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The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness
Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

Just as Jeremiah tells us that God’s love never ceases, and every morning His mercies are new, I like to think about each new year in the same way. It’s like a new morning.

I recall on one particular new year, I awoke before dawn with this awful pit in my gut. I couldn’t breathe, and I thought this had to be the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I called a sister and described my pain.

She came to my side with the oddest story.

She described a missionary woman who was jailed for her evangelism in a foreign country. The woman was isolated in a tiny cement cell with only a bench and a tiny window so high up she could only see the tiny bit of light coming through.

The loneliness that the woman described after months and months of incarceration was stifling. Finally, the woman explained, she noticed a spider in the corner of the cell. She made friends with the spider, giving him a name and talking to him daily.

Still sobbing in my own despair, I got rather annoyed at my sister and her story. “What does a stupid spider in a prison cell have to do with me?” I barked.

New mercies are coming!

Simple, she said. That missionary later wrote about her experience and said this… “Loneliness is a pain. In itself, it can’t kill you. It just hurts, but no one ever really dies from loneliness.”

Somehow, the light came on for me through that story. You see, that missionary was right. I did survive that awful stifling pain. And I also survived the anniversaries of Tom’s and my wedding anniversary and the anniversary of his death. Those moments are awful, but I survived those awful nights, and you will too.

Father God, I know what widows feel when grief hits hard. I’ve been there. That awful pit in our gut that we feel when we’ve lost the one You gave to us for a time. We get so we think we should have our husbands forever. When we said “till death do we part” we kidded ourselves–that death thing–it happens to everyone else, God, not me, right?

Lord, show each of these ladies that while her time here is finite, in truth, we don’t die. As believers in Christ, we live, eternally. This life is painful at times, but it’s fleeting–and You have plans for each of us. Big plans, Lord.

Comfort us widows tonight, Lord. Help us sleep. Fill that hole in our hearts this instant, please Father God. Help us know that many of us have been there. You have been there, Lord. Your Son grieved with the pit in His stomach right there in the Garden of Gethsemane. And You grieved when Lazarus died. You know the pain. Shudder from it, just as we do.

Reach down Your loving arms and wrap them around the lady who is reading this and weeping. Cradle her, dear Father. She’s so beautiful and has so much more to live and give. Allow her to know that the pain is just pain, and she can feel it and sleep tonight and wake to a new morning knowing how Great Your Faithfulness is. Amen.