Tag: Grief

Becoming, Amid Grief and God’s Glory | Ep. 31

August 22, 2023August 21, 2023
by Rosanne Moore

When life as you’ve known it is entirely upended, how do you not only survive the grief but also find new ways to grow and reflect more of God’s grace in the midst of loss? Rachael Crabb joins Rosanne Moore today to share how God has met her in the 2.5 years since her husband Larry’s death and the opportunities she’s found amid loss to offer His love to others.

Bio:

Author Rachael Crabb is a former teacher and ministry consultant who has spoken for conferences and ministry retreats worldwide. Married to Dr. Larry Crabb for over 54 yrs, she is the mother of 2, grandmother of 5, and soon-to-be a great-grandmother. She writes and co-edits for Larger Story’s blog column, “Becoming Me, Without You.”

Links:

SoulTalk

Reading & Relating book club

The SoulCare Experience Study

Anticipatory Grief: The Journey of a Thousand Losses and Endless Grace

“Becoming Me, Without You”

GriefShare

Listen In: Building Faith and Friendship Through Conversations That Matter

The Personal Touch: Encouraging Others Through Hospitality

Transcript

[00:00:28] Rosanne Moore: Hello, Larger Story friends. Welcome back to the Relational Spirituality podcast. I’m your host today, Rosanne Moore, and I have a surprise guest, Rachael Crabb, with me today. Anybody who is familiar with our ministry knows and is excited to see her. For those of you who don’t know Rachael was the wife for over 52 years, Rachael?

[00:00:56] Rachael Crabb: 54 years.

[00:00:57] Rosanne Moore: 54 years of Dr. Larry Crabb. She is the mother of two, grandmother of five, and soon to be great grandmother of one. She’s many things. She’s a wonderful teacher, she’s a great hostess, she’s a loving and thoughtful person, and she is also the primary mover and shaker behind our column on “becoming me without you.”

Rachael, thank you for coming today. We’re so happy to have you.

[00:01:34] Rachael Crabb: I’m just happy to be here. I’m glad I could get on this. People who know Larry, he used to work on zoom and I always had to set him up on that to get it going. I would work at least an hour and a half ahead of time so we could do it. Rosanne and I had that today with me. I’m not up to date on the tech since he’s been gone for over 2 years and it’s hard to get on again. So I’m learning.

[00:01:58] Rosanne Moore: Yes, and we’re using a different system now, so that was a whole new learning curve. Although part of the time was me getting set up.

[00:02:08] Rachael Crabb: But you’re so good at this.

[00:02:11] Rosanne Moore: Thank you for being with us. I want to start with your blog column, because I think it’s a good starting place for you sharing what the journey has been like for you since Larry’s gone to be with the Lord. The title of that blog column is “Becoming Me Without You.” Share more about that journey.

[00:02:36] Rachael Crabb: It was when Rosanne and Karlene were working on a strategy plan. They invited me down to spend some time with them while they were working together. I said, What do you girls have in mind? They said, we’d like you to write something for Larger Story. We think we need to have a grief column.

So far we’ve had mostly widowers and widows talking to us. I introduced them and they’re all friends of mine or are becoming friends of mine. We had a wonderful person who had a book, Tracy Pratt, who wrote a book called Anticipatory Grief. That’s what I truly lived for 25 years, because Larry was diagnosed with cancer – islet cell gastrinoma, which starts in the pancreas – he was diagnosed with that in 1997. He passed away in 2021 and there were 25 years of anticipatory grief because I was called into the hospital several times with the 1st round of pancreas surgery. I was called in three times for them to tell me he probably had less than six hours to live.

We’re all dying, but we knew he was dying. It was 25 years. Unbelievable. 25 years and in the last month of his life, I think he was so productive. He was writing things up until he was laying in the hospice bed for eight days. He was still writing. He wrote a note to all our neighbors to say, be happy for me. I’m in paradise and I want you to be there with me. He wrote that to the neighbors where we lived. That just really hit.

I was given a book called Becoming Me Without You. I thought I lived a lot of time becoming me without him because there were lots of things that I had to do. I was in preparation for things. So now it’s learning to be me. I’ve had two widowers that have just been fun and the several of us have been widows. I had a mother of a mother and father of a daughter and I have another one of those coming up real soon and I have in the can. Something about a mother’s death. So it’s not just for us, but we did feel we were special, and I didn’t realize how different it was, death is death, but death of your other half is your half a person.

[00:06:26] Rosanne Moore: We made reference to the fact that you had been married for 54 years, but before that you had been dating for what, eight years, six years, something like that?

[00:06:42] Rachael Crabb: We knew each other from the time we were 10 and we didn’t start dating each other or sitting together in church services or things like that till we were 12.

[00:06:53] Rosanne Moore: So he was a part of pretty much your whole life. So, what has that looked like? How did you get through? You talked about the anticipatory grief. We’re reading SoulTalk right now in this quarter, we’re focused on that. Larry opens the book talking about when he got the initial diagnosis and it was not good and the sort of existential crisis that he had with many of those. That immediate one, right after getting that news. Then, like you said, he went on for a long time and each time facing that and having him pull out of it. I know for me when I realized, okay, he really is going home this time, there was the sense of, this is actually happening now.

[00:08:01] Rachael Crabb: Yes. I had several of his friends say something’s going on in their life right now and they’ve picked up the phone to call Larry because that would have been their first phone call. That’s the stories I’ve gotten from many people and even I know he’s gone. I really know it, but I know also, how can I be so sad when he’s ecstatically happy? Because that’s all he wanted. He was becoming a person. In fact, friends have called and said, did you read his 66 love letters? Did you read what he said in, I think it was first and second Timothy. I did go read it. And they said all he talked about was heaven. He just talked about heaven. He was very heavenly minded.

[00:08:52] Rosanne Moore: Yeah. At the end, he was like, “Don’t you dare pray that I’ll be healed. I’m ready to go!”

[00:08:58] Rachael Crabb:. “Don’t you dare say that.” People had quoted that, they said he would just say, “I want to see…I want to get home. I want to get home.” He was tired of being poked and prodded. We just knew that our weeks were filled with doctors visits as many as five times a week. He was in chemo even though it was New Year’s day, Christmas day. It was arsenic, we knew, but didn’t realize that he was probably filled with all kinds of blisters inside by that time and he had lost so much weight.

We want our column and the editor for that column is Jeanie Sterling and she and her husband lived with us at least a total of three months while he was being treated for prostate cancer as a result of Agent Orange in Vietnam. He was on the registry as a person who got that from Vietnam, from Agent Orange. They lived with us and he was treated at the VA.

When he passed away, Larry went out, sick, though he was. He and I went a week or two after Al’s death and spent time with her and we became very close at that time. But I didn’t get it yet. I didn’t understand what it was to be a widow.

If you read the first blog, it was a letter to us, my boys and me, about John missing Larry, his friend. He was a widower for 16 years when Larry passed away. Jeanie came in for Larry’s birthday. She came to town, and Paul and Maribeth Niager came to town. I had some people in for Larry’s first birthday in heaven.

My son asked a question the other day. He said, “Mom, I wonder if you celebrate his biological birth or his rebirth.” The questions he comes up with! He said, “I wonder which one they’re celebrating in heaven. Do you think they’re celebrating Dad’s biological birth or do they celebrate the day that they know that he became a born again Christian?” That was an interesting question. I said, “You study it, Son, and come up with the answer.”

But they were here, and I got John’s letter on his birthday. That’s all in the blog part that I got the letter from him. I said to her, “He gets it, he understands what it is. Because it’s a different thing, celebrating holidays or not anything except that son Kenny, who lives around the corner from me, told his dad he would never be away from me. He’s going to be away for my birthday coming up; he’s going to be away and I said, “I can do it. I can do it.” “No, Mom. I don’t know. I don’t know if we should go. I don’t know.” I said, “You’re great.”

So anyway, she read it and I said, “Let’s call John and thank him for this letter.” Paul and Maryibeth had left by that time. Jeanie was there with me, and we called John, and we talked and chatted and laughed.

The next morning I said, “I think we’re supposed to ‘date’ John on the phone.” Honestly, we have the best time, the three of us. It’s so nice for me, it’s nice for Jeanie, a brand new person. John was very active in the first church Larry and I went to 57 years ago when we went to Champaign, Illinois. There are even some stories that Tom and Jenny Board met at a potluck that John and Sharon had sponsoring a college group at the University of Illinois at the chapel we went to, and so Tom and Jenny Board met through them. It’s just amazing.

[00:13:39] Rosanne Moore: We had Tom Board on just a few weeks ago as one of our guests here, so that’s an interesting backstory for him.

Thinking about the whole issue of SoulTalk and how you spent time with Jeanie and you were there for her and you got close, but you didn’t really understand what it was like, what do you think now? You talk with people who are grieving; what’s different in the kind of conversations with somebody who’s in that place of raw grief?

[00:14:23] Rachael Crabb: I want to go back and apologize to anyone who’s become a widow that I’ve talked to. I want to apologize for some of the stupid things I said,

[00:14:37] Rosanne Moore: I think we all feel that way when we get through a lot.

[00:14:41] Rachael Crabb: I really do. I said that to Jeanie, so she wrote on the blog two or three months ago. We had something about I’m sorry. I’m sorry was what she wrote about. I’m sorry. And I love that. People want to help. I love that. I was always one to say what can I do for you?

I read a story when I was younger and I should have caught on to this where someone had passed away in a family and the next door neighbor came over. It was back in the days when you had to polish your shoes, the next door neighbor came over with a shoe polishing kit and said, I’m going to polish everyone’s shoes for the funeral, because in those days, we didn’t go to church on Sundays without shoes polished. So we all had the polishing kits and you worked on your shoes, and so someone said they went and did that. I thought of that. I read that when I was probably in my 20s. Why didn’t I take it to heart?

Jeanie wrote a whole article that I thought she did such a great job on. Everyone who’s written for us has done a wonderful job, and we’ve all had different experiences. But Jeanie talked about people saying to her, “What can I do?” And you’re never going to call them back. Ask them, “Hey, I thought of something for you to do.” And so she gave us a lot of good ideas. I think that really makes a difference when just out of the clear blue, someone does something.

[00:16:18] Rosanne Moore: You certainly did that for me recently when I had my appendectomy, you showed up with the best chicken salad, literally the best I’ve ever had in my life, and I am a connoisseur. Chicken salad is one of my favorite things ever.

[00:16:35] Rachael Crabb: I didn’t know that. I thought, I’m going to go down to see my neighbors from Boca Raton, Florida down your direction and I thought, I just have to drop some chicken salad. You have to know I don’t cook anymore . I eat dinner at Kenny’s house.

[00:16:54] Rosanne Moore: I really feel honored then.

[00:16:57] Rachael Crabb: That’s another thing. It’s hard cooking for one. It really is. Kenny and Leslie have just – I’m just an extra person at their place and he usually has his kids who always have extra friends. I said I come every night. He says, no, mom, you only come about 5 out of 7.

I told him recently that I’m going to only come 3. And so far I’ve been there three times this week, so…

[00:17:33] Rosanne Moore: Maybe you’ll start next week, right?

[00:17:35] Rachael Crabb: I will because he’s away so I will have maybe the whole week, but anyway, it’s just the practical of saying what you’re going to do. And if they say, oh, we’re fine, that’s fine.

Anita Grace and I have a special relationship. I do with your boys too. Your kids help me a lot. They come up and empty storage closets for me, and they just are wonderful kids, and I just love feeding them something or giving them a gift card to go eat on their way home. I just love having Rosanne’s kids because Rosanne’s done such a wonderful job with those kids.

[00:18:19] Rosanne Moore: They sure love Ms. Rachael.

[00:18:22] Rachael Crabb: It’s just fun to have them around and they get so excited when I would bring something and hand it to them, it was really good for me to have to make that. It really was. Thanks for letting me have that opportunity. I’m glad to see you. I have not seen you in person since your operation, because when I’d come…

[00:18:46] Rosanne Moore: I was asleep. I was wiped out and I was napping. I think

[00:18:50] Rachael Crabb: I think I carried things in with the kids two times without seeing you. Anyhow. It’s nice to see you.

[00:19:02] Rosanne Moore: Yes, it is. We need to get together in person.

[00:19:06] Rachael Crabb: I know. After September.

[00:19:09] Rosanne Moore: She’s making reference to the fact that we just put a bid on a house, so we’re hoping to move in September.

Even before Larry’s homecoming, you had your own identity. You’re an author. You’ve written several books, one on hospitality. You contributed with Larry to some devotional books and to some books on marriage. Listen In, you wrote with two friends. It was a book – I was going to say it’s a book for women, but really it’s a book for everybody. It’s three women’s voices.

[00:19:55] Rachael Crabb: Guys will call me about that. It’s a great book. They said they were recommending it to their women. A pastor said, yeah we did that book in a men’s group and we whipped through it, but we enjoyed it. I thought that was sweet of him to say.

[00:20:20] Rosanne Moore: I think for any husband who wants to better love his wife, that book is a good resource. I think also there are things just for being a human, the way that you had conversations, the way that you engaged with your own story. That’s not gender specific in terms of everybody has a story that influences how they’re living today. And that book is a really good model of how meaningful conversations with engaged people who are engaged in listening and loving you through even the hard parts of your story, how it makes a difference in the way that you see yourself, the way that you see God at work in the hard places of your life. It’s a great book. It’s a really good book. We will have a link for that in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out.

But you had written those things. You had been on mission boards. You had done other things. I’m setting you up because I already know the answer to this. What are some of the things you’re doing now? How have things changed? You spent a lot of time traveling with Larry and doing the SSDs and the next steps before the spirit schools, the spiritual direction.

What would you share with our listeners? What’s life look like now? Because you haven’t stopped. You haven’t stopped being Rachael in the middle of this.

[00:21:48] Rachael Crabb: It’s funny because I have a ministry in my apartment and it’s wonderful. The door has opened for me to have this ministry. The first party I had was the longest day of the year. All of a sudden it’s like the Holy Spirit said to me, “Tell them, introduce them to your husband.” And so I introduced them to Larry on their way out the door. It was so sweet. I wrote up a story about who Larry was and where he is and that I was doing this gathering because I had read something that Larry said, and it was like Larry told me to reach out to others. I put that in there and then I put the letter that I wrote all about introducing Larry to them and on the way, when they were leaving the longest night party at 10 o’clock, they said, speech from our hostess! I said, no, I’m just so glad you’re here. I said, “On the way out, on the entryway table, there’s an envelope, no names on the envelope, but I want to tell you about my husband. This party is my new normal, and this is the first time I’ve had more than six or eight people in.” And I said I was a person who liked having people in.

I said,” This is the first time, and here there are almost 30 of you, on my little back deck.” I said, “I want you to know who my husband is.” And on the way out, they picked it up. The next day, I had six people call me. People showed up at my door crying about how they wished they knew him. I was taking care of a woman upstairs who’s just a young woman and she called me from the hospital that she had a stroke. I took that upon myself because they call me the “mayor of the apartments.” However, the other day someone called me “the queen”. So I think I’d rather go with “the queen” than “the mayor.” But, I went up to take care of her dog named Elvis. Of course, I was partial toward Elvis. On her refrigerator, she had hanging the grief shared daily that I had given them where it said what Larry said, “Sometimes when you’re feeling down and you’re feeling low, the best thing you can do is reach out to someone else so as to not get wrapped up in yourself.”
I said, “That’s what my husband told me to do. That’s why we have this party tonight.” And it was hanging on her refrigerator with the letter right under it. It happened to be a week before June 21st, where I had another solstice party and it was hanging on her refrigerator. No way did I even think that she would hang that anywhere or she would say that.

But that was just one person. And I said, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you.”

I’m now in the midst of another domestic situation here but I have good times on the airplane. I went to see Tripp and Judy from Toronto to Quebec City. I met a French teacher who happens to be Quebecois and she happened to move here to live next to her son just down the road from me. We had lunch together yesterday and we’re planning on meeting a lot. I just think, no matter what situation you’re in, you have to make God look good because right now people are trying to make Him look so bad and the Christians aren’t helping.

Larry used to always at the end of an SSD do that passage of the dry bones and saying that he’s going to raise up an army of dry bones. And so that’s what I feel there. There’s a group of dry bones ready to be raised up and we have to be raised up to make God look good.

It’s just this past week I was saying to Rosanne, I get blindsided every time in the GriefShare program. They call it ambushed. I opened up. I do daily readings from the GriefShare. This past week, I read Days 323 and 316. I’m reading along to this little Be Involved in Others Life. You need to find the courage to get deeply involved in other people’s lives and experience the mess and frustration, the sense of impotence, the sense of not knowing what to do, says Dr. Larry Crabb. It says, Dr. Larry Crabb says, in the field of the soul, there are no professional surgeons. There are only caring Christians. I think that’s a biblical thing for us to realize. Soul Talk. And you can’t go in and hit them over the head with the gospel.

I loved what Francis Schaeffer said. He said, if I was next to someone on an airplane for an hour, for the first 45 minutes, I’d talk about life, and the last 15, I would talk about the afterlife. Francis Schaeffer said that one time. So when I’m on an airplane, I talk about life. It was really interesting. The gal I’ve been talking to is a wonderful believer, I did not realize that. I knew it by the time I got off the plane, but by meeting her yesterday, it was absolutely a treat to me. So I get the blessing by reaching out to others.

[00:29:01] Rosanne Moore: It really is a matter of the Lord showing up in the middle. I think sometimes we talk about ministering to others in a way that we think we’re being unselfish, but it’s almost paternalistic. What you’re describing, I think, is what happens when the Spirit really is at work, because there’s a blessing on both sides. Life gets stirred for both parties when we’re really following the Spirit instead of having our own agenda. You show up, you offer who you are, and God shows up in the middle of it and you walk away encouraged as well.

[00:29:40] Rachael Crabb: I attend a Bible study at another church, but I’m leading the Bible study and it’s been great and wonderful with two other gals. The women in the Bible study say, you girls are an answer to prayer. We’re all three new to the church, but I really enjoy just day to day interactions. I like the interactions. I’m old. I don’t know if I’m cut out to be the Bible study person in the future, but I surely have enjoyed the context with people and it’s really good. You say to a kid to know your future, look at your friends. To know your future look at your friends and it’s the friends that will pull you along or the friends that will bring you down and the teenagers have to learn that. That’s one thing that my son Ken has been saying to his girls, if you want to see your future, look at your friends.

Now my future is only heaven. I’m going to be 79 in a few days and I miss Larry terribly, but I said to Rosanne, someone had said this to me in an email, he said an amazing thing. How our loved one can be so ecstatically happy who’s gone and we’re miserable some days. It’s been a hard time.

I spent a week with Trip and Judy, five days alone with just the three of us. We started in 1984. The four of us went all over the world. We started in Paris in 1984, and we were trying to rehearse all the places we’ve been and we couldn’t name them all. We could name incidents that happened and we laughed and we cried. I just think it’s something to do. You have to move on. I’m here. I said to someone, If Larry could see me, I picture seeing him and what he’s doing and that song “I Can Only Imagine” makes a big difference. If Larry could see me, he’d say, that’s just like Rachael because that’s exactly how we wrote our mission statement.

[00:32:15] Rosanne Moore: He’d have a twinkle in his eye as he said it and a big smile.

[00:32:19] Rachael Crabb: He would say, that’s just like Rachael, who’s out there taking care of the sick and she’s out there and that’s what her gifting is. I’m out there trying to make God look good, but it’s not easy. Sometimes I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like making God look good. I want to have a pity party.

[00:32:42] Rosanne Moore: Thank you so much, Rachael, for sharing with us and for being who you are. Even as you deal with the loss of Larry of not being here, thank you for continuing to become you.

[00:33:01] Rachael Crabb: Becoming the real me. Yeah. I’m getting ready to be in a Job Bible study and of course I love Larry’s stuff on Job. Their favorite things in SoulTalk, and I don’t even know if it’s SoulTalk, where he talks about turning your chairs. I love the turning of the chairs image. I don’t even remember what’s in the books. Except for the girl who yesterday said to me, I was in my early twenties, I read his book and it just really impacted me. She said, I can’t even think of the title. I said it was called Inside Out . . I said it was called Inside Out. Because she was just telling it was gut wrenching. I said that was Inside Out. So I remember those things, but how many times have I heard him do Job devotion?

[00:34:02] Rosanne Moore: One of the things we’ve been talking about recently as we’re developing new things, new offerings for Larger Story is all of those devotional materials and all of his notes from the SSD and next step.

[00:34:18] Rachael Crabb: I may have given it over to you guys who work with this material. He did a home Bible study in Boca Raton, Florida, and he did whole books of the Bible. He sat in the middle of a living room and dining room in the doorway of that on a bar stool and taught both sides of the room to friends of our house, of our neighborhood. He taught that Bible study for years, and the guy recorded every Bible study. I don’t know if those ever got out to you all yet. I don’t know. They definitely were in my collection of stuff. I keep saving things to give Kep because you all have ideas in your strategic planning. Every time I turn around, I find another note from him. He was a note writer. In the morning he would leave me a note that says, I love you gorgeous, and he would leave the note and he would sign L. That was the best you could read of the signature. I think people call me and take a picture of what he wrote in their book. Could you tell me what this said?

I have wonderful memories. He was really the love of my life and and 25 years I lived with, is he going to leave today? Is he going to be called home today? But he was called home in a beautiful way. He chose to give up his medicine, give up all the things that were keeping him plugging along. He said, I’m tired of being poked and prodded, I just want to go home. He was so heavenly minded, he was no earthly good, that he would just hate what’s happening in this world today. He wouldn’t be able to stand it. God took him at a wonderful time. It was the right time. He gave us 25 years more than we ever thought we would have. 25 years.

He was sick when he was speaking at places.He went places sick. A lot of people have seen him very sick. He wouldn’t give up. That was the neat thing because he didn’t want to be a person who ever quit on God. He taught us how to die, how a Christian dies.

I think I told this story before, my brother said to me, sing Jesus Loves Me to him. Every night, when you and Kenny pray with him, sing Jesus Loves Me. We sang Jesus Loves Me, and one night I was alone. Kenny had already left, and it was Wednesday before he passed away. I was singing Jesus Loves Me, and he said, Rachael, I know He does. Why doesn’t He take me home? And I said, because you’re teaching us all how a believer dies and how they’re ready to go. And that’s what he taught us. One of our granddaughters said it the other day, she said, I couldn’t give up on Christianity as much as I have these teenage things in my system to give up on, she said, because I watched Pop die, I can’t do it. I thought, he taught us how to die. It’s been a wonderful lesson. It’s been a wonderful thing and it’s just lonely as all get out.

[00:38:08] Rosanne Moore: I think it’s funny because in Revelation it talks at one point about the prayers of the saints and it seems to me, the context indicates that it’s believers who are in the presence of the Lord.

[00:38:25] Rachael Crabb: In the golden bowl before the throne, yes, it’s Revelation 4

[00:38:31] Rosanne Moore: I really believe that he prays with more joy and more power for you now than he ever did, as faithfully as he did throughout his life in praying for people and for you. I have wondered what it was like for you because you had your morning prayer that you each prayed every morning and I’ve wondered what that was like for you to not have your partner in the morning to pray his half.

[00:39:06] Rachael Crabb: I tried doing it by myself for a while. There’s a woman who has faithfully followed Larry’s teaching. Her name is Marilee. She had no idea that Larry made my latte every morning before he went out. He got it already. All I had to do was push the button and I made a latte and, I understand from Jimmy that he was very proud of making a latte every morning and getting it ready. By the time he’d come home from breakfast – because remember he ate breakfast out every morning – by the time he came home I would have had my two cups of latte and he would clean the pot.

My friend Marilee sent me a cup that said, in the morning when I rise, just give me Jesus. I see it on my shelf over there. I always kept it next to the coffee pot. I took a picture of it and sent it to her. I said, you’ll never realize that’s what he did every morning. And now, it’s just Jesus and me. I had to learn how to clean the latte pot, because he would always wash it. Mine’s stained and he would just take care of that latte pot. When he came in, we’d pray our common prayer and the prayer that we prayed for 30 years, we’d pray that prayer and he’d come find me in the house, pray that prayer, go clean the coffee pot. Those little things like that, I took for granted, but in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus, and I’ll do the latte myself. Now I live in an apartment building that has a coffee bar in the front office. And so people carry their pots up there. No one makes coffee anymore. I make a latte because I like it. I do make my own because I like decaf and they only have caffeine up there.

[00:41:19] Rosanne Moore: Thank you so much, Rachael, for spending this time and sharing with our listeners.

[00:42:05] Rachael Crabb: Thank you for this opportunity. Blessings to all of you who are Larger Story supporters, backers, prayers, people who support this ministry. It’s really something. I wish all the people on there knew him personally. A lot of people do that are on there, but I’ve had some people that I’m meeting now that are now saying, Oh, we’re on Larger Story. They’ll hear this story. I’m looking forward to seeing what the Lord does in everyone’s life in the next little bit. Talk to you soon.

[00:43:00] Rosanne Moore: Great. Thank you, Rachael. Thank you for joining us today at the Relational Spirituality podcast, your place to belong, to become, and to be known. If you want to check out some of the books that we talked about today, the links are in the show notes and we look forward to having you back next week.

Thanks so much.

Blog

Secondary Losses

August 17, 2023August 18, 2023
by Larger Story

Jeanie Stirling is our blog contributor for this month. Those of you who have followed this column have been introduced to her as a friend, editor and regular contributor. One piece of information you might not know about her is, tour guide for small groups of women wanting hiking adventures overseas. She has lived overseas and has served as a missionary for Ministry Essentials for many years, and still currently serves with her husband Al. Her past columns have given us things to think about. Secondary Losses is another thoughtful column. Welcome Jeanie!

Becoming me without Larry,

Rachael Crabb

A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Jeanie Stirling

When your partner dies you lose so much more than a person. For awhile you even lose yourself. When the initial grief fog lifts and you don’t recognize that person in the mirror, you wonder who you are now that you’re no longer a couple. Am I a Mrs. or just a Ms. now? Your life and future isn’t what you had imagined. There is a definite before and after. The path you’re on now is one you couldn’t have imagined before.

The first year of widowhood is survival. The second and probably the third year is realizing that everything really has changed forever. There are no future plans with your spouse, no more dinners out, no trips, no sharing the joy of your children or grandchildren, no morning or goodnight kiss, no sharing about your day or an event you attended, an article you read, no one to remember that joke with you, the significance of a song or movie, or all the other lifetime of memories, no one at home when you pull the car into the garage . . . But even with all of that, it’s not really about being alone so much of the time, as it is a realization that no one has you. You don’t belong to anyone in the same way you belonged to him. The day on the calendar that represents your anniversary has no meaning to anyone else, you’re no one’s emergency contact, last phone call of the day when away . . . and that creates a level of loneliness that’s difficult to describe. Widows speak of isolation and loneliness and perhaps it’s this realization of no longer belonging in that special way to someone that’s a huge part of that.

What I know is that I need to allow myself to grieve the things that will never be. I’m allowed to be happy and also mourn those losses. Both are okay. All the non-death losses aren’t obstacles to overcome but rather things that need to be acknowledged and grieved as I move forward. And in the process, I’m becoming someone it never would have been possible for me to be without this loss. I can walk in faith toward the future while also missing what was and what could have been. There is a bitter sweetness to almost every aspect of life now. There are celebrations and joy, new adventures and milestones, fun and laughter, but also the recognition that the person I shared all these things with in the past is now missing. At the end of the day, I can’t tell him about any of it. There is a hole around which I create a new life. It’s like a two sided coin – missing what was and grateful for this new life and new me.

One of the last stanzas of Maya Angelou’s poem “When Great Trees Fall” says,
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly.
Spaces fill with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored,
never to be the same,
whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed.

Blog

Alone But Not Alone

July 20, 2023July 18, 2023
by Larger Story

Larry and I met Bob and Nancy Little over thirty years ago when we began a relationship with Jimmy and Suzi Kallam of the Church at Charlotte. Bob and Nancy were very involved in ministry there, but it wasn’t until our move to Charlotte in 2016 that we began to spend time getting to know more of their story by sharing meals together and attending gatherings in their home. Nancy and I bonded as we shared prayer concerns and ultimately the death of our husbands. Nancy and I also found that we had a lot in common: both coming from Christian homes with a deep spiritual heritage, enjoying the ministry of hospitality and connecting people.

Nancy shares her story of the first year of widowhood in Alone But Not Alone. If you have read past articles in this blog, you’ve realized that each one who experienced a death has their personal journey. This is Nancy’s story.

Becoming me without Larry,

Rachael Crabb

A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Nancy Little

Bob and I were married for sixty-two and a half years when he died and left me a widow. We were fortunate to have been told of his pending death. I say fortunate because for the last six months of his life, we talked openly about what life would look like for me after he was gone. He told me a lot of what I needed to know both practically and emotionally. When he took his last breath and entered into glory, I had a great sense of peace. My family surrounded me and gave me support and encouragement I needed. They continue to be nearby for me but the truth is that I will never have that close relationship again. I am alone when I face every day. When I go to bed at night, I am alone. Every decision I make, I make alone. But I don’t really feel alone.

I was with a group of friends recently when one asked me how I was doing living alone. I told them I didn’t feel like I was alone. I couldn’t explain it to them, and I can’t explain it now. However, there is a sense of purpose and fulfillment with me as I go from day to day. I have also found there is freedom in not being dependent on another person on a daily basis. By being free, I mean that I am free to be available for what God has for me to do. Much of my time had been taken up with caring for Bob which wouldn’t change for a minute. However, it limited what I was able to do for myself as well as the interests and people that fill my life. This is the sort of freedom that I have not experienced since I married Bob, helped in his many vocational endeavors, raised two children, and more recently enjoyed my four grandchildren.

I have never been a person who didn’t have some sort of project I was working on. So, now I can press forward this the projects God has put before me without interruption. Writing this article is one God has placed in my life, and I hope it can be an encouragement for each of you. God has also put me in a wonderful neighborhood filled with very caring people. Some of my neighbors and I have started a Bible study, and together we are seeing God work in this part of His world. I guess what I am saying is that God is filling me with His presence through the people He has placed around me. How can I feel alone?

My husband had a project he was working on when he died. He was writing a book about how to retire with a purpose. A friend and I are trying to put it together and in the process I have learned a lot about my husband. I think much of the principles he put forth apply to living alone after being with someone else for so many years. God has a purpose for each one of us. Widowhood doesn’t change the fact that God is in control of my life. As I put one foot in front of the other, He show me what He would have me to do with my life. I know that He is with me. He is guiding me. He fulfills me, and I follow His lead. Deuteronomy 31:8 has become my guiding force. “The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave or forsake you. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.” I guess this is the reason I can be alone but not alone as I learn to be me without Bob.

Blog

A Softer & Gentler Grief

June 22, 2023June 22, 2023
by Larger Story

Our guest contributor to this month’s column is Dr. Robert Crawford, the younger brother of Janice, the matron of honor in Larry’s and my wedding. Janice and I have continued OUR friendship without paying much attention to our siblings except for occasional prayer concerns. I knew Bob was a professor in Canada, his wife was sick, he had a son and a daughter, had written books and articles. I asked Janice for his contact info; we chatted; he tentatively agreed to a column; and I asked him to fill in the blanks of his bio.

Bob was the son of a Plymouth Brethren itinerant preacher who attended Greenwood Hills Bible Conf as a teen. (I met Larry at this camp, along with lifetime friends.) He earned a BS in Engineering Science from Penn State (roomed with another Greenwood Friend, Carl) and earned a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell.

Bob served as a professor in the School of Computing at Queens University, Canada for 42 years and is now a Professor Emeritus at Queens. He is also chair of the elders board at Bay Park Baptist and chair of Ryansdale Transitional Housing (a charitable group in Canada that operates transitional housing enabling men to move from homelessness to independent living).

I have had wonderful catch-up conversations with Bob in the past few months, and he connected more dots between the 3 of us (Bob, Larry and me) by writing the following: “I knew Larry (Philadelphia Young People) and rode with him in his convertibles, and I knew you (that’s me) from Greenwood Hills. You two were the coolest couple. I, as a complete nerd, could only wish….”

More importantly, I introduce you to Bob, the loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend, and God-follower, who is willing to share a softer and gentler grief story with us.

Becoming me without Larry,

Rachael Crabb

A Becoming Me Without You Blog
By Bob Crawford

In January 2011, Anne was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, with the assurance that this was a slow acting cancer and that she would likely die of something else. The next nine years included various rounds of chemo, a clinical trial drug, some localized radiation, and two stem cell transplants. Given all of that, Anne led, as much as possible, a normal life. She continued to lead a Bible Study for young women, mentor many, and travel when treatment schedules permitted.

Then, early in 2020, Anne experienced considerable back pain. More tests and scans. The cancer had gone into her spine. Trips to the hospital became more frequent; medical care in the home was a regular thing; changes in medication were common; the symptoms increased. A walker became essential, then a stair chair. For some months, there was hope for something to “work.” But by mid-2020, as far as treatment was concerned, they had run out of options. Then it was palliative care, at home, and it was clear that the end was near.

For the last few days, when she was no longer responsive, I would tell her two things, “You can go now.” “We’ll be fine.” And I thought that would be the case. But it was a lie. At 2AM on September 18, 2020, she went home to be with Jesus. I was so happy for her. But it wasn’t true that I was fine. I thought I had grieved with others in their losses, as was only biblical. I learned that I really never had. I didn’t have a clue. Real grief is raw; it is painful.

And it wasn’t that I needed someone to look after me. I had been doing the cooking and cleaning and other household chores for quite some time; I was happy to do that. And I didn’t miss people or feel lonely. I had wonderful family and friends. My daughter and son were amazing. I just missed her. I missed Anne. Her smile, her wit, her prayers, her listening ear, her companionship, her friendship, her encouragement, her love.

On a purely practical note, consider the timing. Anne’s serious difficulties arrived just as Covid did. So in 2020, there were hospital visits that I could not be part of, except by phone while sitting in a car nearby. And although we weren’t gathering with others socially, neither was anyone else. We had a small graveside service with twelve family and friends. Though it was all that we could do at the time, it denied so many others the opportunity to reach closure at least in some way.

So I began this new journey that I think of as walking at the intersection of grief and joy. I have great joy in my life; joy for years of an amazing marriage, for a wonderful family, for a career I enjoyed, for being part of Christ’s body the church, for God’s love and peace poured out on me. Yet the grief is so real, and I have learned at least a bit about lamenting. I don’t alternate between joy and grief; I walk at their intersection, both aspects present all the time.

Not long after Anne died, I read Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven. I wanted to know all I could about where Anne was and what our future together would be like. I yearned for heaven … because I wanted to see Anne. Then I felt guilty; I was supposed to want to see Jesus. But I recalled, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” If I was to love my wife that much, in that way, that wasn’t a love that could end abruptly when she took her last breath on earth. God wouldn’t expect it to. He understood.

It was eight months after Anne died that I had a thought one day that if when we were getting married a voice had come from heaven saying, “You need to know that I can only give you 51

years”, I would have responded joyously. “Wow! We’ll get 51 years together?! What a blessing. And anyway, by then we’ll be old.…”

It was after that, that I began to recognize that my grief was softer and gentler. Still there. Still very real. But not so acutely painful. Not so pervasive every moment of every day. I am so thankful.

Mostly I smile when I think of Anne. I mention her regularly in conversation, and family and friends do as well. I do it naturally and in ways that others are, or seem to be, comfortable with. I choke up a bit when others share memories; so do others. That is okay.

After Anne died, a cousin shared with me how, over the years, “Bob & Anne” had become like a single word to him and his family. I liked that. What an amazing thing to have been part of “Bob & Anne.” But now it’s just “Bob”. Becoming Bob without Anne.

Message

The God Who Meets Us Where We Are |…

May 23, 2023May 22, 2023
by Rosanne Moore

How do we sift through our journey with God when it takes turns we don’t expect and ushers us into places we never wanted to go? And how do we companion one another as we walk through seasons of overwhelming heartache and deep questions? Rosanne Moore and Sheri Glorioso, her best friend from college, trace the ways God has revealed Himself in their lives, often upending expectations and stirring a re-evaluation of assumptions.

The Question that Never Goes Away by Philip Yancey

The Unselfishness of God by Hannah Whitall Smith

Special Offer: Real Church by Larry Crabb Buy One Get One 50 % OFF

Transcript

[00:00:28] Rosanne Moore: Hello Larger Story audience. I am so grateful for a chance to be with you again today. I’m Rosanne Moore, I’m your host today, and I have a very special guest, my dear friend, Sheri Glorioso. Sheri has been my best friend since Bible college. We met at the dorm on the first day that I arrived, and I knew this lady just brings joy and is so welcoming.

I knew we were going to be friends. I had no idea at that point that she was not just going to be a friend, but she was going to be one of the best companions I’ve ever had in my life. Somebody who’s walked through all of the crazy seasons of my life and just been a rock. I’m so excited that she’s here today.

She is married to Emil, and they are parents of two sons and a daughter, ages 16, 13, and 10, so she’s right in the thick of the early high school, middle school years. So God bless you my dear.

[00:01:32] Sheri Glorioso: And one elementary.

[00:01:35] Rosanne Moore: Yes. I wanted to have Sheri here to talk about Real Church with me, in part because she and I have both wrestled with, together, what does it look like to be walking with Jesus in community? Even though we don’t live close to each other in very many ways, we’ve provided spiritual community for one another in times where we were struggling to find other places. We’ve had lots of conversations over the years, but what does this look like? What does this whole following Jesus look like when it doesn’t ever look like what we think it’s going to? I have yet to meet somebody who has it figured out and has that work for very long.

[00:02:23] Sheri Glorioso: Right.

[00:02:24] Rosanne Moore: Sheri, welcome. Thank you for being here today.

[00:02:29] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you so much for having me, my best friend from college and my heart.

[00:02:33] Rosanne Moore: She specifically told me, “I can’t tell you how long to go back.”

I’ll just say, that laugh right there got us in a lot of trouble in the dorms a certain number of years ago.

So Sheri, let’s start by you sharing a little bit. You had a before and after experience of coming to faith; you didn’t grow up with a childhood belief in Jesus as much, it was a more coming to Christ. Would you share about that a little bit?

[00:03:21] Sheri Glorioso: Sure. So I always knew God existed. I prayed, but I didn’t know how personal He was. Then the fertilizer hit the ventilator and my work, my family, my debt was all out of control, and I had no idea how to survive.

[00:03:40] Rosanne Moore: You were a young adult, right?

[00:03:43] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. A coworker shared with me – she used the word scripture, which made me go woah because it sounded so serious – about how God needs all of our needs; not some, not one, not a few, but all of our needs. As long as I didn’t have to stand up in front of a church and proclaim that, I was good.

That night on my way home, I was like, “Lord, I really need you. I really need you in my life.” I just felt this lightness and freedom start to come, and then my relationship started to heal, and my financial situation started to get better. Then I was like, “I really want to learn more about you, God.”

As I was alone in a filing room, I heard, “Christian College locally.” And so I was like, “wow,” and then I sobbed and then I went to this Christian college, and then that one closed so I had to go to another Christian college, which is where we met. I was only a Christian nine months before going to Bible college.

There were times when people would talk about the Lord and how great He is and use all these wonderful adjectives, and I thought, “Wow, He’s really an egomaniac.”

[00:05:01] Rosanne Moore: The things people think, but don’t say out loud.

[00:05:06] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. I didn’t until now.

[00:05:07] Rosanne Moore: Right. No, it’s awesome to own that. Yes, go ahead.

[00:05:14] Sheri Glorioso: I was confused about that. I didn’t see how it all connected. Then when I went to South Carolina for college. It was very structured and conservative, and I just embraced everything that I was taught because I had no clue as to what was going on, what’s real and what’s not.

You could have told me the sky was purple and if that made me closer to God, I would look at the sky and see it purple. But it was also a good experience and it was a safe experience of meeting and learning to study the Bible and having amazing professors and all of that.

There were some glitches along the way that they didn’t understand, but I just tucked them away.

[00:06:01] Rosanne Moore: Give an example. When you say glitches, what are the kinds of things that raise question marks?

[00:06:07] Sheri Glorioso: Okay. The dress code was supposed to be modest for men and women, I think, but especially more for women as we were taught that we can cause somebody else to stumble if we’re not properly dressed. I have a lot of thoughts on that.

[00:06:22] Rosanne Moore: The burden of somebody else’s sanctification was suddenly your responsibility.

[00:06:29] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. Thank you, I couldn’t find the words for it, but that’s exactly it.

I was walking to my dorm and I saw a guy in a tank top who was very well built, and I went, whoa. And then I felt, wait a minute, this isn’t right. I’m not supposed to feel this way, but you shouldn’t be in a tank top, so that was confusing. I was going through some old papers and stuff and I even found where I wrote on a paper that, I have to be careful with what I wear because I can cause somebody else to stumble. And I was like, whoa, this is crap. Oh, sorry.

[00:07:02] Rosanne Moore: That’s so okay. This is why I have you on here. Yeah. The whole thing of holiness being external instead of relational and one-sided.

[00:07:20] Sheri Glorioso: There was another situation – I don’t know if you were there when this happened – but we had a dean of women that was there who was lovely and she couldn’t stay because she got divorced. I don’t know why she got divorced. However, one of the professors openly shared during a chapel that he had an STD that he got from seeking outside his marriage, brought it home to his marriage, and he still has a job. That totally freaked me out.

[00:08:01] Rosanne Moore: I wasn’t there for that, but yeah, with that kind of discrepancy, I can imagine. It was probably presented like there was damage control around the situations and you accepted the explanation, right?

[00:08:24] Sheri Glorioso: I did with the dean of women because I had no knowledge myself what was going on. I never saw a divorce as bad, because if my mother didn’t get divorced, I would be a very different person; my father was not a nice person. I don’t know how it was exposed that this professor went astray, but he gave a big preaching moment about how he was throwing things away and blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, what is he talking about? I didn’t have him, which was nice. I remember sitting in the back going, this is really weird. I didn’t connect that until way later – I won’t say how later, but until way later – when I started to see the structure of what I was being taught.

[00:09:14] Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I ended up having to leave school because of my health breaking down, but you and I stayed in touch, and you were one of the few people who did. I was so isolated during that time when I was so sick battling an autoimmune disease, but you stayed.

[00:09:34] Sheri Glorioso: I wasn’t letting go.

[00:09:35] Rosanne Moore: Thank God for that. You came and visited at times, even though you lived many states away. This has always been an issue for us with God, why she has to live so many states away.

[00:09:54] Sheri Glorioso: I know. Move them closer together now.

[00:09:57] Rosanne Moore: One of us, or both of us; that’s one plan we’ve had. Let’s meet in the middle someplace, like in Virginia or something. Oh dear. But, within a few years after I left school you also left and you faced a really difficult situation with your mom’s health. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

[00:10:30] Sheri Glorioso: It’s hard to talk about because unless you saw what was going on, it was really weird. My mother was not eating for long periods of time. She felt that she had to fast, like Jesus did for 40 days and 40 nights, but she would go for 80 days and 80 nights; she wouldn’t even swallow her own saliva.

[00:10:53] Rosanne Moore: And she was also battling cancer at the time.

[00:10:56] Sheri Glorioso: We didn’t know that at that point. She was thinking that the reason why she couldn’t eat was because she was going against God, so if she did eat or drink something, she would have tremendous pain. It turns out that the pain was coming from the cancer because she had a tumor the size of a football.

[00:11:18] Rosanne Moore: Oh, wow. What I remember of that time was you were trying to take care of her. Because she was responding to this, what she felt was like a spiritual battle in ways that weren’t, it was hard to know how to support her and help her, and you were dealing with the logistics of caring for a very sick person and trying to hold everything together.

And then the emotional burden of trying to figure out, what kind of help does she need?

You went from, “I’m going to turn my life over to Jesus because He’s going to take care of all my needs”, to going to Bible college, where this is the list of what good Christians look like and do, and now you’re in the middle of this situation with your mom that is crazy and there’s a lot of spiritual language. How do you make sense of that? Talk to me about in the middle of that, what were you wrestling with in terms of what it meant? Where was God in that? Where was spiritual community helpful in the nitty gritty of the mess of real life? Where was it not?

[00:12:45] Sheri Glorioso: When she was doing the fasting, unless you said what she wanted to hear, she wouldn’t listen to anything you had to say. She was admitted to the hospital and the psychologist was talking to her forever about needing to eat and blah, blah, blah. Her priest came. Friends came. But she was on her quest and she felt like she was on the right path. I didn’t know anything and I just was like, I’ll do whatever you want, just love me. I would bring her to the hospital when she would agree to go.

She was in and out, I think three times, in an eating disorder unit and everything. So it was pretty crazy. The church community really came – my mother became very active in her church – and a lot of people came to help take care of her when she was in the cancer stage. It was almost like cancer was a relief from this.

[00:13:43] Rosanne Moore: It made sense to them.

[00:13:44] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. I don’t know if she ate three meals a day, but at least she was eating, because I would have meals with her and stuff. That was a bit of a relief. And then instead of going to hospice, people from church who were very close friends of hers came around and did home care for her around the clock; stayed with her throughout the night, stayed during the day when I went to work. They were very generous with their time and their love towards my mom. I was really grateful for that because I couldn’t handle it. I remember my aunt was calling me to come home because it was my shift and I’m like, but I don’t want to.

[00:14:22] Rosanne Moore: You were in your twenties before she died, you were young. Oh, sorry. Am I supposed to not say that?

[00:14:31] Sheri Glorioso: I’m still young. I have found the fountain of Youth.

[00:14:35] Rosanne Moore: Yes, but your youth then was like, that was a lot for a daughter.

[00:14:43] Sheri Glorioso: For any person.

[00:14:45] Rosanne Moore: Yeah, it would’ve been difficult for anybody, but it was a lot for you to be caring at that life stage, let’s put it that way.

I know one of the things we were both trying to make sense of was, how do we find God in the middle of this? What’s He doing? We were looking for answers, looking for ways to make sense of it. I know for myself, a lot of what had shaped my view of walking with God was, you figure out what God’s will is, you try to be obedient to it, and He blesses you. He might not bless you with money and worldly things, but certainly He’s going to bless you with meaning and things will have purpose and He’ll provide and you won’t be ground to dust. And we were both in situations that were just overwhelmingly grueling.

Just really difficult. And so what did it mean to trust? How did we make sense of that? What did faith look like? I think I went through a lot of stages. You were talking about the whole “He seems full of Himself.” I remember reading Hannah Whitall Smith, The Unselfishness of God, and thinking, “maybe He’s not as big a jerk as it seems” – because I had those questions too, it’s like, “You demand so much.” – I remember reading that book where she talks about everything that God does, even His call for us to glorify Him. If He is utterly unselfish in His nature, then everything He calls for us to do, even when it involves sacrifice, is ultimately good because He is good, He is unselfish.

At that time, that was very comforting. There would be later seasons where I’m like, are you sure about that? I think whenever I go through dark night seasons, wrestling with the goodness of God is probably something that I may do for the rest of my life.

That’s probably the issue of the struggle of doubt, of questioning, that I have the most in the seasons that have been darkest. That’s the question I wrestle with most. Not, is God powerful, but is He good? I have to come back to the cross again and again as evidence of his goodness.

[00:17:45] Sheri Glorioso: I’ve struggled with the cross for a long time. I’m a Christian walking with the Lord, but felt everybody’s “saved” but me. I just happened to be in the room at the right time. If I had come to Jesus sooner, I wouldn’t have so much pain in my life.

I saw healings going around and I was in the thick of depression and had all this stuff going on. I didn’t know what it was, but I’m like, how come everybody else gets something but me? What am I missing? I went very inward for a long time.

[00:18:16] Rosanne Moore: One of the things I think Larry talks about in Real Church is the danger of coming together in a place where the focus is on right living and behavior modification and not being able to struggle with the kind of things that you’re talking about.

Everybody has a story, everybody has underlying questions. You’ve been through school spiritual direction; Larry talked there about how we have ways as children before we have a knowledge of God that we wrongly define as life or death. This thing that feels so good, feels like that is the source of life for me, or this painful thing that feels like it has to be avoided at all costs, that is death. Whereas scripture defines life as drawing near to God and knowing God, being close to Him, and death as separating ourselves from Him, stepping back from Him. I wonder what it would’ve been like for either of us during those years of struggle that was so intense to be able to go beneath how you felt about depression and to be able to really name and find the gospel meeting you. The Lord’s done that over time; He’s gone to the core of that.

[00:19:59] Sheri Glorioso: But a little sooner, just saying,

[00:20:01] Rosanne Moore: I wonder what it would look like as believers if we were more focused on that inner story and finding God in that personal story of where we’re looking for life in the wrong places, like fearing death that’s not really death. It’s painful, it’s traumatic. It can be evil, but it doesn’t have to separate us from God. I wonder what it would’ve been like to have been able to look at that in spiritual community instead of to be wrestling with anxiety or depression and be told, oh, just don’t fear.

[00:20:42] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. Just give your fear to God and pray it’ll go away. I didn’t get a lot of over-spiritualizing depression, but I struggled with it so much because it affected me so much and it’s very self-focused.

As I’m battling this, I’m not available for my family. I’m just like, leave me alone. I’m having a bad day. And that’s not fair, there is a genetic component to this. There is a spiritual component to this. There’s so many things that were going into it, but now I finally feel like I could be depressed, but still be a mom. You know what I mean? To fight the depression. It’s becoming more common now for people to talk about – I hate the phrase – mental health issues; celebrities and whatever. That’s good, but I don’t know if everybody really has a full understanding of what it means and how it affects people. Because there’s that taboo, “Ooh, ooh, you’re taking whatever, you must not be trusting God,” or, “If you were really a Christian…” that kind of mindset. I didn’t experience that, but maybe I didn’t talk about it.

With the depression, it was very self-focused, so I don’t think I would’ve been able to be part of a church community to work through the way that Larry talks about: what’s church? I don’t think I would’ve been emotionally available to get there.

I had a lot of work when I first met Larry, I remember. What did he say, I had to take off…?

[00:22:20] Rosanne Moore: Take off the grave clothes.

[00:22:24] Sheri Glorioso: The grave clothes, yes. And start living. That was something like bumped me in the right direction – that phrase, at that conference. God’s appeared over the years in different places in my life where I’m like, I know this is God. I never stopped believing.

I just got to the point where there was no fellowship outside of Sunday, and if there was, it was like always a nice and polite conversation, and I’m not really good at nice polite conversation. “So how’s your dog? Are your toenails still bothering you?” That’s not where my brain goes. Tell me your heart and I’ll give you mine.

[00:23:12] Rosanne Moore: You get deeper.

[00:23:13] Sheri Glorioso: Then covid hit and there was no church, and then I started to get more clarity of who Jesus is, but I didn’t have anything to hold onto yet.You know what I mean? I was like, oh, so He’s funny, He has a sense of humor. He’s not this “holier than thou, you will obey me because I saved you.” So that’s what I feel has been missing, the heart of Jesus, because you can go to any church and you can get theology and you can get doctrine, but I need the heart of Jesus.

I really need the heart of Jesus because life is not easy. Stuff has happened to women over whatever, we’ve gotten the short end of the stick because we were told to be a certain way, and that’s not what God is saying for us to do and all of that. I hate that word, but that misogynistic stuff.

[00:24:11] Rosanne Moore: No, I think in the last few years things have come out in the SBC and other denominations; and not just denominations, of course it’s in Hollywood. But then to have it come out again and again, that abuse has been covered up in churches.

I think that has, for me, I’ve really wrestled with the question of, “Okay. I believe in Jesus. I know He hates this evil, but how do I do community with people who don’t seem to hate this evil?” I know you’ve wrestled with that too, how do we respond to this?

How do we respond to things that have been exposed? It’s not just, they didn’t know how to handle a situation well, but like you said, there’s deep-seated misogyny and I think idolatry of celebrities has also played a role. And it’s not just out there. You knew me during the season I spent 10 years in an organization that had a lot of abuse of people, and so I know some of the ways that I colluded with the organization. I accepted explanations and glossing over and was a part of that to maintain my position in that organization, that community. We conform; scripture gets misused to make us think we’re protecting the church, we’re protecting what God is doing because “He is not big enough to take care of His own church.”

[00:26:08] Sheri Glorioso: How warped is that? He only created the world in seven days.

[00:26:10] Rosanne Moore: It’s so twisted. It’s so warped. The whole idea that He actually gave His son to deal with sin, it was drastic. Sin is evil enough, drastic enough that it required the cross for our redemption. Yet we think we somehow need to cover this thing up to make things look good. If He was willing to take it that seriously, then we should too.

[00:26:42] Sheri Glorioso: “We might prevent people from coming to Jesus if they know that we sin. We’re not perfect, so we have to present perfect so we can draw in the lost. Because we’re not lost once we’re saved.”

[00:26:56] Rosanne Moore: Yeah, because “Jesus saves perfect people” right? “He doesn’t save sinners.” It’s so messed up. It’s such a distortion. That’s a good point though, because I think a lot of times what gets presented is that we’re saved by grace, but we’re sanctified by effort. One of the things that I loved most about Larry was the whole invitation to be willing to own where I am, not where I wish I was, not where I want to be, but to own where I am and to bring that to God again and say, yeah I still need a savior. Here I am. I still need a savior. To realize it’s almost counterintuitive. Instead of trying harder to be better, to be able to enter that darkness to bring it to Him. Not just enter it and wallow in it, but bring it into His presence, trusting that I’m going to be met with love and delight.

Not over what I may rest in sin over, but He still delights in me and He’s not shaken by my ability to fail. That does not shake Him at all. He’s able to handle it. Looking bad in the presence of love, as Larry talked about, the liberating power of looking bad in the presence of love has released in me the desire to live differently. Not the pressure to live differently, but the actual desire to live differently. It’s been quite a journey.

[00:28:52] Sheri Glorioso: You’re talking about the red dot that Larry talked about? That’s hard. That looking inward is not easy, but it relieves the pressure valve on something that’s ready to explode. When you’re being that honest and laying it down, even though we might have to do it again and again, you can breathe better. God knows I’m going through this. He knows why I feel this way. He knows how I feel. He’s not going to be shocked.

One of the other trick phrases is, “God allowed it.” Crap happens in life. Sorry, stuff happens in life. Bad things happen to good people, bad people, whatever. I had bad stuff happen. I was abused and I was told that God allowed it.

But then at the same time, I was told He was weeping next to me. So which is it? Was He sad or was He just saying, here, have her? I need to believe that He was weeping. Just because something happens doesn’t mean it’s God’s will in my opinion. I think people get in the way of God’s will and cause an effect that goes onward from the consequences and everything. Does that make sense?

[00:30:11] Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I think if it were His will for people to do evil, then He wouldn’t judge it. He wouldn’t wind up punishing it.

[00:30:24] Sheri Glorioso: Unfortunately you don’t always see the punishment here on earth, right?

[00:30:28] Rosanne Moore: No, but it’s promised that it will come; all things will be brought into the open and judged.

[00:30:34] Sheri Glorioso: We have choices, like the guy who drinks too much and hits another car and there’s people in there and they die. That wasn’t God’s will for that car to be there at that right time. Can He redeem it? Without a doubt. Will He? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean it was His will. That’s a big thing that I struggled with. I needed to get that out there.

[00:30:53] Rosanne Moore: I agree. I feel this way a lot too. It’s not enough for me to know there’s reasons, all that stuff does not help me. No, I need to know that His heart is even more broken over evil than mine is. That bridges things so that I can trust Him in the midst of things.

Last winter we did a webinar with Philip Yancy and I mentioned to him that his book, The Question That Never Goes Away, had been really faith saving for me at a really difficult season because he said in there Christianity is the only religion that gives us the language of protest, that other religions try to minimize evil, make it so that we should be able to just be okay and go on. And he said when Christians do that, they’re not being biblical. The Psalms are the language of protest. It’s God crying. It’s not just the Psalmist crying out against evil, but God Himself crying out against evil and what it does in the world, and promising that judgment and redemption will come.

That’s a good point, Sheri, I’m glad you brought that up, because I think for a lot of victims of abuse, it’s meant well. I’ve done this, I’ve been guilty of this. Sometimes it’s meant well of trying to reassure God’s going to redeem and all of that, but it ends up being minimizing and I think it’s an avoidance of pain rather than being willing to enter the pain.

[00:32:55] Sheri Glorioso: I think people use that language because they can’t do it themselves. Like you said, we all have a story, and we all have an ache in our hearts, and it might not be the same type of situation.

They have to stay in the mindset, I need to believe that this was God’s will in order for me to survive the pain of looking at it and going this really – can I say a bad word? – This really stinks.

It’s just not easy. I mentioned that recently at a Bible study because they were talking about God’s will. This was part of my confusion: somebody would use a scripture verse and say this is God’s will. Then somebody else would take another scripture and say that it’s not. So what’s real? My struggle for a long time has been, who are you? Where’s your heart and who are you? I haven’t given up on my faith, I just can’t take a theology class in church.

You know what I mean? Where’s your heart? I need to know your heart because if I know your heart and I know that you were there, and all those times that I went through my pain with my mother and with the abuse and a whole bunch of other stuff, then I could breathe. But if it’s because it was your will, that kind of makes it like you don’t really like me that much.

Does that make sense?

[00:34:23] Rosanne Moore: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s the will of God that we be holy as He is holy. That pretty much takes out all the crap that we do to one another off the table. What he does redemptively is His will, but that’s Him stepping into our evil. That’s not Him initiating the evil.

[00:34:47] Sheri Glorioso: When I mentioned that to the lady who was leading it, she goes, I think that we, as Christians, should not use that phrase, “He allowed it.” There’s so many horrors in this world, and I don’t think God’s going, “You should suffer this, and you should suffer that,” for any reason. It’s just that there’s evil in the world that interferes with who God wants us to be.

[00:35:12] Rosanne Moore: A fallen world is a serious thing. We talk about how we live in a fallen world. That’s just a thing to say, but you’re talking about the intricate, complicated impact of life in a fallen world is that granular brokenness. That’s not just a theological construct; that is a daily agonizing reality in so many ways.

We are getting close to the end of our time. I want to bring this back to how God met you recently in this whole thing of coming full circle, because we’re going to see what God does going forward.

You were just telling me that He really met you last weekend. I want to give you a chance to talk about that.

[00:36:02] Sheri Glorioso: It was so exciting because I didn’t expect it, but He is the God of the unexpected. For years I was like, love God, love people. That was my theology. I was searching for the heart of Jesus and trying to find a place where I’ll belong that will share that, because there’s a, them versus us with Christianity; you can’t hang out with the sinners – although we’re supposed to because they need to be saved. – There’s, “this person has a certain sin in their life so you can’t be their friend” or, “they’re not worthy of love” and stuff like that.

I was really struggling with that a lot. I was really struggling with what’s true. “Who are you, what is true about you? Are you this stern, blah, blah, blah. Do you have a heart?” Back and forth. And then, for whatever reason, I listened to an Easter service online – which, I hadn’t been to church online or in person since pre-covid.

I just listened, and for the first time, my wall came down and I connected and it felt so good. It just felt so good as she was sharing about the resurrection and who Jesus is and what we have with Him. I was like, wow. So the next week I went to church live and in person, and God used her to cover every issue that was in my heart.

[00:37:35] Rosanne Moore: That’s so cool.

[00:37:37] Sheri Glorioso: She just gave this incredible sermon. It was so Spirit-filled and it was just so amazing. In my head I’m thinking, what about A, B, C?

And then she said, “Oh yeah, and A, B, C, blah, blah, blah. We all have those moments when the service was meant for you, but every single thing this woman spoke was like, “Sheri, this is for you.”

[00:38:07] Rosanne Moore: She was being led by the Spirit of God in that moment and it’s so evident that He’s speaking through her and to you. That’s awesome.

[00:38:16] Sheri Glorioso: I like the part that I’m saying “her.” Just saying, I didn’t think that would happen. But she’s awesome. She’s amazing. She’s the real deal. She doesn’t worry about forgetting what she’s saying, or losing a thought. She just puts it all out there, and that’s what I need. Not, “this is what we SHOULD do, and this is what the Bible says.” I mean, we need to listen to the Bible, but don’t give me, uh…

[00:38:45] Rosanne Moore: She’s incarnating it. She’s not just teaching it from her head. She’s incarnating it.

[00:38:50] Sheri Glorioso: That’s a good word for it, yes, that’s very much what it was. At the end she said, “If you’ve been away from God or you’ve been doing this, or you’ve been doing that” – everything I’ve been doing – “if you want to come up to the altar.” I had a friend who was behind me who had always asked, “why haven’t I seen you in church?” We ended up sitting in front of her. She didn’t really give me a choice, just put her hand on my back and led me up to the altar.

[00:39:16] Rosanne Moore: We all need friends like that sometimes,

[00:39:20] Sheri Glorioso: It was just what I needed. She prayed exactly what I needed. After the service, I just got to tell her how she was used by God to help me. It was a really cool thing. It was a really cool thing because I never had that kind of direct instruction come from somebody and I really didn’t know her well.

You know what I mean? But I like that we have the same background and she’s just the real deal, so I feel like I could trust “here.” Not that she’ll be perfect or anything, but God is working in this church.

[00:39:55] Rosanne Moore: That’s the thing, right? Larry talked about this in Real Church, you could meet together in an organization and it can be no different from a country club. You can do good things, you can feed the poor, you can do various good things, but what is it that happens in our midst that only the Spirit of God can do? That pastor was allowing the Spirit of God to move through her. You were opening your heart to hear His voice and your friend behind you was obviously being led by the Spirit too.

What does it look like to be tuned in to the Spirit of God and allow our coming together as the people of God to encourage one another. That’s a beautiful example of what only God can do.

Thank you for sharing that. We’re going to need to wrap up for today. This has been so fun, Sheri. I’m going to do it again at some point. Thank you for being with me.

[00:40:58] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you for having me.

[00:40:59] Rosanne Moore: We got through this without anybody spitting their drink into the computer from laughing.

[00:41:05] Sheri Glorioso: I’m thirsty, but I’m going to wait.

[00:41:09] Rosanne Moore: We have many of those memories.

[00:41:12] Sheri Glorioso: When we were talking, pictures popped up in my head of those moments.

[00:41:18] Rosanne Moore: Yes. You know what? It was funny, on the way to school today, we took one of my son’s friends who’s here in the neighborhood, and he accidentally said photogenic memory instead of photographic memory. And I’m like, that’s the memories where you look good in all of the things you remember, right? Those are our memories, Sheri. Oh dear. It’s so good.

[00:41:38] All right, we are going to wrap up for today. Everybody, thank you for joining us. I hope you are encouraged and if you want a copy of Real Church – either to read on your own or to be a part of our reading and relating book club discussions – go to the Larger Story website and you can get one there. Actually, you can get one “buy one get one 50% off,” there’s a sale right now. We hope you’ll join us in our reading community and see you back next week. Thanks so much.

[00:42:15] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you. All righty.

[00:42:16] Rosanne Moore: Bye.

Blog

You’re So Strong

April 20, 2023April 20, 2023
by Larger Story

Becoming Me without You Blog
By Jeanie Stirling

“You’re so strong!” These words, meant to be encouraging, actually feel more like a heavy weight has been added to an already exhausting burden. We don’t feel strong. We’re just trying to survive our loss one day at a time, one step at a time. We weren’t given a choice. We didn’t have the option of saying “no” to this whole loss and grief experience. We’re still alive, stumbling along trying to make sense of it all. We’re attempting to walk in a whole new world where our life partner is missing and we’re becoming a different person.

So instead of saying,”You’re so strong,” why not say something like this:

“I appreciate the way you keep showing up even when it’s hard.”

“Thank you for sharing your experience with me.”

“The way you are handling this (insert a specific thing) is really amazing.”

“This must feel impossible. Are there things I can help you with?”

Then allow time to listen. There aren’t many people willing to listen. “You’re so strong” and “You’re doing so well” make us feel unseen. I remember bursting into tears after a friend commented, “You’re doing so well” on my Facebook page. I wasn’t doing particularly well at that time. But the only contact I had with this friend was a Facebook comment. She had no idea how I was doing, and I felt deeply alone after reading her comment. I’m sure she meant it as encouragement, but it actually produced more feelings of isolation.

So, what should you do? Instead of commenting “You’re doing so well,” you might call on the phone. Say, “Just checking in with you today. I’m not sure what to say or what you need, but thought I would give you a call and see how things are going for you this week.”

Don’t ask, “How ARE you?” That question puts us on the spot and produces anxiety. Sometimes we simply don’t have the words to answer that question.

It would be helpful if friends realized that a deep silence overtakes your soul when your spouse dies. Lonely is not a strong enough word for it. Attempting to understand how that might feel and having the courage to connect in some way really means so much. Even if you don’t feel particularly close to someone who is grieving, your support could lead to a deeper relationship. The hard truth is that the friends you think are showing up for them probably aren’t.

“Call me if you need anything” is another thing we hear a lot. We don’t know what we need, and we don’t have the energy to call you. We’re feeling paralyzed while at the same time having to make a hundred critical decisions in the first few days and weeks. Having to take the initiative to call you is just too much. Say this instead:

“I’m at the grocery store, can I pick anything up for you?”

“I’ll be over at 5:00 to drop off dinner.”

“Can I pick up the kids and get them to and from soccer practice this week? I’ll be over on Saturday to mow your lawn.”

“I’ll move your trash cans out to the curb.”

“I’m committed to praying for you every day this week.”

“Can we pick you up for church on Sunday?”

“Let’s go out for breakfast. What day is best for you this week? I’ll drive.”

“I was thinking of (name) and remembered (some event). I miss him, too.”

Saying the name and remembering is a very powerful comfort to those who are grieving. Thinking it will make us sad or remind us of our loss, people hesitate to say anything. Believe me, we haven’t forgotten, and having others remember with us is a gift. Whether it’s tears or laughter that follow the comment doesn’t matter. We feel better knowing someone is remembering with us.

Grief is frightening both for the one who is grieving and for the friends who want to come alongside. Both need courage. Pray for it. Then act on what God is prompting you to do.

The words you share with us are important. Even if you say the wrong thing, can only think of platitudes, start a comment with “well, at least,” once we get past our initial shock, we appreciate that you tried to connect. Saying nothing and avoiding us is devastating. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Blog

When a Family Caregiver is No Longer a Caregiver

March 15, 2023March 17, 2023
by Larger Story

Becoming Me, Without You Blog Series
An Introduction by Rachael Crabb

“Things are not as they were
Things are not as they should be
Things are not as they could be
Things are not as they will be
They are what they are
And God is in the center
Of what they are”

~Coleman & Tracy Pratt

Tracy Pratt is our guest columnist this month, and I’m introducing her to you with a story about a painting. When Larry and I moved to Charlotte, I dragged along two doors from an old wardrobe. I had pictured those doors with a Narnia scene on them for Larry’s office, forgetting that his office walls were all bookcases. Determined to pursue my vision, I approached Tracy with my wild thought. She told me she hadn’t painted in years but would try it. A few months later, the doors were hanging on the stairway to the loft, and folks had no trouble recognizing Narnia with that lampost in the painting.

This past weekend, Coleman and Tracy came to “reclaim” the doors. (I no longer have the walls to hang those doors.) Within a few hours of them driving away, they sent a picture of the doors hanging in their home.

With tears in my eyes, I tell you that I am so grateful for the friendship of Coleman and Tracy. I found her book Anticipatory Grief: The Journey of a Thousand Losses and Endless Grace deeply meaningful. Check out her website, and be blessed.

When a Family Caregiver is no longer a Caregiver

“Lord, please, help me. Please, give me strength. Please, heal her. I know you can. Just say the word.”

I often whispered those words from the day of my daughter’s diagnosis at five weeks old until her death at age 24. Fighting cystic fibrosis daily governed her life and mine, as I was her primary caregiver. Weeks after she died, I sat in the sunroom of our home in 4:30 am darkness across from my disheveled reflection in the picture window. The flame of a cinnamon scented candle sizzled between us. I closed my eyes and slowly inhaled the new morning and God’s new mercies. Hannah’s broken body lay in a grave, but she was breathing free with Jesus. I imagined her head thrown back, laughing. The thought made me smile. I opened my eyes, longing to see her sitting across from me. Dawn had erased my disheveled reflection from the window, replacing it with our garden bathed in the orange glow of the rising sun. Without warning, panic paralyzed my body. It was my first awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a natural and common aftermath for a family caregiver after the loved one dies.

Now I had a new repetitive prayer: “Lord, please help me. Please, Abba, have mercy.

Soon after that event I found a TIME Magazine featuring why and how the human body works under stress. The stress thermostat, the adrenal glands, sends out hormones to adjust our minds and emotions to stress, both positive (eustress) or negative (distress). When stress is on overload and becomes normal, the hormones cannot keep up. They misfire or shut down. When the cause of stress ceases, the mind, emotions, and body continue to operate in a heightened sense of danger, which is PTSD, a common experience for war veterans.

Abba gave me grace to be broken and mercy to grieve through that magazine. He gave me the understanding that Hannah and I had been comrades in the war with cystic fibrosis. Every family caregiver is on the front line, assisting their loved one in the fight to stop disease from gaining ground. Emotionally, there is no room to pause or disengage. The journey begins with more questions than answers. A strategy is formed. Life moves into an erratic rhythm of victory and defeat. Strategies change. Emotions swing the spectrum between hope and disappointment in the tug of war for dreams, hope, and life. “What if…” lurks in the shadows. Echoes of distressful events reverberate in the imagination. After the loved one dies, the actual stress ceases, but the phantom stress lingers creating a false but very real panic.

The caregiver, no longer a caregiver, has lost purpose, a bond, and the relationship to that family member. The grief is layered. Re-entry into daily life begins with grieving what was. A new normal will evolve, but first there is the journey of healing through grief. I had three safe places to grieve. The first was a trusted friend who was outside my everyday world. The friend asked questions not to give answers but to facilitate what was behind the emotions and thinking. She was not in a hurry to fix my panic, grief, anger at others, and feelings of abandonment and purposelessness. She was intent on what was certain. God is in the center of what things are. When we lose our purpose, He has not lost His. When we lose our story, His does not change. When we lose the bond and relationship of our family member, Abba has not lost His bond and relationship with us.

The second safe place to grieve was a journal. I practice a few rules to keep myself honest in my imperfection:

Use a spiral bound unlined notebook
Only use initials for names
Never erase, leave the mess
Think/write with no editing (I call it “thriting.”)

Between dialogues with my friend, I journaled belief and unbelief about scripture, the highs and lows of emotion, dark and hopeful thoughts, and truth about my uncertainty and His certainty. My third safe place was GriefShare. This is a parachurch ministry that leads people through the grief journey after loss on a path towards God, healing and hope.

It has been sixteen years since I sat in our sunroom at 4:30 am. Re-entry into life and discovering my new normal has slowly evolved. This includes a new location next to our son and his family, a new family relationship with my daughter-in-law and grandchildren. An online ministry with family caregivers will soon begin, Artful GriefCare. While the panic sometimes surfaces, laughter, hope, and creativity fill daily life. Abba gave mercy. He gives mercy and will.

By Tracy K. Pratt

Tracy K. Pratt creates art to inspire hope and beauty in heart and home. She provides spiritual direction, healthy habits and community online at Artful GriefCare to family caregivers in their journey of anticipatory grief.

Blog

Choosing to Live Again

February 16, 2023February 20, 2023
by Larger Story

Jan Richardson has said, “It came home to me that the most profound blessings we will ever know are those that meet us in the place of our deepest loss and inspire us to choose to live again.”

The other day I was on a Zoom call with some of the women I took to Switzerland last September. We didn’t know each other before that trip and met each other in person for the first time at the Interlaken train station. We spent nine days together walking the beautiful trails of the Bernese-Oberland area.

It was life changing for all of us.

Here’s why. Often as widows, someone will comment to us, “Well, at least you still have your memories.” And yes, we do have memories. We have many years of memories, but if we’re living there, we’re not really living.

I think we honor our husbands by making new memories. Having new experiences and adventures was the impetus behind my planning walking trips in some of my favorite places in the world. Our adventuring in Switzerland made each of us feel more alive, more present in the moment, and more hopeful that there is a lot of good living ahead of us. I think our husbands were smiling down on us, proud that as one member of the group said, “Swiss girls rock!”

In Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons, Jan Richardson asks the question: “What does it mean to re-imagine a life, especially when the life we have landed in is not the one we envisioned?” She responds to her own question with a blessing. Here are the final two stanzas:

This blessing

will not fix you,

will not mend you,

will not give you

false comfort;

it will not talk to you

about one door opening

when another one closes.

It will simply

sit itself beside you

among the shards

and gently turn your face

toward the direction

from which the light

will come,

gathering itself

about you

as the world begins

again.

—Jan Richardson, from “Blessing When the World Is Ending”

We “Swiss girls” continue to deepen our friendship and celebrate each other’s growth, each other’s courage, each other becoming a new person in a new world we never could have imagined.

We all have January and February anniversary dates of the death of our husbands. Most of our friends and even family don’t know what to do with us as those dates approach, making those days feel more isolating and perhaps more sad than they need to be.

But during our Zoom call the other day, we decided that in remembrance of our husbands we would set up a Zoom call on Valentine’s Day, the purpose being to each share how we met our husbands. We don’t get asked how we met, and few friends will even mention our husband’s name to us, so having this time with each other felt positive, even joyful.

We shared old memories, precious memories, but in the context of new friendships and steps forward in becoming more of our new selves. It was a win, win!

How do you remember with friends who have lost a spouse? Does fear prevent you from saying their name or telling one of your own stories about them?

By Jeanie Stirling

Blog

Looking Back as I Go Forward

January 19, 2023January 25, 2023
by Rachael Crabb

Becoming Me, Without You Blog Series

On my second birthday without Larry, I received the book, Learning to be Me Without You, by Paula Freeman. I read it in one day, underlining as I read, eager to know what this all meant for me.

The book also sent me down memory lane as I thought about meeting Larry when I was ten, becoming “an item” when we were twelve, and getting married at almost twenty-two. Fifty-four wedding anniversaries followed, with two sons, two miscarriages, and five grandchildren. I’m so thankful that all five grandchildren got to know their Pop. When he was first diagnosed with cancer in July 1997 as our first grandchild was on the way, I remember telling Larry that I didn’t want to be a grandma alone. We were able to celebrate the births and lives of all five together.

Continuing down memory lane, I thought of the different homes and places where we had lived. I thought about all the places in the world we had visited in ministry, how we were very different, but still a team.

We lived with anticipatory grief for nearly twenty-five years after that first diagnosis. And then one day, Larry said, “Enough.” When he asked me and the boys if it was okay to no longer be poked, prodded, scanned, or dependent on medication, we supported his decision and released him. He so wanted to go HOME.

Through this, I didn’t have to learn to be me without him; I had to become me without him. That’s why Jeanie and I chose the title “Becoming Me Without You” for this blog.

How has this process been for me after almost two years?

I sold our Charlotte home.
I moved into one apartment and then into another one more suitable for me.
I’ve met many new people and been more involved with my family.

I’m still very much in process, but one day when I was reading Day 56 of the daily email from GriefShare, I was surprised to read a quote by Larry. It said, “Sometimes the best remedy for grief is finding some way to touch somebody else’s life.” I took that as a direct message to continue reaching out.

Having people in my home and hosting gatherings is something I’ve always done, but now I am deciding to do it alone. I hosted a “longest day of the year” evening in June. As people left my apartment, I gave them an envelope with an introduction to Larry and a copy of that email inside along with a note thanking them for helping me to be other-centered. The responses in the next few days were wonderful!

It’s my goal to “make God look good” by the way I treat others. This ministry of hospitality to the people in my apartment complex offers me opportunities to do that as I become more me without him.

How are you doing that?

Blog

Becoming Me, Without You

December 15, 2022February 15, 2023
by Larger Story

A New Blog Column

Introduction by Rachael Crabb:

I’d like to introduce you to Jeanie Stirling who has been an encouragement to me. Jeanie is a few years ahead of me on the widow path and has led the way for me as we have talked, cried, and laughed together during these last months. Larry and I first met Al and Jeanie when they were leading the Sunday school class we joined in Colorado. They also went through the MABC program, were in a couples group with us, and over the years became good friends. The friendship not only survived, but deepened as we all lived together for several months when they came from Hungary for Al’s cancer treatments at the Denver VA.

Jeanie was with me when I received the letter from John that I shared with you last month. As was said, the letter became the impetus for chat dates with John and this blog. Jeanie will be contributing to the blog as we discuss grief and the process of what we are calling “becoming me, without you.” I’ll be discussing this new title next month. For now, here are some thoughts from Jeanie….

Thoughts on Widowhood

Amanda Held Opelt in an interview about her new book, A Hole in the World, said, “I do not think we can say of grief, this too shall pass. There is no going back. A new landscape has been carved by grief’s rushing waters. And if we are to survive, we must make a home in it, however that might look.” She went on to say, “You will always carry the burden of grief with you, but you do develop the strength to carry it. You do develop the skill set I think is required to live a life of grief. And so to someone who’s in the thick of it, who’s really deep in the woods of it and can’t see a way out, I would say, be patient with yourself. You will develop the strength to carry this.”

The moment Al took his last breath every single thing about my life changed. Many people don’t understand the extent of the loss. But it’s huge. The primary, overwhelming loss of your partner in life and best friend is followed by the many secondary losses that we as widows, in our unwanted new identity, experience. Secondary losses can include loss of a way of life, purpose, identity, loss of friendships, community, intimacy, income, dreams for the future, confidence, health, a shared memory of your life, laughter, faith . . . With little to no experience with great loss, we have no choice but to navigate through these losses and in time find the strength to move forward while honoring the life we had and honoring the man we loved in that life. Does this mean we’ve completed the grieving process? No. Does this mean that happy moments now are no longer tinged with bittersweetness? No. But in moving forward, developing the skill set Amanda mentions, we open ourselves to new possibilities. We make new memories. We take the loss, the grief, and the woman we were before along with us and move forward with what I believe to be bigger hearts.

As you or others you know navigate these losses, remember to be patient. Patient with yourself. Patient with others. Patient with those who simply don’t get it. The title of Amanda’s book says it well – there’s a hole in our world. It will always be there. We will never be the same. But we can also become more than we ever imagined we could be.

About Jeanie Stirling

Al and Jeanie served in various ministries over the years that all had a focus on hospitality. They served 22 years overseas first with Cadence International in Germany and then with Ministry Essentials in Hungary. The Sunday School they led in Littleton became a real community that Larry refers to in his book, Connecting.

Jeanie continues in a ministry of hospitality opening her home to her local community for various activities and most recently leading adventure trips for widows to Switzerland and England. She realized the importance of continuing to travel and add adventure to her life when she walked 350 miles of the Camino de Santiago by herself to mark her 70th birthday and celebrate the life ahead of her.

Dancing With The Trinity | with Kep Crabb & Duncan Sprague | Ep. 1

We are excited to announce our next podcast series titled, Dancing With The Trinity. Our hosts Kep Crabb and Duncan Sprague will discuss topics centered around relational spirituality, and ponder what it looks like to dance with the Trinity.

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More

Who Knew?

It was an unexpected reminder of my loss, another surprising realization that widowhood continually impacts me in so many different ways, both large and small.

Question #7 | with Kep Crabb, Ken Crabb & Duncan Sprague | Ep. 69

Kep, Ken, and Duncan have a candid conversation on what it means to be a Spirit-led person. Join them as they discuss the seventh and final question of the seven questions of spiritual theology: How can we cooperate with the Spirit’s work?

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More