{{item.title | uppercase}}

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”
John 12:24-25 (ESV)

Until I was widowed, it was hard to imagine hating my life.

But I remember one morning twelve years ago, as a freshly widowed single mom, dragging a comb across my unruly hair, looking discontentedly at the mirror and declaring, “I hate my life.”

It’s just honest. The life of a widow is lonely, and I was tired of the pitiful gazes from friends who used to do life together but were too busy doing their couples thing to even want to understand me.

It only took me muttering “I hate my life” once to recognize the evil in that negative affirmation. I wanted to love life again. I would look at the verse above and say, “Really, God? I have to hate my life?” Because truly, if that’s what He wanted from me, He had it… I was miserable in my grief.

But wait. Wasn’t I miserable because I was still in love with life? The life I lost?! The life of having the best thing that ever happened to me—a marriage to a loving man?

Hmm… maybe I wasn’t hating my life… I was hating what my life had become. It was time for me to reexamine what Christ is telling me about not loving my life. His statement about hating my life was not about being miserable. It was about living your life out like wheat that is cracked open and ready for life-giving sustenance for others.

Your joy in your new life will be deeper than the life you had to give up when your husband went home. As crazy as it sounds, it’s like loving that you have learned to let go of you old life for the purposefulness of your new life.

Jesus uses Himself as an example for us.

When Christ is talking about not loving your life, He was talking about all of us, while using His own life as an example. Just days earlier the crowd “…took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (John 12:13). That was something anyone would love!

But Jesus, in His perfection, understood that even what the flesh loved needed to be cast aside for a greater purpose. Just before telling us we must hate our lives in order to keep it for eternity, He likens the coming crucifixion to .. “a grain of wheat (which) falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24).

Crack open your grain of wheat, sister. Don’t accept that the life you loved was the life you are to love, because you’ve already experienced how death ends it. Being a widow means the crushing of the grain has already happened. What’s inside? A new life–wholly different and sacrificial and impactful. Love that, not what was really enjoyable before, but what you can enjoy when you let God use you in your broken state.

Your loss hurts, but also frees you to do God’s work like never before.

I know I see things differently. I recognize how we all end up facing Christ. As widows, we can use that knowledge.

• Remember how before you were widowed, you worried about your couple’s social calendar? That doesn’t matter much now, does it?
• And whether people loved your husband or hated your husband, that doesn’t matter much now either, does it?
• And those who offended your husband, that’s behind you and him now, isn’t it?
• And if your husband was wealthy, does it matter now? How about if he was famous? Not much of a deal now, is it?

But, what about his impact? Did he leave a legacy? Did he influence others for generations to come?

Sister, it isn’t that Christ just wants you to endure the lowly and lonely state of being a widow. That’s not the crushing of the wheat He’s talking about. It’s taking your life and stepping forward to follow Him. Choose to let those wants of the life with a husband to die and pick up your cross to follow Him. He’s not done with your purpose, so don’t hate the life of a widow. Rather, discard your love for the life before widowhood and love that you have finally done that.

Lord, I hold each of these widow sisters in my heart and ask that as she reads these words, You show her the joy of the purpose of what You have already shaped her to accomplish. Amen.