Earl says:

“Now that I think about it, becoming single, that began for me like several months before Gladys died.  She had a big stroke, really the beginning of what ended six months later. I was with her every day, so I knew that she was slipping away much faster than the doctors thought. For me it was a cloud, hopelessness and gloom and doom – I remember saying that over and over to myself at the time.

Even as she got weaker I think I was already grieving, so already it was like you say, becoming single, you might say. But it took me a long time after that before I’d sort out my feelings and get a focus on the life that I had with Gladys for thirty-three years and what I’d do going forward.  I had taken so much for granted, like we all do.”

This is Earl’s story.  He is a marriage and family counsellor in one of those really big church congregations. He speaks about his work as “a ministry,” for which he was “called,” and his conversation sometimes seems to come from the pulpit.

“When she died and into the next month I was a basket case.  Oh, I thought brave words about comfort in Jesus and sustaining grace, and I share them with my clients but there was misery and doubt, the tears, and only a “perhaps” about the hope of life eternal.  I hit the bottom myself in grief and in the doubts, I began to have about some of the things I’d believed and taught for years.  And I was beyond tears in mild depression, certainly lethargy and inertia about my ministry and home life – you name it. I seemed to think only about how I’d do without our relationship, and especially our intimacy.

The loneliness went on, the weeping and remembering, and especially yearning for the physical closeness.  So strong. That was a desire that just wouldn’t go away; I wondered about re‑marriage, guilty that it was so soon, and well aware of the danger of passions.

We must be guarded, you know.  We are warned, you know, about our passions, admonished to recognize them for what they are.  I warned myself over and over to go very slowly, and I have, too, but I am going ahead with that, you understand.

Then God spoke to me. Out of the blue.  No, not about my strong passions, but about the bigger picture, what I was to do with my life, what the way ahead was to be. For me it was as clear as a voice, not out loud, but a clear understanding as if I’d just been told. I understood what it was even though there was no voice speaking.

Here’s what happened. God gave me direction: I was not to feel undecided, in the woods so to speak, like the poem says, but to move on, put away the grief and indecision. The same kind of guidance had happened once before, just as clear, when I gave up preaching and pastoring a congregation to become a therapist, though that happened completely without grief and my dear wife and her loving care had sustained me.

Now, I was to get on, back to the road that Frost talks about and that makes all the difference in lives.  I was to make a difference in the lives of couples and families who needed the guidance that I could give them as a ministering therapist.  That was my ministry, my life.  I was not to be grieving for Gladys, yearning for intimacy with her or to have a blurred and foggy vision for what I was to do. Not at all.

Nothing had ever been clearer to me, and it had come so quickly, just six weeks after her death. So, for me the becoming single was more like a rededication to my ministry. But it didn’t resolve my longings for renewed intimacy. That was as strong as ever.

Everyone’s different, of course, so I can’t prescribe.  But on the matter of one’s mission, my calling, we can be sure that God will lead.  I tell this to my clients also. God will lead.

As to the urgings for closeness and intimacy, that did not go away, thank God.  I’m convinced it’s to be shared and, without going into detail, that’s what I’m doing.

What I will say is that I am sharing my ministry with the loving and intimate support of another.  That much is clear and has been clear to me almost like the voice speaking out to me about my ministry. So, in that department learning to be single has been defined again, hasn’t it? “