Chris + Hannah | Hope
Because both of our stories are filled with vast love and immense loss, our story has been challenged with suffering:
Suffering of our own heart
Bearing the suffering for our children
Suffering from the lack of control
After each experiencing the death of our first spouse, we were left as a widow/widower, single parents of young babies, and honestly, the view of a lifetime being alone. We both knew what would make us whole again. We both knew what our hearts needed. We both knew what would give us our light to exceed the darkness: JESUS, but it still made life hard on Earth. We both felt bitter.
We felt like sudden outcasts to the friendships we had formed around our marriages. We felt abandoned. We felt exhausted to know that these tiny babies were our sole responsibility to raise in the tangle of experiencing deep grief. On days that the sun was even shining, it still seemed like the cloud of despair hung over us, engulfing us in sadness.
Then, right in the middle of a despairing life: God’s will stepped in.
A mutual friend introduced us to meet and chat about our grief and honestly to have a friend in the rough.
As our conversations grew and we started to develop a deep friendship, for let’s face it – when you’ve gone through what we’ve gone through and can relate to each other when no one in our everyday lives could, the conversations are deep, intense, and raw. We never felt awkward about our grief and literally began praising God for the hope and peace He had restored in our hearts to have someone else understand each other’s pain.
This newfound hope began taking over our hearts and driving our hearts in a different way.
We soon knew that God had brought us to each other to not only have each other in the rough, in the pain, in the grief, but to experience a new chapter filled with hope, filled with love, filled with happiness.
God has given us something truly extraordinary. He has allowed healing, hope, peace, and because our God is full of grace, He allowed our hearts to love again. A different love. A love that I believe only those who have lost their spouse can feel. We both get it. We both get that we won’t be the only person each other thinks about, celebrates memories made with someone else, or the journey of grief for the love we lost before.
We both get the role that comes with being someone’s Chapter 2 in life, and we love each other more because of the love we have for our spouses in heaven. When you allow God to do the healing, you will experience that your heart is able to love abundantly.
Our current chapter hasn't stopped because our previous chapter ended. This chapter is a continuation of Jesus' purpose for our lives. It is a chapter that has brought beauty from ashes in the beautiful form of a love story.
It is a chapter filled with the blessing that our children will know love on Earth from all of their parents and who will get to witness how Jesus worked in favor for them. It’s a chapter full of giving up control for the exchange of God’s will and His everlasting peace and serenity.
As we continue to embrace this next chapter, we are in awe that we are getting to not only showcase God’s love and mercy for us – but through the blessings God has bestowed by giving us one another – we are serving Him.
