Seven Husbands

Last Sunday’s sermon reminded me of a conversation I had with Mom not long after Paul died. I've been married several times before and engaged a lot. Actually my marital track record was beginning to look like Elizabeth Taylor or Zsa Zsa Gabor’s BP—before Paul. The problem—I said yes when I meant no then ran when awful got worse.

 In reality, all my previous relationships added together did not total three years. Pathetic considering I met Paul at age thirty-one and stayed with him twenty-nine years.

The conversation with Mom went like this…

“Do you think Paul will be my husband in heaven?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mom said flatly. “The rest of them won’t be there any way.”

Okay that was funny. Not true but funny. I laughed then felt a bit guilty.

We had both forgotten Luke 20:27-38—the passage Pastor Murphy sermonized last Sunday. The story was about the widow who married her husband’s brother who dies, then marries the next brother who dies and so on for a total of seven husbands. The Sadducees wanted to know whose wife would she be in the afterlife? Jesus said, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.” In heaven, we are made different. Human rules don’t apply. So this grief and longing will not last either.  

Till then I wake up, breathe, and move on.