Love.

 “Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are.” -St. John Chrysostom

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” -Jamie Anderson

While writing this for our annual Valentine’s Luncheon for Widows, I found my Christmas letter from 2012 with the following excerpt:

Things I’m grateful for: our house never caught on fire…25+ extension cords removed and re-wiring and redistributing of circuits by a kind electrician whose only comment was “your husband was a very creative man”; if Jeff never died, we may have all perished in a house fire… “Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13

When I sat down to write this, that very scripture was in one of my morning devotionals. Also, this past week, we had a couple of tripped circuits in our house while my current husband Daniel was out of town. So, I thought, maybe, this is the story to share.

Jeff truly loved his family. Three layoffs within 5 years, he’d keep busy puttering around the house, making things happen, even if he didn’t have the money to do the job “right”. I pulled into the garage late from work one frigid December night and hanging from the rafters was a stunning Christmas wreath chandelier, illuminating the darkness. So pretty! It made me smile. I never did ask him how he did it.

The house was built in 1956 with a 1970’s edition. It had a fuse box and a circuit breaker. We were constantly blowing fuses! We bought 40-amp fuses by the 4-pack. Half the walk-out basement Jeff refinished into a family room, with a large area carpet and a drop ceiling. The utility side had a computer graveyard where “Dr. Jeff Frankenstein” pieced together old computer parts and resurrected them into something new. Cords dropped down from the basement rafters, powering so many unfinished projects. One laundry day after Jeff died, passing by that mess, I had had enough. His unfinished creations needed disconnection. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled. And I watched as the whirring, wildly spinning electric meter dramatically… slowed… down.

A group of kind friends pitched in and bought an upright freezer for all the food lovingly bestowed on our little family of three. In the garage by the house door, I found a convenient outlet; one of Jeff’s garage tinkering’s. I don’t remember how long after the freezer was plugged in that we lost power in some of the house…but I needed an electrician. No switch flipping or fuse replacing was going to fix it. 

Peter the electrician traced out the problem in the garage. From the garage door opener every 6’, bump…6’, bump…6’, bump until it finally reached the wall with the convenient outlet. The “bumps”? One extension cord joined to another, neatly wrapped in electrical tape. Basement investigation revealed extension cords in the drop ceiling powering all the light switches, outlets and ceiling fixtures. I remember seeing extension cords joined together in four directions! There was a household extension cord fished out the basement window, buried in the ground under the deck offering electric to a hot tub that, by the way, I had unplugged and drained never noticing it’s precarious wiring. And we did find a couple of blackened outlets, evidence of a fire that never took off. 

In all, we stopped counting after 27 and we DIDN’T count the ones left hanging in the garage rafters.  These discoveries were an accumulation over several years of Perpetual Project Jeff trying to keep busy on a shoe-string (or rather “extension cord”) budget.

That Christmas, the second widowed Christmas, I made a garland of extensions cords and wrapped it around our tree. I remember thinking, “If Jeff didn’t die, could we have died in a house fire?” I am not about to believe that Jeff died to save us, or that “everything happens for a reason” as my human, reasoning mind churns over the possibilities. Things happen. What I do believe is that we live in a broken world, where unexplainable tragedies—like car accidents happen. And I do believe in a God that takes all the broken pieces, gathers them up with the power of the Holy Spirit, and creates something new…or reveals something new, like—maybe I should call an electrician about the tripped circuits in my current home!

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23

(A few extras….)