This morning, I prayed for the widows in my life. Each of these women had husbands who were friends of mine. They are living as women of God, each one serving the Lord in their unique way.

When my father died, my mother lived another twenty years after his death. Jan and I, along with my brother and his wife, stepped in to offer practical support to my mom in her last years. From that experience, I saw how difficult it can be to lose the love of your life and face a future without the kind of love and support a faithful spouse offers.

Everything changes when a spouse dies. It affects us emotionally and financially if we are unprepared for that time. It also ushers in a loneliness that’s hard to understand until the person you were spiritually one with is now gone.

Scripture speaks about our relationship with widows, “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (James 1:27). Part of that corruption is forgetting the widows in our lives in their time of loss. We can too easily move on from the death of someone’s spouse and forget the struggle they will face being alone. That kind of dismissive thinking can spiritually corrupt our lives making us insensitive to another person’s suffering. In the sight of God, that disconnection grieves Him.

Every prayer, each kind word of support and, at times, even offering financial support, tells a widow “I see you.” To be corrupted by the spirit of the world is to forget the widows in our lives and leave them alone to struggle in silence.