My God is an Awesome God

Sometimes I wonder how I maintain such confidence and cling so strongly to God.  After all, Bill is gone and I sure do wish that God had given ME a miracle and let Bill live.  I guess that one of the gifts that God has given me is that I am not angry with God that Bill is gone.  Watching Bill accept and frankly embrace his death and immediate access to God really has changed the way I view death and I just don't feel angry with God that He let Bill leave this world and come to be with Him.  For Bill it would not have been a miracle if he had been allowed to live.  He was ready and wanting to join Jesus for all eternity. I do feel frustration and even anger that I have so much to deal with and I do feel absolute ongoing devastation that my sweet William no longer is with me.

You probably have figured out that I have had a few rough spots since I last wrote.  June 2 was Bill's and my 37th wedding anniversary and June 6 was Bill's 34th Ordination anniversary.  I wonder if he got to preach the sermon in Heaven on his ordination anniversary.  Knowing Bill - he would have named one of the many preachers that he loved to listen to or read their sermons and asked that they or God would teach in his place.  Even though we know very little about Heaven I do think about what he is doing there.  It keeps him alive in my heart.

A wedding anniversary is such a personal thing.  It was the first "first" that I really celebrated alone and didn't know quite what to do to make sure that I got through the day.  I woke up in the morning and thought about my loss.  That was hard.  Then I started thinking about our wedding day.  My family knows that I do that on all important days.  I tell Amanda "in detail" about the day she was born every year on her birthday, and Karl about the day we got him and he pooped all over his father.  The kids groan, but I love these memories.  I now realize that I love the memories of our wedding day and those are what sustain and comfort me now that Bill is gone and I am single.  It isn't really that I feel single, because I feel very married, but an anniversary is a huge reminder that my husband is no longer here.  So I was at work on June 2 and that was a good thing and then I came home, Karl and I loaded up the truck with plants, we lifted mom into the truck and mom and I went to Sequim.  I stayed as busy and I could so that I would be exhausted at night and just go to sleep when I went to bed.  It worked.  I did get a call from our friend who we celebrated so many anniversaries with and that was really nice.  God has given so many wonderful friends who just call and love me at the right moment.

God has also answered a prayer for me in a pretty spectacular way.  I have been feeling increasingly burdened with keeping up my two homes.  I know that I am incredibly lucky to have two homes, but Bill was the handyman and I was the unskilled labor.  Bill and I always planned that if one of us died the other would need to sell one home and, as Bill said, "go forward."  Neither of us realized that the surviving spouse doesn't always want to "go forward." 

However, I have been in prayer since Bill's death that God would reveal a plan for me.  After Christmas I started looking through web sites for a new Social Work job on the Olympic Peninsula.  I have 7 years until retirement age and I have to work to support myself.  I have consistently wanted to move to our home on Diamond Point and decided that since I didn't feel any conflict about that, that God was probably telling me to get started on making that happen.  I cannot commute from Sequim to my job at Harborview very easily so I knew that I needed a new job.

So - 2 weeks ago I accepted a job to work for Olympic Medical Center (OMC) as the Patient Navigator at the outpatient Cancer Center located in Sequim.  I start work on June 28.  OMC is the biggest hospital on the Olympic Peninsula, not that it is huge or anything.  But, they really are establishing complete medical services for the population on the Peninsula and they are actually establishing most of their outpatient specialty services in Sequim.  The hospital is in Port Angeles - about a 25 minute drive from Sequim.  I live East of Sequim so a job is Sequim is much better for me than one in Port Angeles.

This is a Social Work job where I will meet with all new patients and their families and do an assessment of what they may need and then make sure they get it.  I prayed a lot about working with Cancer patients since Bill died of Cancer, but I believe that I have something to offer to patients and their families.  I have felt much peace and confidence about this new job and move.  I have not felt nervous or had any regrets.  I feel like God has been saying, "Hey - I provided everything that you asked for so go enjoy it."  God is an Awesome God.

I have found that I am feeling some resurgence of grief because I am leaving Harborview where I have worked for 8 and a half years.  I guess I should have expected that.  So - I cry some and I accept that I do feel great sadness at leaving a good job that Bill was involved in to.  This will be a move to something all on my own.  Wow.   I also know that I will have many moments of grief or "small deaths" as I call them as I go through our Mercer Island home and prepare to put it up for sale.  I decided that I wouldn't try to get it ready in "a few weeks" because that would probably put me over the edge.  So - Mom and Karl and I are working on things a piece at a time.  I do hope to have the house up for sale by fall.

I did finish cleaning out Bill's office.  That wasn't as bad as I thought it could be.  I found a whole bunch of his sermons and will put them in a binder.  I am going to put them in order of the Bible passage they are based on and then when I am reading that part of the Bible I will read Bill's sermon about that.  Isn't that cool? 

Well - I have rambled on long enough.  But, I wanted all of you to know about my big changes.  Oops - I have been talking about Karl and didn't say that he moved back home a few weeks ago.  It is going fine for now.  He doesn't want to move to Sequim and truthfully there isn't much for him in Sequim so he and I will be working on a good plan for him.

I am going to end with something that our friend Mark gave me.  It has really comforted me recently:

NOTHING
can make up for the absence
of someone we love -

and it would be wrong
to try to find a substitute -
we must simple hold out
and see it through -
that sounds very hard at first
but at the same time
it is a great consolation -
for the gap - as long as
is remains unfilled -
preserves the bond
between us -

it is nonsense to say that
God fills the gap -
God does not fill it -
but on the contrary
keeps it empty
and so helps us to keep alive
our former communion
with each other
even at the cost of pain -

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I continue to love and treasure you all.  Sue