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I confess that it has been 6 years since my husband died and this is the first new year I have viewed as new beginning. What about you?

Previous years, because I felt part of me had died with my husband, I did not anticipate the new year expectantly. Certainly for a good while, a new year represented more struggle and sadness. Yet now I can view those six years in the rear-view mirror and recognize things God accomplished in the valley of grief. He navigated me and sometimes it was so gradual I can only now recognize the adjustments I made and acceptance I reached. Please don’t misunderstand me, I miss my beloved husband still and expect I always will.

Our God chose to define complete segments of time: a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year. He must have a reason for it, right? I wonder if it is to give us a sense of moving forward. Also, perhaps those divisions of time help us because if one day is bad, we can hope that tomorrow will be better, or next month, or next year?

Our steps through the day, the weeks and months, are a medley of the grief stages, widely accepted as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.* They are so mixed, it surely seems at times no steps forward have been taken, but that’s not true. Here we are promised if we delight in God’s Way, He will establish our steps. His path forward for each of us is redemptive.

“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way.”
Ps. 37:23 ESV

We learn further from Psalm 40:30,

“He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”

We know God, our Rock, will establish our goings too, as we look to Him. Isaiah 53 describes Christ as a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. He knows how sorrow screams at us, and how a void so deep and wide is left. Yet, in God’s love and faithfulness He meets us, no matter how deep the horrible pit. I found it very challenging to live as one person–for my mind to reset to the reality that my husband would take no part decisions I faced, nor enter into other areas of sharing my life. The singularity is alien, profoundly so in the early stages of grief. Even so, God makes possible the seemingly impossible. He wants us to know that Christ + you, or Christ + me, equal a majority and a completion. It is a different season, a different kind of completion but it is empowering, purposeful, and anchored into eternal love.

Not only is Christ the Light of the World, He is our Light and Way forward in this altered season. As He moves, so shall we into the future that awaits, a place in which our roles are key and His lessons to us food for others.

Heavenly Father, Christ represents our new beginning with You in this season, beginning anew standing with our Savior true. Guard and guide our steps, uphold our hearts, and lead us by promises we know and those we don’t, into tomorrow and each one after. In Jesus Name.

* Kubler-Ross Grief Stages