Writing Your Chapter Two: When Your Heart Starts Waking Up Again

Writing Your Chapter Two 

When Your Heart Starts Waking Up Again

      Grief can feel like a long, cold, dark, lonely winter.  Life feels like it's buried under the ground by inches of frost and ice.  There are moments during the earliest stages of grief where you feel like nothing will ever grow again.  Imagine the weather changing and having to endure multiple years of unending winter.  You start to forget what spring feels like, what the warmth on your face feels like, you forget the beauty of a flower bursting forth from the soil.  That is exactly how grief felt for me.  When Tiffanie passed away a part of me died and was buried with her.  I knew there would come a day when happiness and joy would return....but for the time being it felt so foreign.  I didn't even want to seek it out.  But one of the strangest parts of grief is realizing that, one day, your heart begins to wake up again.  When new love arrives at your door step, it can feel like ice melting.

      This is the first part of a short series entitled "Writing Your Chapter Two."  The focus of this series is an incredibly heavy, but needed discussion among people that are grieving.  I will be focusing on dating, complications of dating while grieving, and asking if your heart is actually ready for that big step.  This is by no means "Gospel" but instead it's meant to share my personal experience along with personal advice on how a widow or a widower can proceed going forward.  There are countless land mines in front of the grieving person when they start taking steps forward into the arena of dating.  There will be countless people who have never stepped foot on the land mine field giving you advice and making comments, but maybe it would be better to heed the words of someone who has walked across the field and found success.

      Let's start by talking about the title of "Chapter Two."  I had never heard that phrase prior to entering into life as a widower.  It didn't take long to learn this new language.  Widows and widowers call their next love their chapter two.  I personally like that title, while others don't like it at all.  It's called chapter two because it's a second chapter of loving someone in this life, but to be fair with you it's a totally different story because it's with someone totally new and different.  But, it's a turning of the page while always remembering what was written before hand.  A grieving person NEVER forgets who came before them.  They carry that love deeply in their hearts while building a love for a new person.

      Widows and widowers typically want to fall in love again.  Not all of them, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Some never want to love a new person, and that is totally acceptable.  Most of them start looking for love with online dating profiles or meet ups.  New love can be very intentional, or it can come as a total surprise.  I know for me, new love came in the most unexpected way.  Les and I met in an online group dedicated to widows and widowers.  It wasn't a dating group, it was simply a place to find community. A  matter of a lot of the men that I work alongside belong to that page.  I joined the group in order to find a place to belong, where my voice could be heard, to have a safe space to share what I was feeling without having anyone's judging eyes on me.  I found that on the page, but I ended up finding more.  One day Les and I connected.  It started with a simple Facebook message and eventually developed into a video call.

      Leslie had lost her husband three months prior to Tiffanie.  They served as missionaries in Uganda and they had two children.  She loved Jesus and was living a life as a surrendered Christ follower.  I admired her right away, but I had no feelings.  That wasn't the goal.  But then, over time, the snow started to melt.  It reminded me of "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe."  The White Witch brought endless cold, it was always winter, and never Christmas.  Leslie made me laugh, smile, and slowly but surely, little sprouts started to spring forth from the soil.  Love started to grow.

      For some widowers it happens when a woman makes them laugh for the first time.  For others it's when they catch themselves looking forward to conversation.  For me personally my heart would race each time I heard the Facebook messenger tone because I was hoping it would be her.  For other men it's when they want to shave and look presentable again.  It's like the Beauty and the Beast song, there was something there that wasn't there before!

      But then, something else happens that most grieving people didn't expect right away.  They feel guilt or feeling like they were betraying their first love.  I didn't wrestle with this much, but I know for a lot of grieving people they feel a strong pull of tension between their love of their late spouse, and the newly developing love.  New love can be confusing.  I think most people, including us that are grieving, expect there to be a day when we stop loving our late spouse or at least stop thinking about them, but that's simply not the case.  I love Tiffanie more today then two years ago, but I do know the feeling of being confused.  It's hard to imagine loving two people that much, one person in heaven and one person on earth.  It can be a daily struggle for those of us that are mourning.  We feel like we have our signals crossed, one day we are 100% to our chapter two, while other days we feel guilty for 'pressing forward.'

      Many widowers wrestle with questions that they are almost afraid to say out loud.  "Am I betraying my wife?"  "Does this mean I didn't love her enough?"  "Will people think I've moved on too quickly?"  "If I open my heart again, what does that say about the love we shared?"  Let me say this right away.  Those are 100% legitimate questions and should be expected, though I promise you they will surprise you when they come to the forefront.  Let me also comfort you with this thought, those questions DO NOT come from a lack of love.  They come because you shared a real love.  Some grieving people don't face those questions in their own heart, but they know that other people will think they are betraying their wife or that you've moved on or that you've replaced her.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I have had people make quiet, nasty comments that I must not have loved Tiffanie as much as I did all because I started dating again.  Just a quick note that will be discussed in a future post, dating again requires some thick skin.

      There is a hard reality that we need to come to terms with when chapter two starts growing through the soil, grief and love are not enemies, though they might feel that way at times.  But in all honesty, grief and love are deeply connected.  We wouldn't grieve unless we first loved.  The deeper the love typically means the deeper the grief, BUT the presence of new affection DOES NOT erase the love that came before.  They can co-exist, though at times an uneasy harmony.

      One of the lies grief often whispers is that faithfulness means remaining emotionally frozen forever.  But Scripture doesn't paint that picture.  A matter of fact the Bible speaks often about seasons.  Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."  There is a season for mourning. There is a season for weeping. There is a season for remembering. There is a season for healing.  Read over that list again.  Those seasons at times can repeat and cross over into another.  I'm sure we can all think of the strange days in the winter when the weather can be unseasonably warm or when a summer day all of a sudden feels like a crisp fall morning.  We might not like the season that we are in, but like the change of the physical seasons, there is nothing we can do to avoid it.  But, let's not miss out on certain seasons, seasons like when God opens your heart to awaken to the possibility of companionship again.  

      Now let me assure you of something, that season of awakening can be frightening.  You will feel similar feelings that were dormant for quite some time.  I remember when the feeling of love started to develop for Leslie.....I was caught off guard because a lot of it felt familiar, but a lot also distinct.  After loss, many widowers become experts at protecting their hearts. We know what pain feels like. We know what it costs to love deeply and then lose. Opening ourselves to another relationship can feel like stepping back onto a battlefield where we've already been wounded.  It can be terrifying.  One of the major questions I had to ask myself was "I am willing to give my heart to someone else, knowing that they will die one day."  Or another, very candid question, "What if I fall in love with someone who gets cancer in the future?"  Both legitimate fears and concerns.  Dating after losing a spouse takes a special kind of bravery, a unique courage.  

      One of my quotes is that grief should be your teacher, not your master.  Grief can teach us many things about ourselves, our walk with God, and love.  Here are a few lessons that I've learned in the past two plus years.  A heart that is waking up is not a heart that has forgotten it's first love.  A second lesson is that you do not honor your late spouse by refusing to live.  This might sound cliche or like a platitude, but I mean this with all my heart as a man who lost a spouse, refusing to live and press forward does not honor them.  Always mourning and never going forward with life is a tragedy to the love that the both of you shared.  You might or might not date and get remarried, but remaining in neutral isn't healthy.  A third lesson is that you do not honor their memory by refusing joy.  One widower recently shared that he thought joy was a slap in the face to late wife, and I get that.  It's hard to start feeling happy and joyful in the face of their absence, but joy and happiness will come again and we need to embrace it, not fight it.  Another lesson is that we do not honor their love by locking our heart away forever.  My Tiffanie told me a few days before she died, "Fred, you have too much love to not give it away to someone else."  I didn't like hearing that, but she was right.  Tiff will always have my heart, but someone else could have it too.  Locking my heart away doesn't honor her, it doesn't offer healing to me, and it prevents me from finding love again.

      The love you shared remains part of your story.  Those chapters cannot be erased, nothing can take that away.  The photos remain.  The memories remain.  The lessons remain.  The impact remains.  The love remains.  The question isn't whether your spouse mattered. The question is whether God is finished writing your story, because for many of us that are grieving, there are still untold chapters that are unwritten.  Listen carefully, there are still beautiful days in front of you.  You might not see it right now, or maybe you don't want to see it, but they exist.  For some widowers, the answer may be that God is calling them to remain single, and that is totally fine. For others, He may eventually lead them into another relationship. Neither path is more spiritual than the other. The goal is not finding another spouse. The goal is following Christ faithfully wherever He leads.

      Before you ever ask, "Am I ready to date?" perhaps a better question is this: "Lord, what are You doing in my heart?"  If your heart is beginning to wake up again, don't panic.  Take a deep breath, get your bearings.  Don't rush.  Don't force anything.  But don't assume something is wrong either.  Bring those feelings honestly before the Lord. Talk with trusted friends. Invite God into the equation.  The same God who walked with you through the valley of loss is fully capable of guiding you through whatever comes next.  Your story is not defined solely by what you've lost.  By God's grace, it can also be shaped by what He is still doing.  And sometimes, one of the first signs of healing is simply realizing that your heart is still capable of hope.