How Can I Return to Normal Life After Tragedy?
00:00:00.000 | Well, how do we return to normal life after a life-altering loss?
00:00:11.240 | Today's question is from a Brooklyn woman named Andrea.
00:00:14.640 | Dear Pastor John, she writes, "My husband went home to be with the Lord two months ago
00:00:18.720 | after a four-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
00:00:23.400 | We were both divorcees who met in October of 2019.
00:00:26.400 | God restored our lives and we married in October of 2020.
00:00:29.680 | I'm very thankful to have been married to my late husband.
00:00:32.880 | The Lord had restored our lives in relationship.
00:00:35.920 | There was so much joy to live with someone who loves you so much.
00:00:40.560 | My late husband had a son now 20 years old.
00:00:42.600 | We expected to spend the rest of our lives as a family unit, but our blissful days together
00:00:47.480 | were short and our worlds came crashing down.
00:00:53.100 | We held on to the Word of God, expecting a miracle healing right to the end.
00:00:58.160 | He was not healed and didn't recover.
00:01:00.080 | In fact, he suffered a lot of pain in the end.
00:01:04.240 | Many of our friends supported and prayed for us, but now after my husband's passing, I
00:01:09.320 | can't find any purpose in life.
00:01:12.260 | Is this normal to feel this way?
00:01:14.640 | Friends ask me how I am, if I'm returning to work.
00:01:18.320 | I can only say I'm okay, but deep in my heart, I am not okay.
00:01:23.300 | How do I continue to live my life?
00:01:25.160 | My heart feels very heavy.
00:01:27.480 | I tried to listen to sermons and read the Bible, but nothing seems to be getting into
00:01:32.840 | my heart.
00:01:33.840 | Thank you and God bless.
00:01:37.160 | Andrea asks, is it normal to feel this way, namely, not being able to find purpose in
00:01:45.680 | life after her husband passed away?
00:01:49.920 | There are so many factors that affect how we function after a major loss that it's hard
00:01:58.600 | to say what is normal because everybody's situation is so different.
00:02:05.040 | Age differences, employment differences, health differences, family differences, wider relationship,
00:02:13.400 | church, location, gifting, maturity, faith, and on and on.
00:02:20.480 | So many differences, but I think I can say with some degree of certainty that the more
00:02:27.640 | your life is embedded in or intertwined with what or whom you've lost, whether it's a spouse
00:02:38.800 | or job or health or home or child, then the more normal it is to feel disoriented and
00:02:47.480 | aimless.
00:02:48.480 | So that's true.
00:02:49.480 | I think the answer will be closer to yes, it's normal, than no, it's not normal.
00:02:56.960 | But Andrea's real question, it seems to me, is not so much am I normal, but what do I
00:03:03.000 | do?
00:03:04.280 | How do I continue to live my life, she says.
00:03:08.040 | So here are some thoughts from scripture, because God is the one we have to turn to
00:03:15.160 | ultimately, isn't it?
00:03:17.120 | Number one, the first thing I would say is wait for the Lord.
00:03:23.600 | Don't assume that the way you feel today is the way it will always be.
00:03:31.040 | In time, the Lord will change things.
00:03:34.520 | He will.
00:03:36.680 | Which means that this is a God-appointed season of waiting.
00:03:43.440 | I've learned this over years and years from watching my own heart and counseling lots
00:03:51.000 | of people.
00:03:52.000 | I've learned that Americans, or maybe you could say modern people in general, want quick
00:03:59.500 | solutions to our problems.
00:04:02.080 | We don't like waiting.
00:04:05.800 | But God is seldom in a hurry.
00:04:07.760 | It's amazing.
00:04:08.760 | God is simply seldom in a hurry.
00:04:12.560 | It's almost as if he prefers the slow pace of healing and strengthening.
00:04:19.880 | Early in my ministry, in fact, six weeks after starting my pastorate in the summer of 1980,
00:04:27.600 | I preached a sermon about waiting from Psalm 40.
00:04:33.320 | It's Desiring God.
00:04:34.320 | I checked it out yesterday.
00:04:36.680 | It's called In the Pits with a King.
00:04:40.200 | Because David in Psalm 40 says, "I waited patiently for the Lord."
00:04:47.440 | And that's the key sentence.
00:04:49.680 | He doesn't say how long he waited.
00:04:51.840 | And I'm glad he didn't say it was a week or a month or a year.
00:04:55.840 | I waited patiently for the Lord.
00:04:58.960 | He inclined to me and heard my cry.
00:05:01.880 | Yes, eventually he did.
00:05:04.560 | He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet on a
00:05:12.360 | rock and made my steps secure.
00:05:17.200 | He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
00:05:22.440 | Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
00:05:25.800 | Those are the first verses of Psalm 40.
00:05:27.880 | So David is looking back on a season of misery.
00:05:33.480 | He called it pit, miry bog.
00:05:37.840 | And in this situation, his strategy was, "I waited and I cried to the Lord."
00:05:47.240 | And I'm glad he didn't say how long, a week, a month, a year.
00:05:53.720 | That's the calling on all Christians in various degrees, in various times in this life.
00:06:01.360 | Nobody escapes it.
00:06:02.800 | We all will find ourselves in seasons where we have no choice but to wait for the Lord,
00:06:09.760 | unless we're going to just rebel and throw in the towel, which would be very foolish.
00:06:15.560 | David even gives us an explanation of what God was doing in this appointed season of
00:06:22.600 | waiting.
00:06:23.600 | He says that God eventually comes.
00:06:25.960 | He puts our feet on solid ground.
00:06:27.960 | He puts a song in our mouth.
00:06:32.760 | Many see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
00:06:37.200 | In other words, this is evangelism.
00:06:39.160 | This is God's strategy to draw people to trust in him by watching us pass through these pits
00:06:48.920 | that we have to wait in.
00:06:51.200 | The effect of David's waiting and eventual deliverance was, in effect, for the good of
00:06:57.840 | other people's faith.
00:06:59.960 | They trust the Lord because David's patient waiting moved them to trust the Lord.
00:07:08.120 | One of my favorite hymns puts it like this, "He knows the time for joy and truly will
00:07:14.160 | send it when he sees it meet.
00:07:18.360 | When he has tried and purged thee duly and found thee free from all deceit."
00:07:26.280 | So Andrea, God has his purposes for your season of loss and sorrow and even aimlessness.
00:07:36.840 | Trust him in it.
00:07:38.760 | Wait patiently for the Lord.
00:07:40.880 | He will come.
00:07:43.400 | Psalm 23 says he will restore your soul.
00:07:48.520 | Right now, your soul feels numb, maybe even dead, unresponsive, but that's why you must
00:07:56.440 | wait.
00:07:58.200 | God promises, "I will restore."
00:08:01.120 | And the word is "cause to return your soul."
00:08:04.360 | It's as if the soul is languishing.
00:08:07.240 | It's numb.
00:08:08.840 | It's dead.
00:08:09.840 | I will restore your soul.
00:08:13.480 | Second, I would say think much about the preciousness of Christ alongside of the preciousness of
00:08:23.520 | your husband.
00:08:26.000 | When your memory calls up sweet and wonderful experiences with your husband, let the power
00:08:33.280 | of those affections intensify your love for Christ.
00:08:40.760 | Because Ephesians 5 says that your marriage had that aim in the first place.
00:08:49.360 | Marriage is meant to be a portrayal, a drama of Christ's love for the church and the church's
00:08:55.400 | commitment to Christ.
00:08:57.440 | It was meant to help us feel the wonder and pleasure of what a relationship with Christ
00:09:04.760 | is like.
00:09:07.160 | So as your memory brings to your mind and to your heart how much you and your husband
00:09:13.760 | loved each other and how committed you were to each other, translate those affections,
00:09:20.760 | or you could use the musical analogy of transpose those affections into another key so that
00:09:30.400 | the husband love is translated into, transposed into the music of Christ love.
00:09:39.760 | Say something like this to your husband.
00:09:44.120 | I miss you so much.
00:09:46.700 | You were very, very precious to me.
00:09:50.800 | There is a huge hole in my life where you were.
00:09:56.640 | So Jesus, I know you are even more precious than that.
00:10:03.000 | If I did not have you, Jesus, I would miss my very life.
00:10:09.080 | There would be a great unfillable hole in my soul.
00:10:13.920 | But I do have you, Jesus, and you are my true husband.
00:10:19.560 | I pray that you would help me feel for you and more the intensity of what I feel for
00:10:26.520 | the man I have lost.
00:10:29.040 | Something like that.
00:10:30.040 | I think the reason God gives us so much pleasure in our spouse is to give us a taste of the
00:10:40.600 | pleasure that there is in belonging to Jesus.
00:10:44.600 | And so it follows that the pain we feel with the loss of our spouse can be another intensification
00:10:54.160 | of what it means to belong to Christ.
00:10:58.240 | And then third, I would say pray Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24.
00:11:07.240 | Touch me, O God, and know my heart.
00:11:10.480 | Try me and know my thoughts.
00:11:13.680 | See if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
00:11:21.200 | And the reason I say this is because we should always honestly reckon with the possibility
00:11:29.320 | that our love for our spouse could be a disordered love, meaning it might be encroaching on our
00:11:39.040 | love for Jesus.
00:11:41.240 | Jesus said, "Whoever loves family members more than me is not worthy of me."
00:11:47.200 | So we should regularly go before the Lord and ask him to reveal our hearts.
00:11:54.640 | "Lord, is there anything, is there anyone who is competing with you for my supreme affections?"
00:12:05.040 | Because if that happens, it will almost certainly make the loss of that person more disabling
00:12:14.320 | than it ought to be.
00:12:16.640 | And then finally, number four, while you're waiting for the Lord to restore your joy and
00:12:23.000 | purposefulness, ask him to reveal what he aims to teach you in this season that you
00:12:34.120 | could learn from him and from the Christian life in no other way.
00:12:40.360 | And the reason I say that is because of Psalm 119 verses 67 and 71.
00:12:47.280 | They're amazing.
00:12:48.800 | "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word."
00:12:54.600 | Or verse 71, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes."
00:13:03.520 | In other words, don't waste your sorrow, Andrea.
00:13:08.480 | Don't waste the season of loss.
00:13:14.040 | God has gifts for you and through you for others.
00:13:19.000 | Ask him what they are and then take hold of them.
00:13:23.640 | Perhaps write them in a journal and then let him use you in the lives of others.
00:13:30.720 | He will set your feet on a rock.
00:13:33.720 | He will put a new song in your mouth.
00:13:37.360 | Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
00:13:41.560 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the very honest question, Andrea, and for
00:13:46.840 | bringing us into your life like this.
00:13:49.400 | And if you want to ask Pastor John a question of your own, type it out, email it to us at
00:13:53.960 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:13:56.600 | That's our email address.
00:13:58.120 | Askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:13:59.120 | Well, a lot of youth ministries focus on topical messages about life application.
00:14:07.680 | That's their main focus.
00:14:09.240 | But one youth pastor has been wondering if a better way forward is to preach expositional
00:14:13.800 | messages through whole books of the Bible.
00:14:17.560 | Next time, Pastor John will share three key considerations for how to use youth meetings
00:14:21.200 | to build students into a deeper understanding of their Bibles and to set them up for a deeper
00:14:26.140 | encounter with God.
00:14:28.240 | I'm your host, Tony Barenke.
00:14:29.240 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:14:30.440 | [END]
00:14:31.440 | 1
00:14:31.440 | ... And I still cry every time I wake up because the world I live in is not fair.