The date on the calendar means nothing until it becomes time stamped by an impact to your heart, and then you’ll never forget it!

November 9, 2018, I kissed my best friend since I was 12, and husband of 35 years, Joe Weaver’s lips for the last time as he took his final breath here on Earth. Even though I have experienced some incredible joys over the last four years (finding a new best friend, marrying Paul, the birth of Joseph Michael Weaver III, dream family vacation, and retiring early just to name a few). I found myself wide awake at 4am with a pain in my heart, because my mind might have forgotten what the date is today, but my body never will. As I curled up in my chair with a blanket, and my Bible I accepted God’s invitation that He extended to all of us in Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. I prayed to understand how to honor Christ in the midst of a grief that seems to never go away this side of Heaven. I felt the Holy Spirit invite me to sit at the Master’s Feet. I opened my Bible and read in each of the gospels, the account of Jesus taking a few of His disciples with him to Gethsemane to stay with him, and keep watch while he prayed through His grief right before He was arrested.

It said that Jesus was not only experiencing grief, but that he was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”. And the first thing He did was PRAY! He prayed that “this cup (circumstance, or situation causing the grief) be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Each time Jesus got up, and the situation had not changed, He went back and prayed the same thing again. The Bible says He prayed the same thing 3 times. After the 3rd time of praying that the cup would pass, and it didn’t. He said to his disciples “Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” Then, it says when His friend Judas showed up with a large crowd armed with swords and clubs to seize him, Jesus said “Friend, do what you came for.” Sometimes God improves your situation through your prayers of faith; however, He ALWAYS improves your faith through your prayers. Never stop praying! I remember praying over, and over that Joe would be healed. We were obedient to everything we thought we should do, and we continued to pray. However, as the disease continued to get worse, we doubled down on our prayers, but we also said “Not our will Lord, but yours. Help us to glorify You through this situation in life, or death.” We didn’t start including an “escape clause” in our prayers, because we didn’t believe enough for Joe’s healing. No! God strengthened, and tempered our faith like steel in the heat of the fire to the point of trusting Him enough that we believed it was more important that we glorify God through Joe’s life or death, rather than just praying for his healing.

Jesus asked His closest friends to stand with Him in prayer, but He still loved them when they didn’t. It said every time Jesus came out to them after praying, he found his friends asleep. In the gospel of Mark when Jesus confronts them a 2nd time for falling asleep, and not keeping watch with Him it says that “They did not know what to say to him.”~Mark 14:40 I can remember the hurt when friends quit calling, or asking how I was, and I also remember knowing a friend was in pain, and purposefully not calling because I didn’t know what to say. I know It wasn’t that they didn’t love me, and it wasn’t because I didn’t love them. It was because we don’t want to cause pain, anymore than we want to experience it. In Luke 22:45 it says When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.” Wait! What?? THEY were exhausted from sorrow, what about Jesus? Grieving is exhausting. Not only are all of your sensory organs on overload, because of the pain that you’re in. You are mentally exhausted from trying to figure out how to move forward in life without your Loved One in it, because all of your future plans included them in it. Sometimes you can think that you are the only one going through this much pain, when others around you are grieving too! I know I was blinded to my kid’s pain in grief, because of the pain of my own. Why if Jesus knew his friends would flunk “Grief Support 101”, would He ask them to stay with him to pray, and watch? To Grieve is to be in pain, and we want to avoid anything that might cause us more pain. However, the pain of grief we feel today, was created by the great love we enjoyed from our yesterdays. Therefore, if we don’t ever risk being hurt again, we will never experience the amazing healing power of God’s Amazing Grace through love. Romans 5:20 Sin spread when the Law was given. But where sin spread, God’s loving-favor spread all the more. ²¹ Sin had power that ended in death. Now, God’s loving-favor has power to make men right with Himself. It gives life that lasts forever. Our Lord Jesus Christ did this for us.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ~ 1Corinthians 13:13