After my first husband’s death, God’s plans for my future

By Mary Potter Kenyon 

The kitchen was quiet except for the soft sound of my pen moving across the paper and the intermittent rustling of a newspaper on the other side of the table. Intent on writing, I barely noticed when my husband David rose to refill my coffee cup. 

Sensing his gaze, I glanced up, smiling and thanking him for the coffee, then continued writing. When I looked up again a few minutes later, his eyes were still on me, with an expression I’d begun seeing more frequently of late, that of complete and utter adoration.

“What?” I asked, my face warming at the intensity of his look.  

“I’m thinking how beautiful you are, and talented. You sit there and all these words just flow out of you.”

I hadn’t washed my hair, applied makeup, or changed from my ratty pajamas, and my husband found me attractive? He had to be seeing me through the eyes of love. 

We had an enviable marriage by March 2012, an easy companionship centered on love, commitment, and putting each other first. 

Our relationship hadn’t always been that way, which was why it was all the more remarkable in its richness. We were struggling college students when we got married in 1979, and the first of our eight children arrived less than a year later. 

Bogged down by bills and babies, by our 25th anniversary, I sometimes wondered if ours was even a marriage to celebrate. That changed when David was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and I became his caregiver. For the first time in years, I’d put him first — and that triggered the difference. 

In our relationship, we’d become true partners in life. 

“This is what God meant marriage to be,” I thought, realizing how lucky I was to share life with my best friend. 

The overwhelming grief of widowhood 

Within days of that kitchen table exchange, we were headed to the emergency room. David had been experiencing shoulder pain that had moved to his chest. 

We were informed he’d experienced several small heart attacks and needed stent surgery. Three days after he came home from the hospital, I found him unresponsive in the recliner. He’d died sometime during the night. It was the day before his 61st birthday.

And just like that, in one swift moment, I was a 52-year-old widow. Four of our children still lived at home, the youngest just eight years old. 

The grief was overwhelming and the next few days a blur.  Instinctively, I knew I needed two things: prayer and Bible verses. 

I wasn’t certain how to find either, but I did know how to write my way through difficult times. I’d penned my way through my husband’s cancer treatment, my mother’s terminal cancer and death just seventeen months before, and our five-year-old grandson’s cancer diagnosis, treatment and recent recurrence.  

While I’d never learned to study the Bible, I was familiar with many verses, including 1 Thessalonians, on “giving thanks in all things.” 

Forty-eight hours after my husband’s death, I opened up a journal and began listing all the things I was grateful for; the 5 ½ years with my husband after his cancer, our revitalized relationship, our children, the siblings who surrounded me like cotton batting, and a modest life insurance policy that had been reinstated just 27 days before. 

As I filled three pages that morning, it occurred to me how God had prepared me for the loss of my husband, even in our conversation at the kitchen table. 

I devoured devotionals, the Bible, and inspirational and encouraging books by authors who had mourned the loss of a spouse before me. 

I even studied the science of bereavement, believing God designed us to withstand grief and wanting to know the science behind what the Bible said. I copied passages and quotes in my journal, little pinpricks of hope amid the darkness of grief.

Jeremiah 29:11 stood out the most, becoming my life’s verse: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” 

Discovering God’s plan for this season

I’d been David’s wife for almost 34 years, and a mother nearly as long. I barely knew who I was outside of those relationships. 

Though I’d managed to graduate from college, outside of freelance writing and various home businesses, I’d become increasingly isolated: A stay-at-home mom who could barely string two sentences together to talk to the butcher or mailman. 

David had been the one to encourage me to branch out, to conduct couponing and writing workshops for local community colleges. He’d sat at the back of the room to watch, marveling how I’d come alive in front of an audience. 

With David’s sudden death, I was thrust into a state of stillness I’d never experienced as a busy mother. It was in that stillness I found God. 

Though I continued the workshops, I gave myself the gift of a year to grieve and delve into God’s word before I looked for work outside my home 

I followed the leading of the Holy Spirit as I navigated those first 12 months of widowhood, spending hours on my couch, reading, writing, and praying. For the first time in my life I learned to truly listen and discern God’s answers to my prayers. 

Ten months after my husband’s death, my newfound faith was put to the test when we discovered my grandson’s cancer was terminal. He had less than a year to live.

Because I’d needed to understand how God works through our grief, I knew others in my church must need it too. One Sunday, a few days before the first anniversary of David’s death, I stood in front of our church congregation and announced a Bible study and briefly shared my story. 

Fifty people signed up. We met for two years before breaking off into a group of seven that met in my home. 

I yearned to help others, to minister to hurting souls through the gift of presence. I took online courses to become a certified grief counselor. I spoke to grief support groups on finding hope and healing and founded an annual grief retreat. I eventually found work at a spirituality center, where I could freely discuss my faith and God every day. 

God did indeed have plans for me, plans for hope and a future I never could have imagined for myself. I’d discovered a sense of purpose through my broken self, laid bare by grief – and God’s direction when I opened myself to him fully in prayer and learned to listen.

Mary Potter Kenyon discovered God had further plans for her life when He asked her to pray for her "future husband" in the summer of 2018. Three years later Mary met that man, Nick Portzen. The couple began praying together on their second date and continued the daily practice. Now married and living in Dubuque, Iowa, they've discovered the beauty of a relationship centered on God. Mary graduated from the University of Northern Iowa and is a certified grief counselor. She is widely published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. She is the author of seven books, including “Refined By Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace,” and “Called to Be Creative: A Guide to Reigniting Your Creativity.” She has been doing workshops and public speaking since 2011 on the topics of creativity, grief, and writing. Learn more at www.marypotterkenyon.com