Buckets of Hope

By Kat Crawford

How do you redeem your life after your elderly mother-in-law moves in?

How do you rebuild the broken relationship between father and daughter?

How do you remain strong as the primary caregiver for elderly parents? 

How do you recover from the grief of a broken relationship?

How do you reconcile . . . 

How do you rectify . . . 

How do you . . .

Find the answers to these questions and more within the pages of "Buckets of Hope: Recovery from Grief and Loss."

Authors Kat Crawford, Shirl Hart, and twenty-six men and women share how they survived tragedy and deep sorrow, finding hope for the future. "Buckets of Hope: Recovery from Grief and Loss" is filled with real-life stories of healing and restoration, as well as finding peace and hope for the future in the midst of pain. 

Kat Crawford, known as the Lionhearted Kat, is an author, freelance writer, and former newspaper columnist. Gary, her husband of almost fifty-one years, died while she struggled with breast cancer. Kat is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandchild. She is on the leadership team for Wordsowers Christian Writers in Omaha. A native Oregonian, she lived in Omaha, Nebraska, for twenty-five years before moving back to Oregon. Kat uses her gift of encouragement and passion for writing to make a positive influence in the lives of others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kat Crawford
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781080017997

Book preview

Part I

Life Revealed

Kat Crawford

God will recycle our problems until we get it right.

–Gary L. Crawford

In God’s Waiting Room

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

(Isaiah 40:31 KJV)

In January 1979, I celebrated my newfound verse. It became my lifeline. With great pride, I hung that miniscule parchment where everyone could be impressed. After all, I felt important. God directed me to that one verse.

I designed a handout for each woman in our Bible study group. Yes, I beamed with self-importance. After all, I had a Bible verse just for me and I would soar like an eagle.

In February, Gary and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary. A few weeks later, my husband said he planned to resign from ministry in his first church, and he suggested a divorce, saying he didn’t love me anymore. I knew about midlife crisis for women, but men? That was something new to me.

Gary blindsided me. Up until that point, I believed my husband would never leave me after what we’d been through, no matter what I did.

Years before, we had spent months in counseling. With our marriage on the mend, Gary had told our church family how God called him into ministry. He had moved our family from our comfortable home in Washington to a Bible college in Colorado.

In college, both of us studied books on marriage counseling to help others.

But now, Gary said God had made a mistake in calling him into ministry. He should have never left a good paying job in a mill with a retirement plan to attend Bible college.

Our district superintendent (DS) asked Gary to drive north three hours to his office to discuss his decision. I’m not sure why Gary asked me to travel with him, but he did.

He drove. I sat in silence over that long drive.

While Gary met with the DS, I sat in the car, praying. On our way home, headed south on a freeway, Gary finally spoke. We’ve made it this far. Let’s go to your cousins and find jobs.

Within minutes, we were headed north to Portland. Long before cell phones, we showed up on my cousin Mary’s doorstep, looking like two lost souls—and lost we were.

Gary asked Mary and her husband if we might stay a few days. He also called our daughter at home and told her the situation.

Within three days, Gary found a position as a swing-shift custodian for a university in the middle of the state. I found work cataloging books for the school district—a place where my supervisor said, We don’t need speed. We need accuracy.

We drove home from Portland to move.

On our last Sunday, a retired preacher—a member of our church—said to me, Don’t let him step out of the ministry. God anointed Gary to preach.

Like I had any say in the matter.

Our oldest daughter didn’t live at home anymore. While we packed our worldly belongings, we made arrangements for our second daughter to live with our friends, Yvonne and her preacher husband Gene, until she finished the last three months of high school. Our thirteen-year-old son moved with us.

My celebrated life and identity as a preacher’s wife changed.

We already knew the pastor and wife in our new community, but they were the only ones. Gary didn’t want to know anyone else. Every day, I sobbed while I drove the thirty minutes to work.

I prayed more on those journeys than I had in my entire life. I’m a people person. I need others around me. I wanted to talk with my friends—to tell them how lost I felt. But phone calls were expensive, so I rarely made a call to anyone but my parents. My mother asked questions a few times, but I never shared our marriage problems with them. They knew we moved. Gary let them think his decision was based on the lack of finances in ministry.

After work each day, I studied Scripture and prayed for wisdom.

Gary arrived home after work close to midnight, and rain or shine, we made our way to a small airport a few blocks from our home. In the beginning, we didn’t talk. I stalked beside him and refused to hold his hand. All our problems were of his doing. He didn’t deserve any special affection from me.

A custodian spends the full shift on his feet, so Gary’s feet hurt after work, but each night, he asked me to walk with him.

I’m not sure why I agreed to make the trek to the paved airfield each night, but I did. My Bible verse said, they shall walk, and not be faint. To walk didn’t seem possible. Some nights, I thought I’d faint. Only a few days into those journeys, I began to scream. Words came out of my mouth I didn’t think I knew. I screeched like an angry pig being prodded to move.

Gary let me vent my feelings. Often, he wrapped his arms around me and let me beat on his chest.

We never had enough money, he said one night. Your father said I was crazy for leaving the mill. I should have never . . .

We were halfway around the tarmac by then. I stomped off across the grassy middle.

Wait for me. There might be snakes.

A snake in the grass isn’t any different than being near you.

I have no idea when he got home that night. I ended up sleeping on the couch. The next morning, I left for work without seeing him, but after work, I drove to the university.

There isn’t a lot to say when you don’t like or trust each other.

Gary took a break.

Outside the building, we sat in the grass while he ate his lunch.

You know in your heart our income has nothing to do with our problems, right? I asked.

Gary didn’t reply.

We are both working full-time now and making less than when we were in ministry.

He didn’t respond.

We attended church every Sunday morning and evening. I’m sure those who were smiling at us each week thought we were a happy couple.

We didn’t try to get close to anyone and not one person at church sought us out. They didn’t ask us over for dinner, nor did they come to visit.

Maybe the pastor told them not to. It didn’t matter. We weren’t fit company.

Over the next few months, our routine didn’t change much. I worked from 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. At home, I cleaned, did laundry, prepared meals, and studied my Bible.

Gary worked from 2:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. We walked most nights. Sometimes we said nothing. He often kissed me. We slept together. Our meals with our son were peaceful. Gary and I made time for our son, but not as a family unit.

We did not pray together.

For the first time in years, we did not have devotions together or as a family. The chasm between us felt like the Grand Canyon in winter—gray and colorless. The beauty lay beneath layers of fog. Gary often said he loved me, but I felt broken. I loved God and God said to respect my husband, but I felt cheated.

It isn’t like we celebrated twenty years of perfect marriage. We had been close to divorce years before. Back then, Gary’s alcoholism took a toll on us. I had insisted that he see a psychiatrist, a counselor, and then talk to our pastor.

Gary agreed to do whatever I asked. He said he didn’t want to lose his family.

I thought each of these wise people would fix my husband. But they said the same thing to me. It appears to me that you two need marriage counseling.

What? Some of our marital problems could be my fault? I didn’t think so, but I agreed to attend at least one marriage counseling session. After that first appointment, the counselor placed us in group counseling. We both hated the discussions.

Now eight years later, here we were again, needing help. Only now, we knew more about marriage problems. But we would do so this time after we’d attended Bible college and taken courses on marriage counseling. In ministry for the prior three years, we had served as the counselors for those who needed help in our congregation. Ironically, now we were the ones who needed to learn to communicate.

After three months of walking around the wilderness in a standoff, we started interacting. Rather than him saying I’m sorry and me screaming obscenities, we talked. We also started praying together and reading the Bible again as a family.

One night after I told our son goodnight, I drove to the university. Gary and I sat on the grass in silence while he ate.

He finished his food and grabbed my hand. Mook, what would you say if I told you God is calling me back into ministry?

I’m not surprised.

Let’s send out my resume and see what happens.

We wrote and sent letters the following week.

While we waited for a response, I meditated on my King James Version Bible verse: . . . But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength.

To wait on the Lord meant I needed to forgive my husband for his humanness and even beyond, including his saying he didn’t love me and then asking for a divorce. I needed to examine my faults, and see my failures in not putting my husband before everyone else. I had taken him for granted for years.

In ministry, we hurried through the days. Our schedules were jammed with our family and church work. Once we were on the shelf, we had time to figure out who we were. We even started liking each other again.

My King James Version verse said, They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. God helped me to see that the same amount of time will pass whether I’m angry or patient or whether I chose to focus on happiness or end up walking around angry because we were no longer in ministry with my own agenda.

In his commentary, Albert Barnes says the word wait here means to wait in expectancy. The phrase, Wait on Yahweh means to wait for his help.[1]

Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown said the phrase, They shall mount up with wings like eagles, refers to how eagles renovate themselves; the parallel clause, renew their strength, confirms this. The eagle was thought to moult and renew his feathers.[2]

John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible said: they shall run, and not be weary; in the way of God’s commandments; which shows great affection for them, haste to obey them, delight and pleasure, cheerfulness and alacrity, therein, so as to be without weariness.[3]

While we waited to see what God might have next for us, Gary had some insight. Where we are right now is our Kadesh-Barnea (Kadesh Barnea was the chief site of encampment of the Israelites in the Zin Desert;[4] Deuteronomy 1:46). God is going before us and preparing His promised land for us.

We were in renewal for five months.

That fall, we moved to Gary’s second ministerial position.

Reflection: Sometimes God gives us a time out to seek His wisdom. To wait for Him. To find our identity in Him, not in the world. He gives us time to reflect on what is right and what is wrong in our hearts and lives. He promises that if we wait upon the LORD as the King James version says, then He shall renew our strength.

*//*

Silence Isn’t Always Golden

In your anger do not sin.

(Ephesians 4:26)

Believing Gary and I would miraculously heal from a rift in our marriage over a five-month hiatus was far-reaching. We did discuss our initial promises to each other: love, honor, and obey.

Yes, we did say all those words at our wedding ceremony.

Now here we were years later, both of us committed to God. Loving Him and each other meant we needed to focus on rebuilding the love/trust factor between us. We needed to leave the grief of the past behind and focus on our future and our family.

After growing up in Eugene, Oregon, and then living near Portland, Oregon, and attending Bible college in Colorado Springs, our move to Troy, Idaho, a small town of eight-hundred felt confining.

We were slammed into togetherness.

Our budget didn’t allow for more than one trip to the nearest shopping center more than once every two weeks.

Gary and I did everything together. Those first few months, I didn’t feel close enough to any of the women in our congregation to have coffee chats. That meant Gary became my sidekick day and night. We visited each member in our congregation and families who had attended the church in the past. We made hospital visits together. And we shopped together.

Our nine-hundred square foot apartment inside the back of the church didn’t give us enough space for solitude. We were forced to like each other or live in misery.

Since the apartment walls were shared by the church sanctuary, we didn’t raise our voices in an argument. I learned to fume in silence.

In all our married years, Gary rarely raised his voice with me or one of our children. He usually shut down. He walked away. He let me stew.

In our second year in this new home—after being married almost twenty-two years—I