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GRIEVINGSPOUSE.COM How does the heart understand grief when it is broken by the
death of a husband or wife? To survive and live forward, the
surviving spouse must find answers to grief. Inside the Broken
Heart: Grief Understanding for Widows and Widowers was written
to help the grieving spouse understand the emotional and
physical aftermath of death. The book meets the reader at a
spiritual place reserved specifically for those grieving the
death of a spouse.We grieve because we love. The loss of a spouse is unlike any other grief. It cannot be understood until it is experienced. The marriage vow moment "until death do us part" forever changes those who survive the death of a spouse. Grief is not a crisis of faith, it is a crisis of the heart. Inside the Broken Heart: Grief Understanding for Widows and Widowers uses topical references from the Bible to illuminate unfamiliar emotions and questions for the grieving spouse. A journey through "the valley of the shadow of death," the book guides the way back to fullness of life for those grieving the death of a spouse. We must grieve in order to live. In faith we accept the vast mysteries of both life and death when we survive the death of a spouse. We all have a story. "We spend our years as a tale that is told" (Psalm 90:9, KJV). In 2004 my beloved husband died ninety days after the sudden, unexpected onset of pancreatic cancer, an overwhelmingly terminal disease. He was a United Methodist minister for over fifty years, the great love of my life. When he died, my heart shattered into one million small pieces. I was destroyed. For a while, I was certain I would die of a broken heart. At fifty-five I was young and very old. Though my soul survived largely intact, I found myself in frightening, unfamiliar spiritual territory. A few days after my husband died, I sat alone, immobilized by shock, as a tidal wave of emotion engulfed my entire being. I came face to face with the inescapable reality of grief. There was no other name for that indescribable sense of helplessness, the utter hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm me completely. From deep within I knew that I must go through grief, that it would not be denied or delayed. Over many months I worked at grief, I read about grief, I strained to understand grief. Its compelling urgency became my relentless companion. As a lay grief facilitator, I believe that the grieving spouse in search of comfort and inspiration best identifies with an authentic point of view. Our lives are shaped by how we deal with the unalterable circumstance of death. When we survive the death of a spouse we at last emerge from the darkness of grief in search of light, the light of new life. "And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace…will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you" (1 Peter 5:10-11). Through rediscovery of hope, pain and sorrow are vanquished, death is rendered powerless, and grief is no more. The grieving spouse is healed through God’s triumphant adequacy, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3).
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