Not Just a Widow — Grateful, yet Grieving
Recently, I had to fill out some forms online. The current marital status box was like a neon sign: Single, Married, Divorced, or Widowed.
Throughout my life, I have been 3 out of the 4: single, married, and now widowed. There was no emotion when checking single or married. But I had a visceral response in checking the widow box. Like an itchy sweater, it made me uncomfortable.
For the first two years after my husband suddenly died, I didn't consider myself a widow. I still wore my wedding ring. There was something about calling myself a widow. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it yet.
As I studied the grief process and became more familiar with the changes the death of a spouse brings, one significant change is the sense of who you are. Your identity as a married person suddenly changes. It’s a secondary loss. Who am I now? There’s a gradual sense of doing life so dramatically different, and over time, our self-image is recalibrated.
We are so much more than a word with a checked box next to it. According to the dictionary, a widow is a woman “who has lost her spouse by death and has not married again.” It describes an event that happened to us, not who we are. The word “widow” is not a complete definition of who we are. We are not victims or less than. We are still women who love, nurture, teach, give, and serve our families and friends.
Before we were married, we were daughters first—not just to the families we were born into, but to our Heavenly Father. Our identity is not in our loss, not in what has happened to us, but in Who we belong to. We are loved, seen, heard, known, and beloved. We are not just a widow, but a woman who is lavishly loved, tenderly cared for, favored, and cherished by the God who calls us His own.
