Continuing with Job’s wife’s story (if you missed blog 1 in the series, please read below to catch up before reading this one for context), this part 2 is intimate. And I’m sure many can relate.
So we’re back. In the first blog, we acknowledged that Job’s wife (and why doesn’t she have a name?) was under the covenant of Job so her life was spared as a result of her connection.
As I was re-reading Job 1-2 a few things stuck out to me that I want to highlight to you. In chapter 1, Job consistently covered and prayed for his family. He prayed for his sons and daughters that if they had sinned, they would be covered. I find it interesting that Job’s wife is not mentioned in the prayers. We would assume that she was included, but she isn’t mentioned.
In chapter 1 verses 13-19, havoc strikes. Satan is given permission to touch everything but Job himself and that joker gets to work. One right after the other, a servant escapes disaster and comes to share that all the oxen, sheep, camels were gone. Destroyed and all the servants killed with them. Then comes the biggest blow – his children, the very ones that Job was praying and covering daily. They were another casualty in satan’s test. Wow. It stings to word it like that, right. That death can hit so close to home, and it’s meant to test our relationship and devotion to God. While I don’t think that we serve a God that is casual with our lives, I am certain that many situations that we face give us the opportunity to prove where our trust lies, in people – things or in God and His sovereignty.
Where was Job’s wife during this time? Read verses 13-19 again, but instead of the servant telling Job that everything he had worked for, covered and prayed over, that he cherished was gone – imagine that the servant is speaking to Job AND HIS WIFE. It’s unlikely that she wasn’t in the presence of her husband when the bad reports were coming in.
Job’s wife lost her cattle, oxen, camel, sheep, livelihood.
JOB’S WIFE LOST HER CHILDREN.
Every blow that Job was dealt, she was holding the same hand. Imagine for a second being met with disaster after disaster, and then to get the news that all of your children have been killed and only a servant was spared just to share the bad news.
I want us to take a moment to reflect here, cause in the next blog we will dig into some of what she must have been feeling. But, I want you to take a moment and just reflect.
Have you ever been in this situation? Have you lost something or someone important in your life, but your pain is overlooked? Have you had a dream or prayer completely upended and never got the opportunity to mourn its death?
Job’s wife lost everything along with Job, yet her pain and sorrow doesn’t get to take up space, because she is still expected to carry on, she still has duties, she still has to hold it together.
So many of us, especially during this time of year, feel this. And we feel this hard. The Holidays are hard for so many people yet, it’s a time of celebration and light and love and gifts and sparkles, and sometimes it feels like our pain doesn’t get to take up space. We are expected to enjoy cocoa and matching pajamas and Hallmark movies, but when do we get to acknowledge that we thought this holiday would be different? That we thought this would be the year that we were introducing our fiancé to the family? Or this Christmas our marriage would be restored, yet you just signed the divorce papers? Insert your ‘I thought this year’ story here… you get to take up space here. You get to mourn here. You get to not hold it together here. You get to take your mask off here. And be seen.
If this is you, I want to encourage you today. It’s ok not to be ok. It’s ok to mourn, and it’s ok if you don’t do it ‘well’, or in such a manner that others consider to be acceptable, especially others that didn’t face the loss that you did.
Her pain was real. Her pain was unimaginable. Yet her pain was unmentioned.
Keep journeying, next blog – let’s evaluate the way her mourning surfaces and what we can learn from it.