Widowhood and Healing: A Conversation with Marilyn Monmouth Williams

Transcript

Widowhood and Healing: A Conversation with Marilyn Monmouth Williams 

The Widow’s Walk – Part 1

[00:00:00] Rev. Michele Owes: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Teachable Woman Podcast. This is Reverend Michele Owes and we are Teachers of Good Things. I have a wonderful guest today. I am so excited to have Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams. I'm not even going to tell you how long I have known her. We both decided that it's too much information to share, but it has been a long time and she's been a tremendous witness in the Body of Christ.

Marilyn, say hello.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Hello, and Michele, thank you so much for allowing me to share this time with you today, to spend a few moments.

[00:01:00] Rev. Michele Owes: It is exciting for me as well. Marilyn is my first guest for the Widow's Walk podcast. We know that there is a tremendous body out there that is known as the widow. It is a unique body because we have a similar experience. Not all our experiences are the same, but we went from the married state to the unmarried state, not by our choosing, but by the death of our spouses. Marilyn is going to share with us some of the first experiences she had when she became a widow.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Well, Michele, let's just start with my first husband. He was a pastor, and we were married for 20 years. He died at the age of 45, which is, I would say, very young,

Rev. Michele Owes: Yes.

[00:02:00] Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: The experience may be a little different from other women who have had the pleasure of being with their spouses for a longer period. At 44 years of age, I was a widow with two sons, one a sophomore in college, and a sophomore in high school. That presented a different type of struggle, in this walk as a widow.

Rev. Michele Owes: With it being that early, now with the death, you mentioned the words, your first husband. So, one of the reasons that I asked Marilyn to be with us is not just because she is an incredible witness in the body of Christ, but because God trusted her with this process, not once, but twice. Marilyn has been widowed twice.

[00:03:00] And yet her example in the body of Christ has been unwavering. For most of us, our great struggle with the Lord is the loss of our husband the first time, sometimes that is the only time. But Marilyn continued her walk with the Lord, even after the loss of her second husband. Share a little bit about that with us, Marilyn.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Okay Michele, I liked the way you word things.

Rev. Michele Owes: Thank you.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: You know, I lost my husband as I said the first husband, when he was 45. I was 44 years of age. I did not remarry for 12 years. I was not seeking another husband, but God saw fit to give me another husband. We were only married for five years. I think I was probably about 55 or 54. I can't remember.

[00:04:00] Rev. Michele Owes: Yeah.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: We were married for five years. The thing is both situations were so different.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: With my first husband, it was cancer. There was a period where there was a lot of caregiving and a lot of nurturing towards him as he was going through cancer. My second husband died in an automobile accident, so it was immediate. One was over months and even years struggling with the situation and the other was just instantaneously. One of the things that I learned through the process is it does not matter whether your spouse dies over a long period or whether it's instantaneously, you still feel the pain either way.

[00:05:00] Rev. Michele Owes: Yes. Yes, I love the way you made that differentiation. For women who have been in periods of long-term caregiving, I note in some of our conversations that some may feel a little guilty because they're not sad that that time of long-term caregiving and consistency of 24 seven. They are not sad that part is over. Sometimes they mix that emotion with the sadness of the loss of their husbands and feel guilty about it. Can you share with those women who may be in that place where they're not 100 percent sure, their emotions are mixed? Let's just say that.

[00:06:00] Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Oh yeah, in any grief situation, I think your emotions are mixed. I think one thing that we all must understand is that we all grieve differently. We cannot let someone else tell us how we should be grieving. We are comforted by the Lord, and we're comforted by people around us, but no one knows how we are feeling. You know people would come to me all the time and say, you should talk to so and so because you know how she feels. But I really don't know how she feels. I can only imagine how she feels based on how I felt. And when we're around someone who needs our comfort, we need to just be there and understand what they're going through. [00:07:00] Though we may not know exactly what they're going through. You may be in a situation where you have cared for someone for years, and you may be in a state where you're thankful that they are not suffering anymore, though it grieves you that they're gone. You're just so thankful that they're not suffering anymore. There are a lot of things that go on with each of us as we go through this widow's walk. It's not all the same.

Rev. Michele Owes: You're right. You're absolutely right. I think if there's been long-term caregiving, sometimes the caregiver needs a moment to rest. They need a moment to recollect themselves because they've been in a state of service for so long. When that service comes to an end, it's what do I do with myself?

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Yes. Absolutely. I know for me, I still had two sons I needed to minister to them.

[00:08:00] Rev. Michele Owes: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: There were a lot of people looking to me for their comfort. As I said, everyone's situation is so different. The one thing that is so real, and the one that is so predictable is God's care for us during this time. Though our situations may be different, and we may be feeling different, God is going to care for each of us. He is going to meet our needs. He knows our needs and he will meet our needs. You know Michele, one of the things that I am so thankful for is that in each situation with my first husband and with my second husband, the Lord put in my spirit a scripture for me to just be guided by. When [00:09:00] my first husband died, he gave me from Nehemiah; the joy of the Lord is your strength. And that scripture just helped me so much. Just repeat that scripture and it just ministered to me. When my second husband died, he gave me; to be anxious for nothing. Both times God's word just ministered to me so much and I am forever grateful, and thankful that God ministered to me at that point. It helped me so much.

Rev. Michele Owes: Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Marilyn. I think one of the very important things that you said is that God ministered to you and the widow may not understand that this is really where our help is going to come from. Oftentimes we look and see that we are physically alone and [00:10:00] the friends and family that we had may not know how to communicate with us once we've become a widow. In previous conversations you and I have had, we discussed the fact that the church does an excellent job up to the funeral and maybe a couple of days after. After that people typically don’t know what to say or what to do. They don't want to ask you how you are because they don't want to know if you're still in pain, or they don't want you to go back and think that you're in pain if they feel like you're doing okay.

Not only the body of Christ but oftentimes our immediate families, don't know how to respond to us because they want us to be in a healed state. They want us to move forward, not out of disrespect, but out of hope for our future. But it's not something you can rush through.

[00:11:00] Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Absolutely. And that's the thing that we must always be on guard about. We are allowing other people to tell us what to do. Well, you should be over this by now, and why are you still in so much pain? We have to all heal in our own time.

Rev. Michele Owes: Yes,

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: And in the way that God will allow us to heal. And he knows what we need. He will send people. You may not think about what you're going through, but He will send just the right people to surround you and comfort you. If we trust in Him and focus on Him, it helps us get through every stage of grief. We can't do it without Him.

Rev. Michele Owes: That's true. That is very true. I hope that any woman who [00:12:00] has found herself in this state, if you were not sure where your help will come from, that because of this sharing today, you will be sure. Your help is going to come from the Lord. We all want to get back to that place of joy. As Marilyn shared with us out of the scriptures it's the joy of the Lord that is our strength and knowing that He's with us every day and He has never left us.

He has not forsaken us. The death of our husbands is not because He's mad at us, or because we did something wrong, or there's a punishment. It's none of those things. Because the scriptures are very clear that each man is appointed to die once, and then judgment. Every man has an appointment. Every man and woman, I should add, we all have this appointment with death.

When our time comes, it is just that. It is our time. It's not a punishment to [00:13:00] someone else, but also for us to know that our help is going to come from the Lord. One of the things that came to my mind during my study about this session comes out of Philippians 1:12. This is after Paul had been shipwrecked, bitten by a snake, and he was jailed. He was run out of town and had many afflictions as a Christian man.

In Philippians 1:12, Paul says, but I would, you should understand brethren that the things which happen unto me have fallen out rather until the furtherance of the gospel. So oftentimes we think that something has happened to us, whether it's a tragedy or whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, that it's just our experience. But God is doing something that we know not of ultimately for the furtherance of the gospel.

[00:14:00] And when I look at the fact that I met you in my early years of Christendom and God trusted you to train me. You and I could laugh about some of my experiences. I was untrained, a new babe in Christ. But now you and I are together for the furtherance of the gospel. We are sharing on this podcast so that other women might know and understand these experiences in life. It's not over for us. We're still alive and we're still useful in the body of Christ.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Amen. And if there are any women out there who are listening for how they may be able to minister to someone who has lost a spouse, just remember being there goes a long way. I can remember people didn't say a word. They didn't need to say a word. They just did things. [00:15:00] They came to my house. They washed dishes. They brought food. They made sure I had the things that I needed. So being there is an excellent example of God's word. You don't have to beat them down with a bunch of scriptures. You can live the scriptures and just be there for the person.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen. Amen. That's a beautiful sharing. Oh, my goodness, look how time flies. Well, this is part one of the widow's walk and Marilyn is going to be back with us for part two. So, stay tuned. We love you. Thank you so much for being with us today and we'll talk with you soon. Bye now.

Mrs. Marilyn Monmouth Williams: Bye-bye.