pot and learned how to make a lot of things through trial and error through that way.
And God bless my now fiance, Robert, who tells me so frequently, your cooking is fantastic. This is amazing. I love this. Or when my kids say, man, this is really good. Or this is like the best thing, the best version that you've [00:28:00] made. I went from, I hated cooking. I just hated it. I hated the time it took. I hated the, the steps and the processes and all the ingredients and all the time.
Like it takes so long 10 minutes eating. It just. I hated the ine what felt like an inefficiency at the time. But over these past two, two and a half years, not only have I learned how to cook and how to season things and how to make adjustments and how to I can now look at a recipe and make adjustments before I actually start making it because I feel like I know whether or not that's going to be enough of the right seasoning, enough of the right whatever it is.
Now I'm not perfect at cooking and, you know, sometimes I'll say, well, this is the new recipe. Sorry guys, if you don't like it, but for the most part. I actually enjoy cooking now, and I've become much [00:29:00] more skilled at that, and my family appreciates it, and it's become something that, for the most part, I really enjoy doing, and that, to me, was like jumping over the Grand Canyon of a chasm.
I never, ever thought. That I would want to cook that I would ever enjoy it. Like I am telling you when I met Nathan and we started dating. I told him I will do all the cleaning, but you have to cook. I hate cooking. I don't want to do it. I just there's nothing about it that I like. And that was our deal.
Never did. I think that I was going to have to take on that responsibility, but. I have grown so much in that experience and that's just a couple of examples of how I have grown, in really just the, the, a physical and fundamental way. All right, gift number six is appreciation for life's moments. When
I was [00:30:00] working as a leadership executive in this amazing hour house of a career, I felt like I lived life on 90 miles an hour. And it was really hard for me to want to slow down and savor the moment or for me to always feel fully present whenever I was with my family or for me to just truly enjoy those everyday little things that happen and to appreciate those moments in life.
Now, I absolutely cherish and adore all of those moments, you know, whether I'm getting the kids off for school. Some days I enjoy that more than other days. Or whether I'm fixing a meal or whether I'm, you know, helping them shop for clothes or whatever it is. I so much more so appreciate and enjoy all of those what sometimes just feels like mundane [00:31:00] everyday moments are now so important and precious to me.
I know that every time I tell my kids bye, it could be the last time that I talk to them. I know that every time that Robert and I go out on a date or go have an adventure I could be the last one that we have together. And so I value and cherish all of those moments and all of those things way more than what I did before being a widow.
And again, it's because we have that, that new perspective and that new lens. Of how we look at things that really helps us appreciate the moments that we have with the people that we care about.
Gift number seven of widowhood is a sense of purpose. This is a really big one for many widows that I work with and it takes us a while to get there. It takes us a while at times to get past feeling [00:32:00] hopeless to get past feeling like this doesn't matter. None of this matters. What is the point? My person isn't here to think that there's any reason that we should continue living.
I've talked with several widows that. You know, they, it breaks my heart that they love their person and their spouse, and they lived to serve their person and to love their person. And now they just felt like they had no purpose. What was, what was the point of being here? They didn't want to be here anymore because they wanted to be with their person and to have that experience here.
But at the same time, widowhood also can help give us a sense of purpose. And even if that initial purpose is Oh, I was recently widowed, but I can help the person that was just widowed last week. I can help the person who's struggling more than I am right now. I can help speak encouragement and [00:33:00] hope. And a future into someone else.
So they don't feel that life is hopeless and pointless. That's one of the most beautiful things that we do on the Brave Widow show is to help other people tell us, tell their story. And if you've watched very many episodes, you will have heard people that it's only been 30 days since they lost their spouse.
It's only been three months since they lost their spouse. There are some pretty short timeframes in there of when someone lost their person. And yet it's going to get on camera and tell a bunch of strangers they don't know their story in hopes of encouraging and inspiring someone else. That's a wonderful sense of purpose to have.
That's a wonderful way to turn our pain into a purpose and into a way of helping and serving other people who are struggling. Now, [00:34:00] you might find a sense of purpose in volunteering somewhere. Many widows change careers or change job roles within their career, uh, and they are looking for a new purpose, a new sense of I'm needed.
This is important. I am really contributing to something meaningful here. I need something that needs me to pour into it because I'm ready to give back. I'm ready to invest in something else and. I'm needed. Prior to being a widow, it's easy to just think about life and the mundane day to day and just moving through life and that we have, you know, 50, 60 more years together and, you know, we, we have different priorities versus now with this new perspective and this new sense of purpose, we are looking for purpose.
We're looking [00:35:00] for, why am I still here? You know, why? Maybe we were both sick. Maybe we both went through something and he died, but I survived. What is the reason why I'm still here? What is my purpose for still being here on this planet to help someone else, to give back in a really generous way? Like, what is that?
So, having that Sense of purpose and that sense of vision for yourself is that 7th gift number 8 is spiritual growth And this is one that's really interesting to me because I see a lot of widows struggle both ways I see some widows that move away from faith that question our faith that really struggle with the reality of what they're facing versus a divine entity that cares about them That loves them and has the best in store for them.
And then I see other widows where their faith is made [00:36:00] stronger. And in several of my interviews, I've really asked guests to lean into that. Like, why do you feel like. This made you stronger in your faith. Why would this not make you question God or question your faith or question? You know your understanding of his love for you and those sort of things and for me I knew I just I couldn't do it on my own.
I couldn't I cried and I begged God to pull my heart out of despair and to pull my heart out of sadness because I felt like I could not do that on my own. I needed divine intervention and he did. I needed to feel like I wasn't alone. I needed to feel like what I went through wasn't pointless, that I wasn't abandoned
or discarded or forgotten. And there are so many verses in the Bible about how [00:37:00] important widows and fatherless, the fatherless are to him. And how he captures every tear and holds it in a bottle and how he rescues the broken hearted. And you better believe I leaned into that and said, you said these things.
There are a couple of verses in Exodus in the Bible where God clearly says, do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. For if you do, and they call out to me, I will hear their cry. And you better believe that there were times I was calling on that widow hotline to God and saying, Hey, I thought I've been wronged here, or, Hey, I don't, I don't want to be taken advantage of in this situation, or I need guidance, or I need help.
I need you to rescue me. And you said in the Bible, if I call out to you, you hear me.[00:38:00]
So I know you hear me and I know that you are going to help me through this situation to get to the other side. And of course he did. I can't imagine the despair, the sadness, the hopelessness that I would have felt so much more of. If I didn't feel like I had that lifeline, if I didn't feel like God was cared about me or was going to help me or could get me through some of this, if I thought it was all on my shoulders that I had to do this by myself, I can't even imagine that.
In fact, I had a widow friend that asked me. You know, how, how did you remain strong in your faith through losing Nathan and through losing all of this because I'm just really struggling with it. And she reminds me of my response at times, [00:39:00] but I just told her I had to, I had to believe. That what God says is true and what he can do is true and real.
There was no other, I didn't give myself any other option. I just believed and had faith and moved forward with that mindset because I couldn't face the alternative. I couldn't face a possibility of. That isn't true. No one's looking out for me. This is all on my own. This is just really bad luck that this happened.
This is just gonna suck, you know, the rest of my life. I had to maintain faith and I had to believe that I was cared about out there in that great big all universe. So spiritual growth and closeness is a gift in widowhood when it's something that we choose to accept and that we choose to pursue.
Number nine is inner [00:40:00] strength. And I know, I know, you're tired of people saying, Oh, you're so strong. And you feel like all you want to do is not be strong for a hot minute. And you just want to be, and you just want to not have to be strong. But you are so strong. You're not watching me, I'm smiling really big as I say that.
You are so strong. And you are so brave to face every day. And so many widows that I talk to. Say, didn't know I could get through this. I didn't know this was something I could take on. I had no idea how strong I was or I could be until I had to face the situation and there wasn't another option for me.
And even though it's hard, it's so, so hard. I know it's hard. You're so strong and you can take anything on. You've [00:41:00] lost your person. You've lost your other half. There is not anything else that you cannot take on. You can get through it.
All right, the tenth and final gift of widowhood that I have for you today is the gift of new beginnings. This one's a little bit tricky because new beginnings are things that we get to experience, we get to do, we get to enjoy, that maybe wouldn't have been possible if our spouse was still here. I went on a trip to London, England.
I took a cruise. I have found love again and am engaged. And these are all wonderful, amazing, incredible things that never would have happened. If Nathan hadn't died, he never would have gone on those trips. He never been on a cruise. I definitely wouldn't have gotten engaged to someone else if [00:42:00] I was still married to Nathan.
So it's not a matter of saying and diminishing what we had with our person by saying, well, at least I get to do all this other stuff that I wouldn't have got to do if they were still here. But it's a gift that we're given. To be able to have these new adventures and to start new beginnings and to do things that otherwise we never would have done if we had not gone through this experience.
One of our members, Sue Peters, in the Brave Widow membership community, she is writing a book. And this next year, she is going to be a published author, which is Amazing. And she's done so many amazing things and she's traveled and she's tried new things and she's been writing and she's been doing lives on her social media, all this stuff.
I'm so proud of her for that. She never would have done.[00:43:00] Had she not lost her spouse, had she not been widowed and gone on the many adventures and paths that she's chosen to do. Again, it doesn't take away. It doesn't diminish what happened to her. Instead. It's another way of How something beautiful and remarkable can come as a ripple effect of something bad that has happened to you
Alright, so those are the ten gifts of widowhood again They are number one a new perspective number two self discovery number three stronger relationships Number four, compassion, five personal growth, six appreciation for life's moments, seven sense of purpose, eight spiritual growth, nine inner strength, and 10 new beginnings.
And speaking of new beginnings, we have a [00:44:00] new year that's right around the corner, and I would love to walk hand in hand with you as you rebuild your life, as you dream new dreams, as you chase those dreams, and as you create a miraculous and beautiful future for yourself. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and I am sending all the love that I have to each one of you who's watching or listening right now.
Emily Jones: βHey guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, finding hope, or achieving your dreams for the future.
Do you need a safe space to connect with other like-minded widows? Do you wish you had how-tos for getting through the next steps in your journey, organizing your life or moving through grief? What about live calls where you get answers to your burning [00:45:00] questions? The Brave Widow Membership Community is just what you need.
Inside you'll find courses to help guide you, a community of other widows to connect with, live coaching and q and a calls, and small group coaching where you can work on what matters most to you. Learn how to heal your heart, find hope, reclaim joy, and dream again for the future. It is possible. Head on over to brave widow.com to learn more.
