Welcome to this podcast from Harvest Community Church of Huntersville, North Carolina, where our vision is to make disciples who make disciples. I'm your host, Liz Stefanini. All through the scriptures, we see that God has a special place in His heart for widows. There are stories of provision, such as in 1 and 2 Kings with Elijah and Elisha. There are stories of redemption, such as the story of Naomi and Mary. And there are stories of sacrifice, such as the widow who gave her two copper coins, or Anna, who spent the remaining years of her life ministering to the Lord in the temple. In today's podcast, family pastor Scott Torres talks with a few Harvest widows on how God has shown himself to be faithful through one of life's most difficult times. So sit back and be encouraged as we listen in. This is Pastor Scott. We are talking with some friends, Ms. Judy and Ms. Maribel. We're talking along the topic of God's care for widows. We ended our last segment, and Maribel mentioned she was tongue-in-cheek, but she was serious about, you know, she mentioned mechanics taking advantage of widows. Oftentimes husbands would take cars in to get things worked on, and she found herself in a situation where she was easily taken advantage of. And it just reminds me of our role in the church, especially as men, perhaps elders, perhaps just church members, to be thinking about things like that. I recently heard a story of a recent widow in our congregation. She lost her husband during COVID, and one of our church members, his name's Corey Granada, he reached out to her, her name was Barb, and her husband owned a car, and long story short, Corey took that car, cleaned it up, prepared it in any way, helped sell it for her. She was in need of Corrie doing that. And just the story of Corrie stepping in and taking care of that situation, it's just a reminder of the need for men when we have widows in the church to step up and to kind of help out. So Maribel, thank you for sharing that. Well, God has raised up a really unique ministry here at Harvest Community Church. It's called Healing Hearts. And I'd like to just talk about that because God has used this ministry to minister to many widows. How did Healing Hearts come about? It came about one Sunday morning as I was sitting in church, and I was looking around, and I noticed all these ladies. I was fairly new to the church, but I noticed all these ladies sitting by themselves, and they were widows. And what brought it to my mind really at that time was Judy Sellers. And I didn't know her really well at that time, but yet her husband had just died. And it just really struck me that we have one more widow. And I went to the office and talked to whoever was in the office, and I said, could you give me the name of all the widows in the church? And there were like 15 to 20 widows who were in the church. And so then I went to Judy, and that began a friendship when I went to her. And I talked to her about maybe having a group made up of widows, ladies in the church. And she was enthusiastic about it and joined me in that. And so we went to every single lady in the church who was a widow and say, would you like to be part of a group? And every single one of them said yes, which amazed us. And we began our group calling it Grief Share. But then we thought we wanted to be more positive. We wanted to show that we were healing, and so we call it healing hearts. And it just started and, you know, ended up being 10 to 15, 20 ladies sometimes, usually around 15. But it came from the scripture that, and I have it here, 2 Corinthians 1, three and four, and it says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. And so that's what our group is, that we share, and because of the comfort we receive, it's more of like a support group, but it's based on biblical principles, and it has just become a special time for us that we meet, we also do things together, we go out to eat together, we've been to, where, a couple places together. to the Biltmore House. We've traveled together and had experiences together, but it's been just a really special time. I can't remember what it started right after Bill died. So that would have been a few years ago. Judy, anything you want to say about Healing Hearts or about that? You know, I remember going to Healing Hearts for the first time. And you know, when you sit down in there, everybody in there is experiencing the same thing you are. And as word got out about our group, we started adding more people. We now have about 31 people, 31 ladies on our roll. The first time I went, I cried almost the whole time. And, but I still wanted to go back the next month because it was, I just enjoyed being with that group. Can I add one thing too? We talked about at Widows, but it's anyone who experienced loss. And so in our group are ladies who have experienced the loss of their health because that's a loss and there's a grieving process. There's ladies who have experienced the loss of their husband through divorce. There's ladies who have experienced loss to financial security. So it's not just widows that make up healing hearts. It's those who have experienced loss. And we have ladies in there from the age of 30 on up to where we are and older. you know, that when we experience loss, there's also always a grieving process to that. And so we try to be compassionate and support each other in that. One of the things you just mentioned, you mentioned 2 Corinthians 1. The comfort that you receive from God, comfort others. And that was one of the passages that kind of helped springboard the start of this ministry. If you're listening in and you have an experience by which God has comforted you through difficult times, maybe he's calling you to consider reaching out, using those experiences, maybe starting a ministry just like Maribel did and now there's several ladies being ministered to and helped. I just wanted to say that sometimes what we need is just a little nudge and maybe 2 Corinthians 1 that care that God has given to you, he then uses you. Maybe this will be the nudge. Well, I'd like to close out this series of podcasts on God's care for widows by asking you guys a question. And the question's this, what words of advice would you give to a fairly recent new widow? Love to hear from you. I remember within a week or so after Bill died, one of my neighbors who had lost her husband a couple of years before, she came to me and she said, Judy, you have to stay busy. You can't sit here in this house and play poor pitiful you. This is your first year. If someone asked you to do something, to go with them somewhere, you do it. Now, the second year, she said, you can pick and choose what you want to do. I'm not sure that I did everything everyone asked me to do that first year, but I took her advice and stayed busy. And when I felt like that I was in over my head and had decisions that I had to make, the answer is prayer. There were so many times that I would be standing somewhere, like Mirabel said, in front of a mechanic or someone, and I would think, what am I going to do? And I would just say a prayer. Thank you for sharing that. One of the main things is to stay in God's word and find some scripture that really speaks to you. For me, it was 2 Timothy 1, 17. God has not given me the spirit of fear, but the spirit of power and the spirit of love and the spirit of a strong mind, because I needed all those. In fact, I put them on little cards and I put them around. I put one next to my phone, so when I was about to answer the phone, I'd have that or in different places. And then Hebrews 13.5, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. That all people may leave you either by choice or by, through death or whatever, but God is the only one who will never leave you or forsake you. One of the advice I would give to early widows is to be patient with yourself. Don't put too many expectations upon yourself. Don't let people tell you what you should do, or how you should feel, or how you should act. Judy and I have both lost our husbands, but we're different because we're different people, so we have different reactions. And so listen to yourself, but as Judy said, make sure that you don't get stuck in any one of the phases of grieving. That if you get stuck in sadness and you find yourself just being overwhelmed with that sadness, seek help. Sometimes the help may be through a counselor or through your pastor. or reaching out to your friends or whatever, but don't let yourself get stuck in one of those phases if you see that happening to you. Because there's people that if you reach out to them, they're willing to help you. But first of all, just be patient with yourself and be kind to yourself. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I'd like for us to close by talking about the local church. Healing Hearts came. God raised up a ministry within the local church to care for those who were grieving. And so when you think about the local church and Healing Hearts and the importance of local church during this whole process, can you just give me Maybe a couple sentences of what comes to your mind about the local church and the way God has used it to kind of help you through this process. my local church became my family. I was away from my children at the time when my husband passed away, and they became my family. And there were people in the church, I remember one Steve Corley in the church, who would come out, I would just call him and my drain was stopped up, and he would come out and he would work on that. And he just was there to help me, and he came from my church. And then my pastor, who would include me in things, and even when I felt I wasn't ready to do something, he'd ask me to lead a Bible study or lead something, and I'd feel I'm not ready, and he says, you can do this. And he encouraged me to do that. And just surrounding me with love and support as you say, through healing hearts, but just an understanding and just a lot of love. You know, God's love that they showed to me throughout that time just meant a great deal. But they became my family. Amen. Thank you. Judy, anything that come to your mind? Think about the local church. My local church was Harvest at that time, and they became my best friend. And I remember one time Carl Seeger had a group of people, I'm not sure exactly how many people were in it, but he said they kept asking what they could do to help And I had a dead bush in the front yard. And I finally said, Carl, do you have anyone that could take up a bush? And he said, absolutely. And in a couple of days, there he was with his group and they pulled up the bush, put it on the road. And those little things that, that thing that he did maybe did not mean as much to him as it did to me. Because I saw the love that people had for me and how they wanted to help me. And I think sometimes it's hard to admit that you need help, but you do. And if you're listening in and you know a widow, and you're a Christian and you're part of a local church, or even if you're not, I want to encourage you to extend a hand to help that widow. But maybe you're a widow and you're not part of a local church. God has orchestrated the body of Christ, and there are local congregations that would love to care for you that actually God will use to care for you. I want to encourage you, if you're a widow, get involved in a local church. Ladies, thank you for your time. You've ministered to me, trusting that God is going to use our time together to minister to many, even in our congregation. Can I add one thing? We would like to invite all people, any woman, doesn't have to be part of our church, can be part of the community, to come to Healing Hearts. We meet the last Tuesday of every month. at 11 o'clock and we meet here at Harvest. We have our time of support with each other and then we go out to eat together and we would like to invite any woman who is listening to this podcast to be a part of that group. We would love to have you. All right, there we have it. Thank you guys for your time. Thanks again for joining us today from Harvest Community Church. This podcast is also available on our website HarvestCharlotte.com. Please go there if you want to send a question or comment, learn more about our ministries, or find out how you can donate to support the podcast.