Joanne The Widow Lady Wants to Know Why God Didn’t Answer Her Prayer to Keep her Husband With Her
Several months ago, the viewer question segment of the 700 Club’s show was called “Bring It On,” but for whatever the reason, they changed the name of the segment to “Your Questions, Honest Answers.”
On today’s (January 3, 2018) program, a woman named Joanne wrote Pat Robertson with this question (video below). I will type up a transcript of her letter (which was read aloud by the lady co-host) and then I will opine about the letter below the transcript:
Viewer Question Transcript:
My husband and I were happily married for 37 years. Every single night I prayed to God thanking him for my husband and the life we had together.
I asked God to never take him from me, for I had hoped that we would grow old together.
Then one day out of nowhere, my husband was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. I was devastated and I felt like my sincere prayer must not have meant anything to God.
If God only answers prayers according to His will, what difference does prayer make?
(signed), Joanne
You can listen to Pat Roberson’s reply to her (video below), but he didn’t really answer her question.
Robertson basically just said her husband is in a better place now, that your prayers to God say more about you than they do about God, yada yada, but he doesn’t really address the question in her e-mail.
I’m not really that interested in Robertson’s response, though.
I am truly sorry for Joanne’s loss, but what I say next may come across as cruel in a way, which is not my intent.
One of my big pet peeves as a never married 40 something who had wanted to marry are these people who either complain about their spouse, or, like this lady, who got married, and after over THREE DECADES of being married, she’s upset that her spouse is gone now. (I am assuming her spouse died from the brain tumor.)
These women at least have (or had at one time) something I always wanted and never got.
Joanne’s husband may be dead, but she at least got three plus decades of companionship with someone, which for lack of a better way of putting it, beats my zero decades of companionship, so I’m finding it difficult to be too worked up over her loss, outside of the ordinary “I’m sorry your loved one passed away” (which I too experienced, only my loved ones who died were not spouses).
I had an internet friend whose first husband beat her up. She got remarried to another guy who makes a great living and who does not beat her up.
However, husband number two’s profession would take him away from her for months at a time.
She used to write to me to complain about how lonely she was without him around.
About two or three years ago, this same friend contacted me privately on Facebook to complain that while she was expecting a romantic gift from her husband for Christmas, such as a diamond necklace or bottle of perfume, that her husband instead got her a frying pan.
She felt deeply hurt that her husband would get her something practical for the holidays, rather than something meaningful.
I guess she felt that her husband was not meeting her emotional needs on some level, which I understand. I was engaged for a few years to a selfish idiot who didn’t care about meeting my needs (emotional or otherwise), and yes, it hurts when the guy you’re with isn’t meeting your emotional needs.
However, it really bothered me to sit and listen to her complain about her marital problems (“Oh, he’s away on his job again, I’m lonely now,” or, “Oh, he bought me a skillet when he should’ve been Mr. Romance and bought me a ruby ring”), when this same friend new damn well I had been single for years, never had been married, and had wanted to be married.
I’d gladly trade spaces with my friend.
I’d rather be married to a guy who, due to his job, has to spend a few months away from home at a time, or a guy who gives me a frying pan rather than a diamond necklace as a Christmas gift, rather than have no husband at all.
In this area of life, my online friend has me beat – she has a husband, I don’t have one. Yet she complains about the husband she has. And she apparently wants me to feel empathy for her, feel sorry for her, and so on.
I do feel if you are married to a really abusive guy – whether he’s verbally or physically abusive, or if you’re married to a guy who is consistently neglecting your needs – that yes, you are better off single than with that guy.
However, my friend was talking about run of the mill marital problems and her husband was more or less a stand-up guy who just made the normal, bone- headed occasional faux paus many husbands make, having known for a few years prior to all this that I was single and wanted to be married, and yet I had to spend a few years listening to her complain about her marriage.
I can’t think of too many things more tacky than you, a married woman, complaining to, or in front of, never-married women like me, who desire marriage, about how crummy your husband is, or that you were married for over 30 years, and your husband is now dead.
You at least have a crummy husband. You at least got 30 years of marriage to someone. Yet you complain anyhow.
At times, some married women, whether they are widowed or not, sound very ungrateful for what they have (or did have at one time).
It’s like at this job I had one time, where the bosses gave us all pay raises. One of my co-workers took me aside to complain about the size of his paycheck, that he didn’t feel was big enough to start with, and he found the pay raise he got too small.
He told me how much he earns per year – which was about $50,000 – and he said his meager pay raise was an insult.
I did not feel sorry for this co-worker because at 50k per year, he was earning WAY MORE than I was.
I gladly would’ve traded places with him to have his 50k per year, and he could have taken my rinky- dink salary.
Same concept: some people have X, complain about X, but then there’s someone like me who’d like to have X and do not have X, but I have to listen to these other people complain that their X is not good enough or that X is not there anymore.
I do try to be sympathetic when I hear women complain or cry about how their husband is dead, and they find it difficult to adjust to being single again, but as a never-married woman, it’s hard for me to muster up that sympathy. Ditto for the women who complain and cry about how their husband forgot to get them flowers for Valentine’s Day or whatever.
So, on the one hand I am sorry that Joanne’s husband is dead, but as a never married lady past the age of 40, I find her letter rather annoying. She at least had 30+ years of marriage, when women like me get zero years of marriage.
(Link): You Tube video link
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