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Suddenly it’s over. The person you loved and cared for, who took center stage in your life for months, maybe years, dies and it left you heartbroken. You stand at the end of a road that once felt way too long. No more doctor’s appointments, hospital vigils, treatment or medication routines, or aides to schedule. The work you did no longer matters… Will you matter?

Work defines us

in our American culture. You are a homemaker, mother, doctor, secretary, salesman, caregiver… And then you’re not, and you can’t go forward. There are two choices.

You can plop down at the intersection and just stay there. Stop living, and just exist in your memories. We must cherish our memories and shed a ton of tears along the way. But it is possible to carry our memories forward, and not let them bury us in a living death.

We can choose a new direction. Unless you have work you’ve been dying to do, or do more of, or a hobby you’ve promised yourself you would someday lose yourself in, you may need to just hang a right (or left) and be prepared for whatever may lie ahead. You don’t know what’s ahead, but it’s certain God does. Either way, you are on a new road.

Called According to His Purpose

God called you to love and care for one of his children, and you did. You fulfilled one of the purposes He had for you. Rest assured, He has more because you are still alive. You may not feel very alive now, you may wish you weren’t, but there’s no getting around it—God doesn’t waste anything or anybody. So pick your direction. Right or left? God won’t let you choose badly.

Your new road

may not appear to be anything much. Sometimes people, after vesting their entire lives in others, realize they did not carve out many interests for themselves. There didn’t seem to be time.

Now time overflows with empty hours. I found myself saying “yes” to every invitation I received and reveled in just being around my friends. Maybe the first step may be to join a group at church, or in your neighborhood, or volunteer. The point is, we must walk the new road to find God’s purpose for us. And very often His new purpose for us may be nestled in strange places along the way.

I stopped in our church’s café after service one Sunday simply because it beat going home to an empty house. Immediately, I ran into friends, so I joined them for coffee. While we were chatting, a woman came up and discussed the book supply for the library outside our Food Pantry with my friend.

Books? Library? My ears perked up. I love books. No surprise there. Even my protagonist, Lou Skalney, in The Divine Meddler is a bookworm. Long story short, I now volunteer at that library and enjoy meeting all sorts of people as they enter and leave the Food Pantry………one new purpose on my new path. I suspect more lie ahead.