Surviving Great Loss, episode 86

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal, and also help and hope for your own life journey. Welcome back to a new episode of When You Love a Prodigal. I hope you enjoyed listening to some of our best episodes over the holidays. I pray that today God will speak to you in the current place where you are with your prodigal. Be sure to capture what God says to you. I always think when I catch onto something that I'll remember it later, but I rarely do.

0:45 I find it's good if I get a word from God or an understanding that I write it down. As you may know, my wonderful husband, Steve, died from complications of cancer on October 29. I've been pretty much out of pocket since then, spending a lot of time with my children and grandchildren. When you love a prodigal, you often experience loss on some level. I know I did during our 15-year wilderness journey with our prodigal. But the loss of my partner of 47 years has been the most difficult experience of my life.

1:30 I know it's a long journey and I have much still to learn. But I want to share with you a little of my first impressions or understanding things from the Lord on this journey. I get asked all the time, how are you? How am I? Mostly okay so far. Being busy has helped. There were so many things that needed attention as we prepared for memorial service and as we took care of things that needed to be taken care of.

2:13 So I didn't have a lot of time to grieve them, but it was fairly overwhelming still. Being with my kids and grandkids has really helped. I spent most of December going from one home to the next for extended stays. The love and hugs were fun and healing. Grandchildren are great distractions. People praying for me has been so important. And I have been blessed with the many who have prayed and the many who have written or called or commented on social media that they were still praying for me.

2:57 This is surely why I am doing as well as I am. But waves of sadness do hit. Usually unexpectedly, often at night when I'm home alone, it could be a picture, a comment, a memory, and tears will come. But God has been a faithful comforter. Some things have been hard. One has been that I'm having to do the things Steve did, have to make my own coffee. He was famous for making coffee for me every morning and putting out the trash.

3:43 Today was trash day. And yeah, it's just a lot of things to take care of. Oh yeah, and then the biggest one is probably handling finances. I haven't really done that after the first two years of our marriage when he realized that wasn't probably a good job for me. And I've just returned home from all this time with family and now I need to face and do something about all of these things. Another thing has been cooking for only myself. Last night I was tired so I ate cereal. I can see how people living alone can choose to eat poorly.

4:27 I hope I get a little better at this. But one of the very hardest of all is not having Steve to talk to. We talk through everything at dinner each night and on Sunday mornings especially. But anytime we called each other and asked for input, one or the other of us would be working on a talk or an article and we would brainstorm with each other. But what I want to tell you today is that things that I learned on the prodigal journey are serving me so well on this hard journey.

5:09 They're really helping me. These practices help me through a prodigal wilderness and are now helping me navigate this great loss. One of those is to be honest with God. I can tell him how I'm doing and what my fears are or how angry I am or anything. And I learned to be honest with God about my attitudes and needs regarding our son. And now I'm able to be honest with him on this journey too. And I think you'll find the same. The hard things you're learning as you endure the prodigal journey you're in will serve you well because life will have other challenges.

5:56 And these things have helped me tremendously. Probably the one that has helped me the most is to give thanks. And how many times have you heard me on this podcast talk about give thanks in everything? God convinced me during our long wilderness journey with Josh that my best response was, thank you, Lord. And that response has served me well again. Here's what I wrote for Thanksgiving a few days after he left us. This Thanksgiving, I have so much to give thanks for.

6:38 There were five of us, my three children, Steve's brother and myself in his ICU room. Each of us took a few minutes to thank Steve one more time for all he had meant to us. Then we watched him leave. His color paled, his eyes shut, his body relaxed. God took him. We all huddled together. All I could pray was, thank you, Lord. Thank you for this wonderful man. Thank you for the privilege of being family to him. For having his love for you and service to you touch our lives in such powerful ways.

7:20 Thank you for ending his suffering and taking him home to glory. And since then, entangled with many tears, I have continued to be so grateful. Of course, grateful for 47 wonderful years together, for our family, for crew, for friends and coworkers around the globe, for partnering with others in the body of Christ, and so much more. Thank you for my sisters who came to be with me after my children left and returned two weeks later for the memorial service. Thank you for my children who came with their spouses and children and our ten grandchildren for the service.

8:05 Spoke so eloquently and tenderly of their dad, of papa, and then stayed for Thanksgiving. Thank you for all the different people at crew who helped bring about the beautiful service that accomplished all I had prayed for. That Steve was honored, but that God was glorified. And people were encouraged to entrust their lives to God, to make their lives count. Thank you to Discovery Church for welcoming us and the hundreds of friends who came to the service, wrapped loving arms around me and our children, who said words of comfort and care, who promised to keep praying.

8:50 Thanks for the thousands who watched that day online and the many more, I believe more than 6,000, who have viewed online since then, making beautiful comments and words of prayer in the chat, as well as on the crew testimonial page, and my Facebook and Instagram. Thank you to all of you who filled our house with the beauty and fragrance of many flowers, who have given gift cards and books and offers to help. And oh, the lovely cards and sweet notes, I just I keep on reading them because I haven't made it through them all yet. They bring smiles and tears.

9:33 And thank you, Lord, for your response to me every time I cry out, how will I live without him? And you always say softly, I will be with you as you begin a new year with your loved wanderer. My listeners, may I encourage you to look for the good things you can be thankful for. Look hard to find some good. Write it down so you can be reminded of it when you need it again. Practice thanking God for it. It will begin to change your perspective and responses.

10:14 Look for the good works even now that you are experiencing from your prodigal journey. Here are a few good things that I have observed in the hard times of this new journey. Our family was brought together in tears and in making decisions and in planning the service for Steve and in love for each other. My sweet kids cleared out some things. We have lived in our house for 31 years. Steve didn't like to get rid of things, but our adult children were able to get rid of a lot.

10:57 Now, we've just made a small dent, but still, I'm grateful for the things that are waiting for the Salvation Army even now. Steve's graduation to heaven was a gift to him. How can I begrudge that? His body was growing weaker from cancer and some other situations. God was so kind to cut short his suffering and to call him home. And as much as I wish he were still here, I'm grateful. I can say thank you. I can see the good that has come from the fact that he's left.

11:38 My journey without him has just begun. I know I will need to keep depending on God, trusting him to give me all I need as I navigate this new aloneness, though, of course, God will always be with me. I know this is not the same as your prodigal journey nor of mine, but I hope you will be able to see some ways that God can sustain you, give you wisdom and peace, guide you as you trust him with your loved one. Take a minute to write down a way that you can see God's provision for you in your prodigal journey, something you haven't noticed that you could say thank you for, something that was different or better over the holidays or a new way that you're able to relate or a new way that you're able to trust God.

12:38 Take a minute. What is God showing you that is a good thing coming out of your prodigal journey that you can give thanks for? Now, we're going to be giving away three of Steve's books. For anyone who would like a copy of Steve's book, Enjoying Your Walk with God, if you will write to the link that's in the show notes, which is judy at judydouglass.com, we will send you one. We will also have drawings for two other books of Steve's.

13:24 We will have a drawing for How to Get Better Grades and Have More Fun. Maybe your prodigal would be interested in that book. And we're going to have a book called Achieving Your Potential is his other book. So if you would be interested in being in the drawing for one of those books, be sure to follow the prompt in the show notes to put your name in the list for that. I know this is a little different session than we usually do. I'm just grateful that maybe the journey I'm on right now will be a help and encouragement to you as you are on your prodigal journey and give you ways to look at God at work, even in the midst of pain and loss and uncertainty.

14:20 And I want to invite you to not miss our next session. Next week, I will be chatting with Daryl Smith, a former prodigal who is living a transformed life today. He has a powerful story of growing up in poverty in a single home, of an early marriage that failed, of drug dealing, of time in prison, and of a transformation as God captured his heart. It might remind you of your prodigal. So don't miss it. Daryl's a passionate communicator, and I think you'll learn a lot and you'll be touched a lot.

15:03 May your new year be filled with joy and peace and good changes with your prodigal. God bless you.