Hope for the Widower
by: Rev. Ronnie Hoover (Widower and Campus Pastor with Chi Alpha University of Arkansas)
“Where do I sit? Oh, there’s my good friends Steve and Karen, I’ll sit by them. No wait! The open chair is beside Karen and that would feel weird. Who's here that their wife couldn’t come, maybe I could sit by them.”
“Well, I need to go down to dinner with all the other Missionaries and Pastors, but who should I sit by? Maybe I could just skip dinner or just order room service. I don’t want to sit by all the single Missionaries, I’m twice their age and they would think it’s creepy.”
These are some of my honest thoughts at one of my first district meetings to attend without Dana, who had passed away suddenly after only forty-four days when the breast cancer had returned. I know it’s silly and no one else was thinking things like that, but that’s how I felt. Not to mention, they were all talking about and praising a guy I was very angry with at that moment – God Himself.
The first mornings after Dana died my mind played a cruel trick on me. When I woke, I would have forgotten that she had passed and then I would remember, and that dagger would shoot through my heart and bring a pain of grief that was almost unbearable. I found myself groaning out loud and bending over at the waist. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, but in that moment Holy Spirit brought a verse to my mind, Romans 8:26 “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown; Holy Spirit was ministering to me. And if that was so, then 1 Corinthians 14:4 was also true and it says, “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself…” So, I began to speak in tongues and at that very moment my spirit was edified, restored, lifted up, built up and I was able to continue what I was doing. Therefore, every time I feel that dagger of grief - pain, I simply began to speak in the language of God prompted by Holy Spirit. Jude 20 says that praying in the Spirit builds your most holy faith and I absolutely experienced that. How do non-Pentecostals make it during times like this?
I’ve spent the last three months just trying to keep the devil from deceiving my grown adult God-fearing kids. About the time I think they are all settling in with their grief, we get this text in our family group text from my middle son. “The nurses did all they could do to save mom, but in the end they were helpless. The doctors also did all they could do, without effect. We did all we could do and expressed true faith and y’all saw how dad believed until the last minute, even saying when she was breathing her last breaths, ‘Just wait, we could still see a miracle.’ But you God, you are the only one who could have done something, and you did nothing. Thanks a lot. Understand? Never. Trust? That’s all I have to hold onto.”
These are the kinds of things I was grappling with after Dana passed away. To stand in the pulpit and preach was asking a little too much of myself so I just didn’t for over three months. As a missionary on monthly support, I felt guilty not doing my job and not walking on campus to disciple students, but I just couldn’t. I was immobilized and struggling with my own faith in this “Good Father” everyone was singing about. Oh, I’m grounded in the Word and I knew He was Good, it was just hard to see it during this moment. It was only by the Word that I flushed (word used intentionally) my mind daily. Most mornings I couldn’t even read it, so thank God for technology, I simply turned the Bible app on and let it read to me. And I found God to be Faithful to speak to me through His Word. Almost every day a verse would jump off the page and I would stop and journal about that verse as Holy Spirit gently spoke to me and healed me through His Word. I still Flush my mind each morning with the Word.
I had to give my kids to God again like I did when they were dedicated as babies. I had to pledge my own life back to God in one of our Chi Alpha services. I was the first to respond to an altar call of consecration that I would lay down my life and give my whole life to God. I felt like a teenager at youth camp. Wherever He would lead I would go because my life didn’t belong to me, but to the One who had bought me with His precious blood.
There is a hope in the midst of the grief: acknowledging that we are not our own but are bought with a price; feeding daily on the Word; and being edified and restored by speaking in tongues.