I don’t know what it is like to lose a spouse. I don’t know what it is like to bid farewell to the person with whom I’ve built a home and had a family and shared a life. I don’t know the unique griefs, the unique sorrows, the unique traumas that come with so devastating a separation. On the one hand I can’t know without actually enduring it myself, but on the other hand, I can learn from those who have experienced it and have recorded it. I can learn so I can better serve those in my life who are enduring this trial.

Mary Echols lost her husband very suddenly and unexpectedly after he suffered a heart attack. And in the aftermath of her loss she was desperate to find out how much of her experience of loss was typical. “I began looking for something I could read that would allow me into someone else’s journey and help me to see that the little things I was stressing over were okay,” she says. “I needed to know that someone else couldn’t change the sheets, that someone else washed her spouse’s clothes with hers, that someone else would open his bathroom drawer that held hairbrush, aftershave, cologne, and breathe in his scent. I needed to have these things validated!” Because she couldn’t find anything, she decided to journal her journey and the result is And Then There Was One: An Emotionally Raw Journey Through Spousal Grief.
The book’s format is what I have found typical for a book that has been written in a time of deep grief in that it is comprised of short thoughts that are often very urgent and very poignant. Some of it is written as if to her husband, some as if to herself, and some as if to an unknown reader like you and me. She recounts returning home to find her husband slumped in his chair and tells, how though she was a seasoned RN, nothing had prepared her for the moment. She tells about the early hours in which, as if in a terrible dream, she went through the motions of calling her children, and the early days in which she cried herself to sleep in a bed that was now cold and empty.
But time passes and she finds that, though time does not heal all wounds (as some insensitively suggest) it does provide space in which healing can begin to take place. She observes that the initial stages of healing seem to proceed in six-week increments where every six weeks she realizes she has begun to see some change in herself, some new ability, some new acceptance. She begins to do those things all grieving spouses must—write thank you notes to people who have brought her a meal, box up her husband’s possessions, learn to shop for one instead of two.

What happened? We used to be together. We sat at the same table, ate the same food, watched the same TV shows, slept in the same bed, breathed the same air, and then you went away. Funny how that changes everything. I still sit at the same table, eat the same food, watch the same TV shows, sleep in the same bed, and breathe the same air, but none of it is the same.
❖
I am alone and I’m so afraid. I’ve lost so much with your death. It’s not just the loss of my husband and friend. I’ve lost my protector—the one who always saw to it that I was safe from the world, the one who stepped in when I couldn’t handle something and took care of it for me, the one I turned to for guidance when I didn’t know what to do or how to do it, the one who was my emotional support, the one I leaned on. You were so strong when I was weak, and now there is no one to be strong for me. Now I have to handle the world all by myself, take care of things I know nothing about, and trust people I don’t know to help me.
❖
My mind is gone and I’m not sure I want it back, as I don’t know where it’s been. What kind of strange journey is it on, and why didn’t it give me some notice that it was leaving? The audacity of it to just leave me without so much as a hint it was going. I would much rather my heart had left and taken the pain of your death with it—but maybe, my mind decided I should only deal with one thing at a time, and that grieving should be top priority. But doesn’t my mind understand that its leaving just made the grieving harder? How can I concentrate on grieving when I can’t concentrate? My mind is gone, and I wish I had gone with it.

There is a turning point along the way where she gains a deeper acceptance of her circumstances. The day comes when she realizes she may be tempted to turn some of her husband’s things in a shrine and resists that temptation. The day comes when she realizes she doesn’t mind making decisions for just one person instead of two and living according to the plan and schedule of only herself. The day comes when she faces some of the regrets from her marriage, when she utters one final apology and grants one final forgiveness. After all, “We were just two people who loved each other and did the best we could with who we were.”
By the end of the book she has emerged from the worst of her sorrows. She may not be healed, but she is healing. She may not be over her sorrows (as if anyone ever is) but she is once again getting on with life. She is laughing again and experiencing joy. She has come to the other side of her grief. She has begun experiencing a new normal. “I am at the end of my grieving now. I find I can think of you without tears or heartache, for those things have been replaced with sweet memories. I can talk about you without tears yet, sometimes the memories are so sweet that the tears still come, but they aren’t tears of grief any more, but of fond remembrance. You are still as much a part of me as ever, and I find myself talking to you every now and then when I need another viewpoint because you were always so wise.”
In my assessment, this book has two notable strengths. The first is related to Echols’s realness. She simply lets us into her journey as she goes through it and is honest about her joys and sorrows, her fears and doubts, her submission and her anger. The second is related to her faith. She writes as a Christian who mourns, but not without hope, and who grieves, but not without a sense of God’s will being expressed even in something as tragic as death. Her book is not a theology of death, yet teaches that God reigns over death and provides ultimate hope beyond it. This is a beautiful, hopeful little book and one I’m glad to recommend.

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Grace and peace to you today.

Stooping To Filthy Feet
What a thought. “The man on his knees, rinsing sweat from Peter’s athlete’s foot and getting between Judas’s toes to wipe away the dung was our Creator, who is before all things and in him all things hold together; the hands that washed those verrucae and blisters would one day be the only ones qualified to break the seals and open the gates to the New Jerusalem.”
Hyper-Headship in Marriage
Keith has been writing a series on the pastoral issues he sees the most in counseling and today he discusses hyper-headship. “What we are speaking about is oppression in marriage. What it looks like from one marriage to the next will be cloaked in many different garbs—constant conflict, a depressed and docile wife, isolation, perpetual walking on eggshells in the home, and the list goes on.”
She heard cries for help during deadly winter storm. Her actions saved a life
We all love stories like this one, and for good reason.
3 Reasons Why You Should Make a New Year’s Resolution This Year
Here’s a defense of making New Year’s resolutions, in case you’d like the challenge.
Seminary Is Not For You
Anna Stewart: “Even now as I immerse myself in year three of my theological education as a weaker, more sober Christian, I find myself asking the questions I realize I should have been asking a long time ago. Why am I really here? Who am I even doing this for? Brothers and sisters in seminary, I invite you to consider these questions alongside me.”
5 Myths about Porn
Ray Ortlund shares 5 ugly myths about porn.
Flashback: How To Make A New Year’s Resolution That Sticks
I have done a fair bit of reading on how to make resolutions work, and it turns out that though there are many reasons your resolutions may not work, the most common ones are easy enough to avoid. Here are some tips on making wise resolutions and on making them stick.

The fear of God will swallow up the fear of man. A reverential awe and dread of God will extinguish the creature’s slavish fear, as the rain puts out the fire. —John Flavel

We are at an interesting point in history in which, when people look to the past, they seem more likely to cringe than to celebrate. It has become customary for people to look to their forbears and then disavow them or apologize for them in what has become almost a ritualistic purgation. There are many who are ashamed of their roots, ashamed of their family, embarrassed to admit who and where they have come from.

But isn’t it interesting that this is not the case with God? God has been adopting people into his family for thousands of years and along the way has welcomed many whose pasts are shady at best and scandalous at worst. And despite their sins, despite their scandals, he loves them and refuses to turn away from them. God’s enduring and unashamed love for his people is the subject of Erik Raymond’s new book He Is Not Ashamed.
If we were to assemble a great portrait of God’s family, “we’d find people with unflattering stories. Some are known as the chief of sinners, the sinful woman, the thief on the cross, and the prostitute. We’d also see those who were overlooked and disregarded by society. We’d find weak people unable to give God anything. We’d even see those who wore the uniform of opposition to God. Here in the portrait of grace, we’d find a multitude of misfits. It would be quite the picture.” It would be the kind of picture we might be embarrassed to hang on the walls of our homes. Yet in the very middle of this picture we’d find Jesus, the very best of men, standing side-by-side with some of the very worst. “At first glance, we might think that Jesus doesn’t belong with people like this. What business does majesty have with outcasts? But poring over the Scriptures, we see something else. In this family photo, Jesus may seem out of place, but in reality he’s exactly where he belongs. Even more, he’s right where he wants to be. Instead of being ashamed of them, he calls them family.”
In this book, Raymond examines the kind of people who would be included in this portrait which is to say, the kind of people God delights to identify with. And thankfully, “nobody has a story that can make Jesus blush” for his heart is oriented toward those who need him most, no matter what they may have done or how they may have sinned.
In the first chapter he shows that Jesus is not ashamed of people who have an embarrassing history—people like Tamar who behaved like a prostitute and like Judah who treated her like one. “When Matthew includes Tamar, Judah, and their children’s names in Jesus’s genealogy, he means to make a point: Jesus comes from a line of people with messy, embarrassing, and shameful stories. And not only does he come from messy people, but he also comes for them.” If that was true of them, that is equally true for us.
In the second chapter he looks to people who opposed Jesus to show that they, too, can be objects of God’s love and salvation. This includes people, like the religious leaders, who killed Jesus and people, like the Apostle Paul, who persecuted his church. “Since every person is naturally born with the status of an enemy of God, everyone can relate in some way to these stories of opposition. Though our experiences and sins may be different, nevertheless, our standing apart from Christ is the same.”
In chapter three he turns to those who are overlooked (e.g. children who were beckoned to come to Jesus and women who became his trusted companions) and in chapter four to those who were far from God—people like the fictional Prodigal Son who appeared in a parable or the real-life sinful woman who appeared at a banquet and fell at his feet weeping. “The incarnation of Jesus Christ proves that he loves to retrieve those who are far from God. Nothing should keep you from him. He welcomes the prodigals, the sinners, and the unclean.”
In the next two chapters Raymond focuses on those who have nothing to give and those who are weak before turning to those who still sin, people like you and me who have been saved by his grace but who still commit deeds that are so very rebellious and so very dark. “Run your finger across the pages of the Bible, and you find many examples to prove that God delights to lavish his forgiveness on sinners. Even after they commit to following God, many believers fall on their face, only to be lifted up again by the staggering love of God.” If this was true of Adam, Moses, David, Jonah and so many others, it is equally true of you and me.
The final chapter considers the one kind of person of whom Jesus is ashamed, and it is the ones who are ashamed of him. “He’s ashamed of those who reject him. According to Jesus, the people who are ashamed of him are those who refuse to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. They’ve considered Jesus unworthy of their devotion and obedience. They reject Christ and refuse to follow him by faith. On the day of judgment, Jesus will be ashamed of those who are ashamed of him in this life.”
He Is Not Ashamed is a timely reminder that Jesus does not merely love us, but also accepts us and welcomes us. And this is true even when we have behaved or continue to behave in ways that are nothing less than shameful. God’s love is eternal, unshakeable, and “unashameable.” And for that we all owe him the greatest thanks and the highest praise.

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