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Please enjoy our guest today – Laura Hao! You can read her bio at the bottom of the page.

I still can’t bring myself to stop hugging the edge of my side of the bed each night.

The other side often turns into an office of sorts, but sometimes I’ll look over at that expanse of emptiness and a wave of aching grief will yet again envelope me. One day as I sat there crying on my side of the bed I told Jesus, “I wish You could take up more room in this bed.”

A smile came to my face as it seemed Jesus was replying, “I wish I could too.”

As a new widow and mother to four young children, I’m often in survival mode managing this new life. Nonetheless, I feel a shift coming as Jesus begins to offer invitations to take up a new role in our family.

A new hope is being birthed as my heart starts to hunger to have him fill the emptiness that my husband’s death has left in my life and in my heart.

So in little steps, I am starting to open my heart to a new man named Jesus. Sometimes I share my day with Him when I crawl into bed. I journal with Him in the few spaces of quiet that I find. I ask for help with parenting or repairs. My garbage disposal really did suddenly start working again. And though I don’t see Him on the other side of the bed, I hope that more and more I will feel His presence throughout the day.

Having had hope shattered in the trauma of my husband’s murder, I am all the more grateful now for its rebirth. It has brought a whole new meaning to the resurrection power the Bible promises.

I am grateful for the resurrected hope in my life that, though I have lost much, Jesus in His abundant grace is offering me more of Himself.

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
Phillipians 3:10-12 (NKJV)

Jesus, as I see emptiness all around my life in this time of grieving, remind me to ask for more of You. Come and take up more room in my broken heart and resurrect what has died. Thank You for always wanting more of me. Help me now to hunger for more of You. Amen