Lesson Manual: How to Be a Widow

Accept the fact early on that you aren't going to be as effective playing mom and dad as you were when you were just playing mom. Things will happen. 

Will they remember me as someone who was different when their dad was here than I was when he was gone?  And will that difference be good or bad?

I don't know if I have the patience life demands for me to be a good mother.  I feel pulled in a hundred different directions.

Lesson Manual: How to Be a Widow

Be patient with the development of patience. It will come. Have faith in your own unseen potential. 

Sitting in a living room, with a full stomach from a delicious casserole and the best brownies ever, those moments were a gift that I will never forget!  Tina, Kathy, and Linda amazing in their small acts of service to me.

I began to realize that within so many of us is something, something for which an anniversary comes and goes or a terrible burden they are facing daily while the world goes on like it is a normal day.

Yes, we were discovering a few of the perks to widowhood.

I want to use that perspective in facing my own trials.  If I am faithful, my story will also end with a cry of thanksgiving.

"We just keep losing members of our family.  First Dad, now my brother.  It doesn't even feel like our family anymore."  It broke my heart.

I just had to breathe deep and go by faith.  I just had to be grateful for family that was there when I needed them most.