I follow a lot of young widows on social media. In the early days, it was how I got through the hard stuff. I would watch them and think that God has a plan for me and the kids and that in the end, we were going to be happy again.
I did not have an easy marriage. In order to make my relationship and eventual marriage work, I had to move to Phil. I had to take on over an hour-long commute despite constantly applying for more local jobs that never happened. I had to live 6 minutes away from his abusive family. And then when our eldest was only a year old his health stuff began, and I went from wife and new mother to his constant care giver. I did everything. I was the provider, I was the caretaker of the house and when I was not working, I was with our kids. He appreciated none of it and as I look back now, I realize how much of a narcissist he truly was. Everything was ALWAYS about him unless it came to his friends that he would bend over backward for because he liked how it made him look and if I didn’t do the one thing he wanted at that moment, it was always flipped into “I wonder if you love me?” Really? And even after he died, I stayed the very true widow and made sure he was buried the way he would have wanted. I did the duty that I felt I owed from my wedding vows. Imagine the gut punch feeling I got when I later discovered his mistress and six months after he died sat on the phone with her finding out how this had all begun in what I would have described as the happy years of our marriage. In the end, he was just like his womanizing father– something he said he always never wanted to be like.
That is another story all together, but it made me begin to pray a lot. I prayed that God would send me a life partner, someone who loved me and my kids. Who wanted to be a husband, someone who was just not looking for a wife. Someone who would want to have a baby with me and give me the chance to really be a mom, not the exhausted one my kids have been used to. Someone who wanted me to be their wife, because I really want to get to be a wife since that too is something I feel like I was cheated out of the first time.
And I believed what other widows told me, that I would meet someone and it would happen quickly because God has a way of watching out for widows. So, I began online dating and after talking to several people, I thought I had met someone that seemed to want what I wanted: honesty and connection. I have never in my life been as vulnerable or as honest as I was from the moment I entered that relationship. If asked, I shared it no matter how hard it was. Only as time had gone on I felt as though I had opened up my entire life to him, but he never did the same to me. Sure, he did very loving things, spent most of his time with me and my kids, but never seemed to want to take it further, never wanted me in his life. After a year and some months, I finally ask about living together and it was just met with a total stone wall. At first it was avoiding me altogether and letting me sit in very hurt feelings for weeks and then it was coming over to talk, but I knew if he came with a truck he had already made his decision. He was already packing up what he had here, and we hadn’t even talked about us yet. And then suddenly I am told how he doesn’t want to be a stepdad and it’s not like my kids can even talk (they can, but one is overcoming CAS and their siblings are overcoming growing up with an older sibling with CAS as well as the trauma of having their dad die in front of them). And then suddenly I am standing in my driveway, alone and crying at 2 o’clock in the morning with my heart doubly broken as first, a woman and then as a mother.
I don’t know why God directed me to him in this life. I spent too much time grieving an unfaithful husband and then I opened up my whole self, my whole heart to someone that despite the ridiculous marriage I had…that I trusted and in turn, looked at me like what I had said I wanted was the craziest thing, even though we had talked about all of this on probably or second or third time together. So, I have spent a lot of this summer crying and also cleaning out my life and facing the things I couldn’t before like the dogs I had to handle. And also, the toxic things that lingered in my life that I should have addressed when I was married but always let it go. I can see that is where I was not a good wife nor girlfriend and I should have handled that differently than I had.
I am starting a new job in the fall and that has kept me anchored in that I will once again be lecturing college and teaching high school seniors. Between that and the kids, it has kept me going even on the days where I wish I could just crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep for days. And at night I still say a prayer to God that out there somewhere is a man who is going to love me and my kids and want to be a stepdad to my kids and want to be my husband. And who wants to complete my family…our family with me. Sometimes your faith and hope are all you have because sometimes a widow doesn’t get her happy ending, but rather another heart break that she has to recover from.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 