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Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord is the one who goes before you. [i]
The Widow's Might
The transformation was instantaneous it seemed. It was the final insult over the course of two years of hell. She stepped into the shower a woman and stepped out an old lady. Standing nude, dripping water all over the carpet she stared in stunned horror at a vision that would define the rest of her life: she had a gray pubic hair. She finally sat down on the edge of the tub, her body already feeling the effects of age. Her hip ached. Arthritis. Her neck and shoulders cramped. Scoliosis.
She desperately searched through the file of her mind looking for reassurance that she wasn't old, she wasn't nearing the end of her life. Words crashed around in her head that did nothing to soothe her: widow, grown children, Nice 'N Easy # 37 . . . She glared at the shower in a fury of accusation; it was like an evil time machine. Things would truly never be the same. But what was she thinking? Things were never as they seemed. She already knew that. Life was just one big lie.
In those early moments as she shuffled around her bedroom she considered just going to bed, pulling the covers up and waiting for the inevitable - death. It could only be a few weeks away . . . But she had obligations at church that morning. She may be old, but she was still responsible. Until Alzheimer's took over . . .
Church attendance had been a part of more than half of the 52 years of her life. A legacy her mother had left in her that she had not been able to shake. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, her head said. She'd done her share of active involvementover the course of the years: Sunday school, youth group, and Vacation Bible School when the kids were little, attendance at adult Bible studies once the kids were older. She had friends there. When Jonathan died, the church family had rallied around her with a solid show of love and support that had helped her through those dark first days and weeks and months while she gradually adjusted to the new club of Widowhood.
At first the concern and outreach had been much appreciated. The phone calls, the notes, the meals, and the visits had kept her from drowning in the ocean of sorrow and loneliness and strangeness that in the blink of an eye had become her life. But she could not be shielded from the harsh realities of life - Widowhood and The Truth - forever. Eventually, she had to face the facts of what her life and her marriage had been: a lie. That's when she began to withdraw. Recede from the real world into an imaginary, dulling fog of numbness. Inquiries of how she was feeling, how she was coping, how she was making it now were answered with vague, automatic responses that had no basis in fact or reality. They just kept everyone at bay so she could continue to try to cope. It was an act of survival. As she quietly, slowly began to withdraw from life, she became just a mere shadow of what she once was. No one knew The Truth but her. She kept it bottled up inside her partly because of pride and partly because she saw no reason to tell it. What good would it do to tell anyone that her great grief initially rooted in her husband's death was overshadowed with rage when she discovered that he had been unfaithful to her? She grieved not the death of her husband in the end, she grieved the loss of her entire adult life. All thirty plus years.
Driving to church she realized that The Shower Incident (as her mind now referred to it) was the first emotional jolt she'd felt in months. Hell, years. She was approaching the second full year of Widowhood and for the life of her this second year was nothing but a dull, gray blur. She had gotten quite good at not feeling, not reacting, not noticing anything really, all under the guise of being a functional, sane woman. She'd stopped going out almost entirely. She'd even found a local food store that delivered groceries to her once a week. The days went by one after another in a fog of blissful nothingness, growing into weeks and then months . . . People who knew her well finally accepted that the woman she was now was the woman she was going to be. Flat. Unemotional. Withdrawn. Solitary. And now, she'd add a new one to the list. Old.
She was doing the scripture reading today at church. It was the only church duty that she was still performing after all her years of service. Not that she hadn't tried to get out of it. Requests to be left off the rotating list of volunteers had been met with various excuses. "Oh, I forgot you'd asked." "Please, we're short handed in that area, can't you do it for one more rotation?" "Really? You're still on the list? I thought we'd taken care of that . . . " When she'd gotten the call this past week to remind her she was up this weekend she'd been rather forceful and abrupt. She'd been assured that she would be removed from the list this time. So, this was well and truly the last time.
The smiles of welcome (and pity) were acknowledged by her with polite yet distant responses. One tall, scholarly looking gentlemen hovered at the doorway to the sanctuary and as she brushed by him he asked if he could speak with her briefly after the service? He needed to ask her something but didn't want to make her late ... She mumbled an answer that could have been interpreted any way he saw fit and hurried to find a seat. Good grief, he probably wanted her to sit on another committee or volunteer for some "just" cause. Old widow women did those sort of things.
The scripture passage was read without her brain comprehending the words that came out of her mouth. The hymns were sung without her appreciating the verses. Her mind wandered as the announcements were being given. Still, church was the only place that she still could not always escape into numbness. The lies and the deceit somehow seemed bigger, worse. How could Jonathan have sat in a House of God and pretended to be the devoted husband when he was doing what he was doing? Flashes of memories poked through the gray cloud to cause a pain so intense that she almost doubled over with it. It was in this place that the memories of Jonathan and even the children as they grew stole into her carefully guarded emotions and brought her agony to life. Lies, all of it lies. In a blinding flash of the obvious she determined then and there that this would probably be her last time to attend church. With the acknowledgement of old age would come a final change in behavior. She'd become a heathen as well.
A word jarred her out of her thoughts. She could have sworn that she had heard the minister say, "Widow." She looked up at him, standing high in his podium, his robes perfectly arranged, his hair carefully combed, his glasses slightly askew. He was a sincere sort. She couldn't find fault with him really. He was new, only here a little over three years. Young, too, with a sweet, energetic wife and three children that were pure hellions on earth. She couldn't even remember his name. Talk about numbness. Curiosity made her pick up the bulletin and had it not been so utterly inappropriate she would have laughed out loud. His sermon topic was "The Widow's Mite or The Widow's Might." She remembered that the minister always tried to come up with catchy titles for his sermons to drag the unsuspecting in.
She remembered this story. The old woman gives just two pennies - or mites - and yet Jesus makes a big fuss because it wasn't the amount she gave that was important but more importantly that she'd given everything she had and had trusted that God would care for her. She reflected just briefly that perhaps her situation was moderately better than this poor Biblical widow . . .
Financially, she was well off. Hell, thanks to Jonathan's death she was close to being a millionaire. Life insurance policies taken out when the children were small and the mortgage was big to cover the unthinkable had succeeded in providing for her in comfort for the rest of her days. At a time in her life when the children were finished with school, the mortgage was paid off, and the necessities of survival cost her minimally she had more money than she knew how to deal with.
"The measure of the gift was not how much was given, but how much there was to give," the young minister intoned. She had a brief, unchristianlike thought that perhaps it was his way of saying the giving was down and they needed a few more dollars in the plate. When was the last time she'd written a check to the church? She had no idea. She used to give so faithfully. Most of her bills were automated now with direct withdrawal out of her checking account. Another area she no longer had to deal with or think about. She fumbled through her purse and wrote a magnanimous check and tossed it into the plate as it passed her by.
She left before the final hymn was finished being sung. She was half way home before she realized she'd escaped speaking with that gentleman who'd wanted to ask her a question. Good. Her conscience was technically clear because she hadn't intentionally avoided him. He'd have to find another willing widow to volunteer some of her vapid, empty expanse of a life. What bitter thoughts she had. Old. Withdrawn. Widow. Heathen. Flat. Unemotional. Solitary. And now bitter. Wow, she was coming up with quite a list.
