Walking Well in Every Season: For the Empty Nester, the Grandma, and the Widow

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Parenting Adult Children"

"How You Can Influence Your Great, Great, Great Grandchildren"

"Comfort in Widowhood"

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Dannah Gresh: All month long here on the weekend program, we’ve been highlighting seasons of a woman’s life. 

We’ve talked about girlhood.

Dannah (on True Girl): The shepherd is the one who fights off the wolves, so the safest thing a sheep can do isn't to learn everything about wolves. The safest thing a sheep can do is stay close to the Shepherd and learn everything we can about Jesus.

Dannah: We’ve explored singleness.

Charmaine Porter: Whether you have the gift of singleness or the gift of marriage, open that baby up! See what it is. It's a tool for us to use for however long the Lord has us to have it, to bring Him glory.

Dannah: We’ve encouraged those mothering littles.

Laura Wifler: One day I said to my kids, "Who made you?" And my youngest daughter who doesn't hardly speak very much, she just goes, "GOD!" She just yelled it! I just lost it, "Baby, I'm so glad you noticed!"

Dannah: We’ve cheered on the moms raising teens.

Joy McClain: So I want to encourage you if you have a prodigal—big guy, little guy, middle-aged guy—do not cease in your praying. Keep praying. Storm the gates of heaven.

Dannah: You can go back and catch all those episodes at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. But we want to walk well in every season, and there are a few we haven’t covered yet. If you’ve been feeling left out, today just might be your day! We’re going to hear encouragement for the empty nester, the grandmother, and the widow. I hope that, whatever your season, you’ll be richly encouraged. And even if you don’t fit into any of these categories, I hope you’ll stick around, because odds are good you know someone who is in one of these seasons. Maybe she needs this encouragement from you. You could be the one to share it with her.

I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

First up, the empty nest years. Been there. Done that. (I still remember the moment I burst into tears at the grocery store because I reached for the family-sized ketchup and realized I didn’t need it anymore.) There were a lot of tears that day. There are emotions, and there’s such a learning curve as we shift from actively parenting kids to mentoring adult children. But fifteen years in, I can tell you: there can be such joy in this transition when you navigate it with the Lord. How do we walk well here? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sat down with a group of dear friends to talk about just that. I’ll let her introduce them to you.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: On my left is Kim Wagner, and she’s just written a book, a terrific book on marriage called Fierce Women: The Power of a Soft Warrior. Every married woman needs to read that book. Most women need to read that book. It really has very practical handles.

Kim and I go back to even before the beginning of Revive Our Hearts radio. And these are women who have been friends and prayer partners. I’m going to stop saying nice things about them because there are a lot of things I could say. But on my right is Holly who’ve I’ve known longer than any of these women. We go back to . . .

Holly Elliff: 1985.

Nancy: You still have three children at home and grandchildren.

Holly: Going on seven grandchildren, now.

Nancy: So you’ve got lots of different seasons going there. We’re going to talk about seasons. 

Holly: Seasons is good. I like that.

Nancy: We're going to talk about some of the different seasons that we’re in right now. And then Rebecca Lutzer. Rebecca and Erwin have been dear friends. Rebecca’s a part of a group of women who meet in the Chicago area regularly to pray for me and for Revive Our Hearts. We call them “The Chicago Praying Ladies.” They have been really dear, sweet friends. Your husband pastors the, actually, all your husbands are pastors. Some of you hear Dr. Erwin Lutzer on the radio program “Running to Win.” He has been a pastor at Moody Church for many years. Your children are all grown and all married.

Rebecca Lutzer: And I have eight grandchildren. 

Nancy: And Kim, your children are grown and you are expecting a third grandchild shortly.

Kim Wagner: Yes, I’m very excited.

Nancy: So having my empty nest and near empty nest friends here, we want to just talk about some of the issues related to this season of life. How to think about those. Let me just start with the blessings. As your children are getting older, you’re getting into grandmother season of life, what are some of the things you are really enjoying about this season?

Kim: Well, I am just loving hanging out with my adult children and now their children. I love it. It is so fun to watch my daughter. It’s like I am seeing me in her. She’ll say, “Mom, I do these parenting things that just seem to come naturally. Then all of a sudden I hear you in my head saying these things that I’m saying.” That is just a blessing to me to watch that and to see. Now I get to invest in these little ones, and it's just fun. I love it.

Rebecca: I love going to my daughters' homes. I just have daughters; I don’t have any sons. I've had to learn how to keep my mouth shut and let them be autonomous and do things the way they like and their husbands like. That was a little bit of a hard lesson for me to learn.

Kim: It’s interesting that you say that. It definitely is hard because you're used to be able to tell them when they were younger. You were able to set them in that chair and say, "Don't move." You know when they were little bitty. Now they are making life choices for your grandchildren. And those may be different than what you would have made.

Rebecca: Yes, I struggle with that, too.

Kim: What has been good for me is to be able to affirm my daughter and the things I’m seeing that she is doing even better than I did a lot of times. So when I’m affirming that, sometimes she’ll say, "Well, mom, I don't know how to handle this." And I’m thankful for that because there are choices they’re going to make, and they’ll learn just like we learned from our mistakes, and that’s hard. But again, we’re trusting God’s grace, that He’s bigger than we are to be able to take care of that.

Rebecca: It’s also an interesting place to be as a mother and a mother-in-law to watch your adult children relate to each other and work through their issues and their problems and to keep your mouth shut. Like you said, we teach the children, we teach our daughters how to do things, and we want them to do them the right way, of course. Then they get into their homes and they’re influenced by their husbands, and there are things that they want to do. So God’s really had to teach me about keeping my mouth shut.

Nancy: So how do you know when to speak up about something and when to be quiet?

Holly: My degree is in speech pathology. You know how some people teach their toddlers sign language? We taught our kids to talk. Now, in hindsight, we regret that just a tad. So we were real fans of teaching our kids to talk things out. We never let our kids go in their room and shut their door and pout. We would follow them. When you have that many people who all believe in talking things out, you have a lot of conversations.

Now, there are moments when the Lord just has to give discernment about when to speak and when not to speak.

Nancy: So do you wait for them to ask for counsel? 

Holly: I don't always wait for them to ask. I know all the books say, "Don't talk." But because of the culture of our family where we have always talked about things, there's a little more freedom. So it’s not that I necessarily give my opinion about what they ought to do, but I do believe there should always be the freedom to share biblical truth in a winsome way or a loving way, a kind way—not preaching but just sharing your heart a little bit. I think the Lord is wise enough to tell us when to be quiet.

Nancy: Rebecca, you’ve got daughters, and I know Holly you have some of both, and Kim you have one daughter. But there is a sense in which they need to be shaping their own families with their husbands and letting him provide leadership without feeling that momma’s still controlling them. 

Rebecca: Right. There were times I would just say what I was thinking to kind of help the situation or to help the daughters or with the grandchildren. And now, I’ve just noticed in this last year that I just have sort of a weight in my heart and my mind. It's the Holy Spirit that holds me back—and I actually think about what I would like to say and just say, “No, I don't need to say that.” I just let them ask for counsel or advice. I think it works better that way. 

Sometimes you cannot say anything, and you shouldn’t, and you just tell that child, “I love you, and I am praying for you.” Sometimes that is the best thing for them to hear.

Dannah: What a wealth of wisdom! Empty nester, you are in good company. So many women are navigating this season right now. Let me go ahead and pass on one of my favorite pieces of advice for the empty nest years. Someone wise once told me, “Go on a vacation with your husband. Your rhythms will no longer revolve around rising early to get kids out the door or having a family dinner. You’ll need to re-establish new rhythms as a couple. Go on a trip to push re-set and talk about what your life will look like—dream, plan, be excited.”

So Bob and I did. We drove up to Maine during the fall leaf change. We cried about missing our kids, but then we dreamed. We decided to dive in hard to ministry in the years between children and grandchildren—to spend ourselves on the mission field of life. And we surely did. It was so purposeful and exciting. 

We also talked about mentoring our adult childre and preparing to welcome grandchildren with intention. It turned into a very sweet season. Here’s to hoping—and praying!—this is the sweetest season for you, too.

Well next up, we’ve got a word for all our grandmas—the grammies, the grannies, the nanas, the meemaws, the gigis, the mimis—or whatever your favorite little ones call you! I’m NanaDannah, if you were wondering. And I LOVE being a grandma. I don’t take it lightly. I want to leave a beautiful legacy of faith for my grandchildren. So does my good friend, Jani Ortlund. She and her husband have co-written a book called To the Tenth Generation: God’s Heart for Your Family, Far into the Future. She’s passionate about walking well as a grandmother, and she’s gonna share practical wisdom on what it looks like to weave a life of faith into the life of your family. She begins with why this conversation is so important.

Jani Ortlund: It matters so deeply to me. Because we're all leaving a legacy of one sort or another. Whether it's a spiritual legacy or not, we are leaving a legacy. We who know Jesus Christ had the privilege of leaving His legacy to those all around us. So, I'm so excited about this topic.

Dannah: Yeah, I think that it's from the very beginning. The Bible tells us be fruitful and multiply. And then in Deuteronomy, it says, when your kids are walking, standing, sitting, everything they're doing, plant the word of truth in their hearts, that is our responsibility. As moms and dads as grandmas, let's talk about the children first. Those that are our offspring, whether it is biologically or by adoption. What do parents need to do? What do they need to plant in their kids’ lives today to be bearing fruit, spiritual fruit in the future?

Jani: That is a really good question. It goes very deep. I want to speak, first of all, to those who are listening or thinking, Oh, that's just too huge for me to even begin thinking about. I want to say that, really, the Bible doesn't give us guarantees that if we behave A, B, C, live out this before our children, then the absolute promise result is what we want. There are no guarantees. No. So where does that leave us? As I think of it, as a grandmother, a mother, an aunt, a Sunday school teacher, a friend? Where does that leave me? It leaves me thinking about not guarantees, but investments. I can invest in it, as in any investment. Dannah, you know, I know our listeners know, all we can do is seek out God's wisdom, invest, and leave the results with Him.

The best investment, I believe, and my husband Ray believes, the best investment we can leave is our own personal love of Jesus Christ.  When those around us whether they be six months old, 16, or like our kid at 46, whatever; the best investment we can give them is to show that no matter what, no matter what this life offers us, no matter what we are facing, we can get through it with joy and peace, through Jesus, He is the answer. 

We want to make Him beautiful, enticing. We can do that in a lot of ways. I mean, we do need to teach the Word. But we can live it. We want our homes to be kind of a foretaste of heaven. Where our kids, if they love our homes, they'll be more likely to want to lean toward heaven and go that direction. We want our marriages, those of us who are married, to be an example of Jesus. We want to be in love with His Church, and His Bride, the Church passionately in love with Him and longing to serve Him beautifully so that the those around us can see our marriages, our homes. 

Dannah: Well, you know, I think what you're saying is something that's near and dear to my heart is so much of what we need to teach in God's Word is better caught than taught, don't you think?

Jani: Yes. Oh, I really believe that. And that can be tricky, because I can talk better than I can control my actions. 

Dannah: Amen. 

Jani: It's always easy to say, “Hey, you do this.” But it's a little harder to say, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” I want that. I want that for my children, my grandchildren. I want them to have a visual, as well as an audible memory of me serving the Lord, loving the Lord in ways that are enticing to them.

Dannah: Yeah, me too. Me too. Now that gets really hard, because your children are great observers, but not always the best interpreters. So, on our bad days, they might misinterpret things. How important is it to slow down if we want to build a spiritual legacy, and ask for forgiveness, or say, “I'm sorry, I didn't get that right." Like when we blow the example, are not following Jesus on a certain day or in a certain situation, how important is it in our legacy leaving to stop and say I didn't get it right?

Jani: Oh, I think that's so important. Because then through that, children can begin to understand their relationship to the Lord. When I can see myself as I really am, and I feel that little off, why did I say that? I lost my temper again. Or why didn't I do it this way? And we look that child or grandchild straight in the eye and say, “I am so sorry. This is what I did that was wrong.” And I know the Scripture says, where is it Dannah? Ephesians 5, I think it's verse 10. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. “I wasn't discerning what was pleasing to Jesus, I don't see His smile on what I just did, how I treated you. Will you please forgive me? Please forgive me. I want the Lord to forgive me. And I want you to forgive me.” That sets a pattern before a child of vulnerability, openness, no shame in admitting who we really are. We're all sinners saved by grace. I'm not any better than you are. We're all in need of His forgiveness.

Dannah: Right? You know, I love what you're saying. Because if we do that, that's also modeling something that's really important, which is repentance? If we don't model that, how are they ever going to really be able to have an authentic relationship with Jesus? I've had the privilege through the years of mentoring a lot of teenage girls. And one of the things that gets in the way most in their relationship with mom, is this very thing. They don't come to her and say, “Hey, I messed that up. I yelled at you. I shouldn't have said this. This is how I should have handled that.”

And then when that girl messes up, whether it's lying to her mom or dad or doing something she shouldn't have done with a boyfriend or cheating on a test, she doesn't know, oh, I'm supposed to tell someone. And then she doesn't have the wisdom and the accountability that she needs to walk through that well. 

Hey, I want to ask you a question about time. How much time does it take to invest in the next generation? My husband, Bob, has a special passion for this. Right before we became grandparents, just three years ago, he said Dannah, we need ten hours a week in our schedule, somehow. That's what I want to set aside to invest. That's the word he uses, invest in the hearts and lives of our grandchildren. 

So, coach me up. How much of a factor is time in grandchildren? Remind us again, how many you have?

Jani: But we have fifteen grandchildren. Time and investment is so important. All of our children live far away from us. We're in Nashville. Some are in London, California, the Chicago area—eight of our grandchildren live up near Chicago. So, we've had to make a commitment to invest in them. At least once a year, we go and visit each of our families. 

Dannah: Wow. 

Jani: It's different if they live near you.

Dannah: I think in our busy, get-it-done culture, we want to skip past that sometimes. We want to leave a legacy, but we don't necessarily want to invest the time as fun as those grandkids are. And what you're saying is that I imagine getting to all those different places around the country is quite a commitment.

Jani: A wonderful privilege. It really is a privilege. 

Dannah: I love that. 

Jani: God gave us those children and grandchildren. I'm the only maternal grandmother they will have. 

Dannah: Yeah. 

Jani: And so, I really want to invest in them for Jesus's sake. Not for our sake, but for their sake and the sake of the kingdom on out into the future.

Dannah: Amen. That’s Jani Ortlund. What a privilege it is to learn from this godly friend of mine! I hope you’re feeling inspired to leave a faithful legacy for your children—to the tenth generation and beyond. 

As we think about grandparenting, I want to point you to our featured resource this week—the 30 Days of Praying for Your Grandchildren booklet! It’s a resource that provides intentional prayer prompts you can use to pray over your grandkids. When you make a donation of any amount, we’d love to send you a copy! Go to ReviveOurHearts.com to give and request yours!

Well, last but not least, we’re talking about the season of widowhood. I’ve been walking my mother-in-law through it this year. And, of course, my dear friend Nancy. This isn’t an easy one to walk out, but the good news is that God enters this season with you. That’s the truth Holly Brewton will encourage you with today. Her husband, Dr. Greg Brewton, was a beloved professor of church music. He served at Boyce College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville for almost twenty years. In September of 2021, Greg contracted COVID (and you’ll hear just a bit more about that in a moment). Within two weeks, he was with the Lord. 

Not too long after this, Nancy sat down with Holly to hear how God was upholding her in those days of deep sorrow. I hope Holly’s honest words might help to uphold you, too, if this is the season you’re in.

Holly Brewton: Well, the beginning months were very foggy, very dense, very dark. I feel very much, even still, there’s many days that I feel like I’m “walking through the valley of the shadow of death.” There’s much about life that is dead to me. Hearing a car drive up in the driveway—just simple things . . . Initially, my description was, “I was hemorrhaging, but nobody could see a drop.” It was just basically a hemorrhage situation.

I feel like I really have had some very dark seasons of the soul, desperation to the point where twice I thought I was dying. I literally felt like I was dying—just breathing and pleading with the Lord to take me. But I also know that when these tsunami waves of grief or destruction seem to be coming your way–mentally, emotionally, physically, whatever it is—it’s very important to bring light to the situation.

I don’t know if this scared my family or not, but I said, “Well, last night I felt like I was dying.” It wasn’t to worry or concern them, but how do you know where somebody is at, in a trusted situation, if you don’t share?

And also, it tells us, like in Ephesians 5:11, that for the darkness of sin, you need to bring light to create healing. I’ve thought about that many times when there’s hidden sin. But this isn’t a matter of sin. This is a matter of deep darkness. 

Psalm 139:11 says, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, and the darkness is as light to you” (vv. 11–12 ESV).

I have read Psalm 139 and many of the psalms, obviously, because of the lament involved in them, they have really come to life at a depth that I’ve never known before. And each day I just basically have to be reminded that God is God and I am not." I’m not God, and that really, God does only have His best for me ahead.

Greg’s days were complete. He didn’t live an incomplete life. He didn’t die early. He didn’t die young. He lived a completed life. If you’re in the Lord, your first breath and your last breath are under His care. And when Greg took his last breath, it was what he was supposed to have.

And so I feel like I’ve had to come to the realization: Greg is dead. He’s not disappeared. He’s not off in some spot where I don’t know where he is. He’s with the Lord. And I’m alive. So, what does that really mean for me?

It’s a hard thing to say, but I feel the Lord definitely has been preparing me, mainly through the end of 2020 and then into ’21, I felt very convicted just about accepting the hand of what God gives.

And when I think back, when I first started being a part of Revive Our Hearts in 2010, I was crushed in spirit. I was crushed emotionally. I was crushed in my spiritual walk. I had decided I was on a standard that I felt the Lord really needed to weave His Word more in me and just abiding in His Word at a tremendous level because I was anemic, in 2010.

And the Lord has just worked in me through these years. He’s worked through the podcast. He’s worked through Grounded. The resources are tremendous. If somebody is seeking and looking, I think this ministry gets to the heart of what it is being a Christ follower. Every dollar spent, every prayer sent, every hand that gives support the things that help in such a crushing or even a good event of life. They frame it within the gospel of Christ.

One of the verses that the Lord really just drove home through 2020 was 2 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you.”

Don’t really take that verse up if you’re not ready for it, because life happens, and then the Lord says, “That verse that I’m weaving in your heart and your emotions and your will and your obedience, what are you going to do with it?”

Well, in March of 2021, Greg had the opportunity to go to Israel for the first time. I just wanted to say, “Can I go, too?” I really wanted to go. But it wasn’t for me to go. And the Lord really enabled me to be supportive of him totally. I was totally in. I was more supportive of . . . He said, “Well, we probably won’t go in COVID,” and all that.

So, in preparing me, when he left for that trip on July 11, we said goodbye. He was having a really hard time separating. He hugged me and kissed me and hugged me and kissed me, and we’re trying to say goodbye. I finally looked at him, and I said, “Greg, you have to go. I have to stay. I’ll be okay.” I told him that. I said, “I will be okay.”

On that trip, he had the opportunity to go through the Aquaduct. I can’t tell you where in Israel it really is, but you can actually go down it, walk through the water. It can be as high as waist high. You use your phone to go through it. He told me that was a very narrow channel. Apparently at times it was like a dead man’s squeeze. You really just had very little room to get through. It takes about twenty minutes. And when you get to the other end, it breaks out in this brightness, and you're out in light again.

And so, when Greg was so ill, laying in that bed, the Lord really brought that to mind. I reminded Greg, “We don’t know why you’re having such squeezing right now.”

Greg asked me at one point what was his prognosis. I said, “We don’t know. But either way, you’re going to be good. You’re going to be all right. We just don't know which way this is going to be.”

And so, I did not get to tell Greg goodbye, but I feel like He used that. I know that in telling him I was going to be okay, I know I’ll be a Christ follower. I know I’ll say, “Yes,” and I’ll be leaving the working it out to Him. Christ is our only hope in life and in death. (Listen to Southern Seminary choir sing "Christ Our Hope in Life and Death" dedicated to Dr. Greg Brewton.)

Dannah: That was Holly Brewton talking about how Nancy encouraged her in the days following the loss of her husband, Dr. Greg Brewton.

We’re able to share this hope with women in every season because of generous listeners who give. They’ve experienced the blessing of Revive Our Hearts’ resources, and they want to help those reach further. If you feel the same, would you consider making a donation, too? Again, when you give this month, we’ve got the 30 Days of Praying for Your Grandchildren booklet to send your way. To give and request your copy, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Well, next weekend is Labor Day! Where did the summer go? In light of this, we’re going to talk about . . . well . . . labor! More specifically, we’re going to talk about what it looks like to labor for the Lord in faithfulness, to bring Him glory through the work of our hands.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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