Reclaiming Hope After Losing a Spouse

Danny and Alicia thought their family was done until they listen to Focus on the Family. They said something in that broadcast about being willing to open your heart to a child that may need a home and I remember praying in the car that tensing the Lord. If that is the direction that you ever want to take as I just want you to know that I'm open to that. Today Danny and Alicia are proud parents to baby Chloe what I love about Focus on the Family are now more than ever, is that it encourages people and inspires people into a life of abundance serving God, but not only does it do.but it challenges us to take risks for the kingdom I'm Jim Daly help us find more adoptive parents like Danny and Alicia. And when you donate today.

Your gift will be double. Visit Focus on the Family.com/strengthen families almost every couple experiences a time when they're just going through the routines of life and this couple to come to take each other for granted Trish a lot Williford remembers the time like that in her own marriage before we know that we view this person is no longer one of great joy.

And when you can't be life with grace and joy. Everything will become an easy to stop doing little things to show appreciation for your spouse. Allowing grievances become agitations that turn into arguments. Patricia has an encouraging word for you today to stop and choose to love your hostess focus Pres. Jim Daly and Anjan Fuller. We can always understand why God allows us to go through certain experiences in our lives. We may not understand much of it until we get to heaven.

That's just a simple truth, Trish a lot.

Williford went through an unimaginable journey that really took a lot of courage on her part, but God's love and grace got her through the despair which is the right outcome. Right. Her despair turned and hope which is what God wants for us as believers and we always have hope and you'll find that in the discussion today. It really is an inspiring story and Patricia is the author of the book and life comes back. She is a blog that you can check out and also is the mom of two boys and we spoke with her number of years ago but sure the conversation with you once again on Focus on the Family.

Let's start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your husband Rob's. What was it like being married to this person very different people and we met when I was in college he had just graduated from college and I was just 19 years old. We started dating. We got engaged really quickly and married a year later, we are very different people.

I am an artist and on and I'm super creative and he was just very logically minded said he was an accountant type or engineer really like ducks in a row and I made him very nervous because I was out of control is very hard to tame pressure and sell and that one of the things that we have the strength to my kite. The air in his balloon because I helped him to stay fine and he kept me from floating away. Did you ever think about how God draws opposites together like that and why does God do that for irritation or that we can bring out the best anytime I think he does that, because I think in management living at the great commission of serving one another, and getting to know one another and loving each other the way that God loves us and fell bring out the weaknesses in each other and said that they can be healed. That is, describing the happy side of those conflicts but it isn't always that way. No differences can really create some friction. Did you have that in your marriage.

How we Dan Rather night got married in 2000 and really really fine years of being newlyweds and then we had the babies in the minivans in the suburban and the mortgage and all of this things happened and life started to get really busy and it seems like a machine to maintain and I discovered summer line. The line that had a spare if ungratefulness had moved in, and that starts to look like criticism and instead of being thankful and having sometimes by the idiosyncrasies and quirks of this accountant like mind that I had married just as irritated. Did you start feeling some guilt about the way you are feeling good work in you so could take this step. Take this little step this big step.

What was it like I just cited that I needed to change some things that made I was thinking, but I wanted to change it internally wrapped in no hard work that I was doing. I just wanted to make it just the client that the plane and I think that discipline is the spiritual buzzword in our culture that we have spiritual disciplines of the following things that we do, but really I feel like it's just wanting to be better and taking one small step in that direction and another step in that direction until you discover that you are on an impact. I decided about a journal and I decided to write down. My goal is to write down one thing every day that I was thankful for. One thing that I noticed that he did one thing that blessed me something that encouraged me, just one thing every day and I started keeping track and I would write on things like Rob brought me flowers today after work or Rob helped me fold the laundry tonight or Rob serves popsicles to the boys today and then he wasn't impatient when they change their minds. They wanted different flavors or I just started paying attention. He refilled my diet Pepsi tonight at dinner. Small things like that to give me a different lens a different way of viewing him and it gave me such a sharp eye and once I realize that once I started looking for one thing every day.

Then I found three things are five things or six or seven so it worked really dead. It's it just transformed my thinking he couldn't grace you That for about a year, maybe longer to two years and what you do with the Journal that really made an impact well selling 2010.

It is our 10th anniversary and we decided to go to Mexico for a week to celebrate our second and I had this journal that had been writing instant 2008, and these two years of a daily record of me noticing all the things that he done and I wrapped it up and I read sparkle paper and curly wire read and tucked it into my suitcase and gave it to him on her honeymoon but he opened and sat down and read it all in one setting and I remember just doing so touched that this magnitude as he can see that I've noticed and he was thinking the same thing she noticed she noticed an end. I'm not 10th anniversary on the second honeymoon. I feel like that lays sort of the beginning of our friendship all over again. We fell in like I really like Eli remember why I married you know you're my friend, you're my friend. I had forgotten for a little while to sing that act of kindness is what really rekindled the relationship yeah absolutely is probably true of any relationship is learned in those two years of keeping track that I couldn't change him back to change me and I couldn't change his patterns in the way that he was wired, but I could change the way that I received his love and the truth is that I later learned upon retrospect that he will try to control you just take care of everybody. He was just trying to keep everybody safe. He was just trying to keep the house in order so that things worked smoothly so that he could eliminate conflict. I felt like it is creating it, but I was able to change him that I could change me the conductor like that minimize the chaos. My goal right so there you were.

You have that going on. It was turning the corner you felt your relationship rekindling after 10 years of hard slogging and raising the little ones and those things. What happened that kind of threw everything off track. Well, it gets really really fast because Rob died and he was. It was six months after that that second honeymoon and we it was a couple days before Christmas and the doctors thought they had the flu and sent us home from the hospital and he died the next morning and it turns out that he did have the flu but masking, sepsis, and he had an infection in his bloodstream and he I want to say quickly to all of the listeners on that it's not going to be terrified of the flu or any of the symptoms therein.

Rob happy is an accident when he was 14 and he had his spleen removed, and the only reason that you have a spleen is that I now know is to hold infection like a body prepares to fight against the infection.

So when the doctors missed this infection in his bloodstream, and they sent us home. The infection just went viral and his body attacked his heart and his lungs and he died the next morning, but during that situation when there are several key moments for you.

Yeah, take us through that give us the dramatization of what happened because I think the way you and Robert communicating her things pretty pretty impactful yes.

So I came home. I'm a writer and I was working on several writing deadlines and try to get them done. It was December 22. I was writing through many contracts and papers and things like that and get them done and I was at Starbucks and working and he texted me and said he wasn't feeling well and I came home shortly after that and found him on in his recliner and on covered in blankets and just kind of shaking and I came over in and checked on him and he could tell that this is different from anything that I had ever seen. And so I thought that I just didn't know. I didn't know what was going on but I knew it was in some kind of shock. I took him to the ER and they ran all of these tasks and like a sad day. They found the flu and influenza A and they said he won't die from this that he's going to feel like it and they said Emperor society. Christmas has been ruined and that's illness run 10 to 14 days and so the home quarantine him. Give him lots of Gatorade and popsicles ants will see in a couple weeks he'll be fine if he has any trouble breathing, 911 and said that they didn't think that is exactly what happened exactly what happened, so they said it was a respiratory flu and that that was the only thing we should watch for goodness to come home and I put them to bed and I slept downstairs next the Christmas tree because the doctor had said he needs to be by himself. Once I checked on and off throughout the night. I remember even taking him ibuprofen and I remember him taking it from a hand so carefully so that his fingers didn't touch mine and he said I feel this is the most think that I've ever been. I feel so thick you have to not get this. I feel so sick and I now can look back and that this is the last protective act of him saying I gotta take care of you. You can't And when we were in college when we were first time I with each other. We had this little silent code back and forth that Lily could squeeze under the table are on in church and that he would squeeze my hand three times, and that meant. I love you and squeeze back twice and you to and so in that night when he was so sick I came in to check on him again and he tapped the bad three times.

He was just too sick and too weary to even speak, but he tapped the bad three times to say I love you I love you to be okay and be all right will get through this. So he called me at about 445 in the morning and I came racing up the stairs as I was answering the phone. He was sitting on the side of the bed and he said I can't slow down my breathing immediately thought of what the doctors in the ER headset if he has any trouble breathing.

Call 911 and I said okay they said that this might happen. He said he might have okay I'm calling 911 and said he was over here and he was sitting on the side of the bad and and as I'm over here gathering all of the things I hear this giant crash over here behind me, and it sounded like 200 pounds of potatoes all hitting the ground just in one side and a looks back over here to see that he had lost consciousness. And he'd fallen out of her bed and sigh came rushing over and now I'm screaming into the phone until nine. You have to come is not conscious you have to help me have to help me and they're telling me what to do and in that moment he found consciousness one more time and he pushed himself up off the floor and he leaned back against the wall and he found me with his eyes, and I just knelt down in front of him and I was talking to him and listening and trying to find you know, listening for instructions and watching him. He was just right here and then his breathing changed and then his eyes looked different and in his color changed and humate he had this breath that sound like someone he just sat on his chest. It was just one last exhale and he just died right in front of me, his spirit to slept right through my fingers and I remember just feeling this helplessness of knowing feeling.

I remember feeling this is it. I remember those words being in my mind and I remember feeling the awareness of this is happening right now this is it. He's dying that finality.

I absolutely dead. I also felt this is the moment of my marriage vows. This is it. Be here be here in every way and that paramedics came rushing in to find me doing chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth and they knelt over me and I remember a paramedic putting his hands over mine and and another one just lifting me out of the way and I remember saying please text them please please fix and please fix them and I went downstairs and awaited.

I waited and I sat at his chair in the dining table and several years before that I had started again along the path of just wanting to be better and just choosing one thing to help me to be stronger and better. I had chosen to start writing down Bible verses and when you're young mom with preschoolers. You just don't have a lot of time and so I would read the Psalms and I read right and whatever stood out to me just one percentage time and I start writing them on 3 x 5 cards that carry them in my purse.

I opened up the Ziploc bag and he pulled this one out that when someone 21 my help comes from the Lord. My help comes from the Lord. My help comes from the Lord and I read it over and over and over again, and a man came downstairs in his uniform and said are you his wife and he said we need to tie that he has passed and I looked down at this card in my hands.

That said, my help comes from the Lord and I looked back up at this officer and I said okay which is never ever the response I ever would've thought never and in all the times when I let fear carry my thoughts away and I would think of what, if something ever happens to him. I would fall to the floor, screaming and crying.

I would be a patient myself I would be an absolute back ill in that moment, the Holy Spirit met me there with Scripture in my hands.

I had written months in advance. And God met me there and said your help comes from the Lord so that I looked at this man who had just found no signs of life and the man that I've been married to for 10 1/2 years. He said I'm sorry he's died and I said okay the confidence though. What were the other things going on in your mind and remit thing that Scripture certainly an encouragement but your help comes from the Lord.

Were there other thoughts and ideas floating through your mind so many so many so many.

I remember feeling like I know who holds the future and I know that ultimately will you will be okay but I don't know what to do next. I don't know what to do right now and I was so afraid for my children, who were still asleep upstairs. They were not yet in kindergarten, they were so little and I called a friend who came and took them to her house for the day for a pajama day and we decided they can watch Christmas movies and have one more day of the old life before I have to tell them what has happened and I guess I was flooded with so many what I remember thinking window window. I remember saying that word went out 31 widow, Mrs. touch, the question becomes, is the title of your book in life comes back. What were the subsequent years like what went on with your boys what's happened with you. What if you found the dues another life.

Now how do you keep going in this life when you know Rob's no longer here. What you do well the trauma and the nature of the way that Rob died was so sudden it was really just like a surgeon slice that he was here and then he was gone. He was healthy and that he was sick and he was here and then he was gone and Bart put me in a place of posttraumatic stress of reliving rescuing him over and over and over again. The fact that it happened in our home the fact that it happened right in front of me. The fact that I was there by myself with no way to stop this train from crashing rewired my brain to cause me to feel like I was always in a place of danger or someone I love is always in a place of danger, unable to sleep. I can't fix this and I can't stop this, and if we're not safe in our home were not safe anywhere. So I began seeing a therapist who became a lighthouse for me and working through this process of learning how to lean into the pain, and to let it let it feel let it be true. Should you have an experience which to me in the book really stood out there was a story about helping a homeless man who, in the transaction that occurred. I thought that was profound was almost like Robert speaking to you through the person tell us what happened and the impact that have a full, probably three years after Rob had died and I learned that the grief process really takes two years the first year was for my head to just make sense of the very facts of what is different. The second year was for my heart to start to process emotionally how I would face life this way. In the third year was when I started to feel like okay we can start to do this again, so there was a man named David and David will come and go at McDonald's we would see him now and then. And he's a homeless man and he comes in and out of lucidity.

You never really sure if he's going to speak clearly and confidently, or if it will be nonsense, but I had there was one day that he was sitting next to us and he struck up a conversation with.

I have my two sons one is an athlete and one is an artist and my athlete Tucker was collecting all of these Broncos football thing is that whatever were the happy meal.

I like to. He's pretty great style. Fisher and David start talking to him and suddenly started reciting all kinds of football facts like he was an encyclopedia and and there you could tell that there was a lot of he's done some studying. He and there was a time in his life and he is a very smart together and so we began this conversation with him and of course Tucker loved it and they talk to Heisman winners and and it just became quite this moment, and finally it was time for us to go and he David stopped my friends and family, but could throwing the trash away and he called the moment he said guys, I want you to know you need to take care of your mom take care of your mom and I also want you to know, and he began to recite Philippians and he recited it like a storyteller. He recited it with such clarity.

With such a light in his eyes, and the beauty of that is that he started telling them. The fourth chapter, Philippians, and when Rob is in college. He had claimed Philippians 413. This is my first and that was so tied to so many things that he did. He had that one right in front of him, that I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me and said this man said to my sons like he did notice Philippians 413.

There is nothing that can stop you. You can do anything to Christ who strengthens you just felt so like what is this holding moment of the sacred space. He felt that it just felt like David friend of ours is a conduit that he was a messenger is getting the word of God and your he was and there is a homeless guy. You never know God will use you never know it was a beautiful moment. So Tricia, as you look at these traumatic things in your marriage was struggling you keep the journal you give it to Rob on your second honeymoon tenures in your marriage. She reads it touched by that rekindling is occurring and God takes in this way, did you ever have resentment. Did you ever see God what the world are you doing your mother said that officer okay but there had to be a lot of not okay lot of not okay. There was a lot of not okay and it we were a few weeks past Rob dying and I just had it out with that every morning and I started copying the Psalms from my Bible into my journal because one of the I realize many things. The first was that I had nothing to say to God, I felt abandoned I felt forgotten. I felt overlooked.

I remember saying what made you think this is a good idea what made you think this was a good idea. These children need their dad and I needed Batman what made you think this is a good idea and what I discovered is that in the book of Psalms. Every motion is covered every emotion is covered. There was nothing I could feel that David and his friends didn't already feel and write down some 88 total despair is total despair, but it made the cut and made the cut into the final manuscript. There is no neat and tidy bellwethers wrapped up at the end it says that God is my Savior and I will trust him which is true of many of the other Psalms. But this one is just utter abandonment. Where are you. What I loved about that is that I felt permission felt permission to say all of those things and I remember feeling and thinking and coming to complete clarity. If I believe that God made me and I have to believe that he's bigger than me and if he's bigger than me and he made me and he is aware of all of these emotions and none of them scare him son going to give it to him and we had some shouting matches the pages of my journal are written with black scrawling?

Anger, of claiming David's words but writing my own as I started to find my voice. Where are you. How long was the process which I think is a healthy process. God is big enough to trigger concerns or grievances are despair yes you sword that right says Abba father. It was months and months that may have been a full year ends. I just felt like God gave me one breath at a time. His presence just gave me his present will and what I'm hearing you say is that it doesn't necessarily all the grief in those paintings of despair don't go away completely. Know your able to accept what is happened and now move forward yet. Is that a fair way to describe fair way to describe one of the things that I learned I cannot fix that but I can create new and that's what I also learned that he wasn't going to fix that if he could make Neil and he would show me where he is in desk in the context you've remarried) how many years has it been since Rob since Rob passed almost 6 years now. It's a new beginning. It is a new beginning sound happy sell happy in ways that I never ever thought that I would be. I am so happy Tricia that is wonderful your book in life comes back.

What a beautiful story that so wonderful that the Lord even through your tough questions and the way you went after answers to those questions got stuck with it is great story really hard one but one of redemption. Tricia what Williford has been a guest here today on Focus on the Family. No Philippians 413 says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and Tricia is exhibitor. She's done is you've listened today.

I don't know what your situation is. Maybe you've lost a spouse or someone close to you are a child and you don't know what to do. Tricia was describing how it feels when darkness sets in and I want to know were here for you. We have a counseling department and focus has so many resources to help you draw closer to God.

Especially during this time of uncertainty with the pandemic.

Don't hesitate to let us help you and your family and if you've been on the receiving end of encouragement from this ministry. May I ask you to send a gift to help others in their time of need. When you give today. The great news is your gifts going to be doubled by some generous friends of focus through a matching gift. It really is a wonderful opportunity to have your donation doubled and will invite you to call today donate and will send a copy of Patricia's book in life comes back is our way of saying thank you for stepping up and supporting the ministry of also you can schedule a consultation with the counselor were just ask when you call 800 K word for 800-232-6459 or click the links in the episode notes. Thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here on John Fuller inviting you back. As we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. Lately my family has been feeling tired and restless and a little stressed out case for you. That's why I love the new free streaming service called focus at home hours of faith filled entertainment trust explore audio dramas like adventures in Odyssey goals of Narnia series like the world they know all free for a limited time. Sign up now Focus on the Family.com/streaming