To Remarry or Not....

"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." - 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 (NIV)

It will be fun for me to read this post a few years later (and even funnier if I get married) so I gotta post this now so I don't forget.

Lately I feel like I've been contradicting myself in these posts since reading some of my older posts over the past few months have confused me more than ever. Please bear with me. After writing yesterday's post on taking breaks, I woke up not feeling too good about what I wrote, specifically on the sections on me getting to know others and then feeling like another mess, going up and down on the emotional roller coaster. Going to Atlanta on Sunday to visit Teri and family and then having someone you never met over for dinner on Tuesday and missing your grief class... really Erwin?? I almost deleted it on my way to the gym but talked myself to just leaving it. I then thought, why can't I also just keep things to myself and not have to write stuff to the ~20 of you that still read...

Glad she kept these photos on her Facebook profile

I think it's better this way, to just try to do these heart/brain dumps when I'm in the middle of the emotional roller coaster vs. waiting till I feel better and all my thoughts are organized. Then I feel like I'm just filtering everything and that's not really too helpful for anyone if I'm also trying to work on being transparent.

The truth is, I need something to do besides reading in bed since I am waiting for the dishwasher to finish so it doesn't beep at me while I'm sleeping. It's almost done.

Anyways, I'm writing for the second night in a row, after saying I need a break from grieving because I had a very interesting and insightful conversation with my therapist today about remarriage and wanted to share. I also felt like he might have gone slightly off script, as usually he seems to say all the right things and also focus on me, not his own stories. I'm so thankful he did.

Towards the end of our session, I shared that I've been thinking a lot about why society seems to encourage remarriage when you’re younger, like me at 40, but as people get older, the expectation seems to fade. It’s almost as though the older you get, the less necessary companionship is considered. But is that true for everyone? My therapist shared that maybe it’s okay if I don’t remarry, and that’s something I’ve been reflecting on. He even mentioned that if he lost his spouse, he wouldn’t remarry.

Crazy stuff for me to think about.

He made it clear that who knows what he would really do if he were in my situation. But that's what his gut feeling answer was and I'll take it. The truth is, no one can really plan any of this stuff regarding what you'll do after you lose your spouse when it comes to remarrying. You can say something like that now but you just never know if God will put someone else in your life that you'll want to marry again. Hopefully that's my case.... I commit to just staying single and not remarrying for now, but let God prove me otherwise, sort of like how he brought Teri into my life.

When my therapist said that, I thought what was pretty bold. He also just lost his father due to cancer and can relate to me at a whole new level now regarding my grief.

I felt quite relieved and encouraged when I heard all of this. Maybe it is OK if I just keep writing about Teri, grief, random fitness and work stuff once in a while for many years to come. If it makes me happy and fulfilled and also "weeds out" the people that may not like reading this stuff, that's a good thing, right? So it is OK if I focus my free time on writing my book about Teri. Who cares what people will think since at the end of the day, they just don't understand how complicated life is when you lose your spouse. Except maybe the two people I know that actually did.

This conversation brought up memories of a discussion I had with Teri before she passed. I asked her if she would remarry if I passed away. Without much hesitation, she said she wouldn’t. Reminding me of that stuck with me. We both valued our relationship deeply and had built a life together and went through so many ups and downs, starting with finding out about her first cancer in July 2017, 5 months after we met. It was A LOT of stuff. It makes me wonder now, as I process my own loss, whether remarrying is the path I want to take.

I know from my faith that marriage is a gift and a covenant. It’s a reflection of Christ’s love for the church, as we see in the bible:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” - Ephesians 5:25 (NIV)

There’s something so profound in that—an example of sacrificial love that I experienced with Teri. The idea of remarrying feels like a complex question for me because that bond we had so significant. And now she's gone.

Going back to Paul's letter to the Corinthians at the top of this post, the words remind me that there’s no wrong or right answer here. Paul’s advice to remain single acknowledges that living a fulfilled life doesn’t depend on remarrying. Perhaps God is calling me to embrace this season of singleness and to trust that His plans for me are good, even if they look different from what I imagined.

I also learned from going to Atlanta that I simply miss Teri so deeply, and the thought of remarrying feels like a very overwhelming idea at times. But maybe that’s OK and that's just the price you pay when you really really love someone and still wish she was here, even though she's in a better place, free from suffering. It's really nice knowing that this is a season where God is asking me to lean into Him more, to find my strength in Him rather than in the expectation of a new relationship.

I guess my conclusion for tonight is that I clearly don’t have all the answers. What I do know is that I trust God’s timing and His purpose for my life. Whether that includes remarriage or not, I’m choosing to keep riding the emotional roller coaster with faith, knowing that His grace is enough for me.

That's it! Did any of this make sense? Probably not. About to fall asleep now, thanks for reading.