Reframing Hope and Healing: A Widow’s Honest Journey
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” —Psalm 34:18
After Blaine passed, I found myself at odds with two words I had always cherished: hope and healing.
Hope felt hollow. Healing felt like pressure.
I knew the eternal truth—that my hope in Christ and the promise of Heaven had not changed. But the idea of hope here, now, in this life felt empty. How do you hold hope for the future when the one you pictured it with is gone?
And healing? That word didn’t sit right either. It made grief sound like a disease I needed to recover from. Like it had an endpoint. Like there was some destination I hadn’t yet reached.
But over time, God gently invited me to reframe those words. And through that process, I found glimpses of healing and hope—not as finish lines, but as companions.
Let me show you what that looked like, through the lens of RISE: Resilience, Intentionality, Strength, and Empowerment.
R – Resilience: Learning to Sit with the Ache
Resilience isn’t about pushing through or pretending to be okay. It’s about remaining in the story when everything in you wants to run from it.
For a long time, I thought having hope meant I couldn’t be honest about how much it hurt. But I’ve learned that resilience means being able to name the ache and still trust that God is near.
Sometimes, the only hope I had left was in Heaven—that I would see Blaine again, that God would wipe away every tear. And you know what? That was enough for that day.
I – Intentionality: Allowing Space to Redefine
I had to give myself permission to release the old definitions. Hope didn’t have to mean a dream or plan for the future. Healing didn’t have to mean being “back to normal.”
I began to understand healing more like an amputee does. Healing didn’t mean something grew back. It meant I learned to live with the loss. I adapted. I rebalanced.
It’s taken intentional effort to speak kindly to myself, to allow grief to shape me without defining me, and to make peace with the fact that healing may never look like I once expected.
S – Strength: The Quiet Power in Receiving God’s Daily Mercies
The strength I needed wasn’t in pretending I was healed. It was in waking up and receiving mercy for that day.
Healing became less about a timeline and more about a rhythm. Like manna in the wilderness, God gives us enough to carry us through each moment.
Some days, I would feel it in a song. Other days, in tears that finally came. And sometimes, in the sacred stillness of just being.
E – Empowerment: Giving Yourself Permission to Reimagine Hope
One of the most empowering things I’ve done is reimagine what hope looks like.
Hope doesn’t have to be bright or loud. It can be a flicker. A breath. A quiet “maybe.”
I stopped waiting to feel hopeful. I started noticing the tiny ways God was still writing my story.
Empowerment came when I realized that I could be still becoming. That I didn’t have to be “healed” to be whole. That I could carry grief and grace in the same breath.
So friend, if you’re wrestling with these words too…
If hope feels like betrayal and healing feels like pressure, I want you to know:
You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not alone.
You are becoming.
And God’s mercies? They’re new today. Just like His healing.
#WidowRISE #StillBecoming #GriefAndGrace #WidowedNotInvisible #HopeAndHealing