Focus was a guiding light to this widow and her young sons

Linda’s life took many turns she did not expect. Although her first husband – and the father of her two sons – was often emotionally unavailable during their marriage and she felt alone as a mother, his tragic death in a plane accident set her on another path altogether.

She thankfully had her mother nearby to help with her sons, but Linda was in a deep daze for three months following his death. “I don’t even remember those three months,” she recalls. “Then I snapped out of the fog and needed to take care of the children. So there was this terrible fear that I was going to be next, I couldn’t describe the fear and knew I needed to find out what was after death.”

In 1995, Linda went looking for answers at church. One day, the pastor said from the pulpit that if anyone needed to stay after, they were welcome to talk with him. “I knew that God was speaking to me,” she says. “God spoke to me that I was living in sin.” She then asked Jesus into her heart. “I remember walking out of there with this freedom and a weight lifted off me, because I didn’t need to live that way anymore. I had only felt valued when I had a man in my life.”

She also walked away from a relationship with another man. “I was able to focus on my sons and getting to know God and the Bible through church,” she says, especially noting that she was looking for support with parenting. “I was just new with my Christian faith and my walk with the Lord and I had two young boys. I asked someone at church for some parenting help. I was looking for help with my new Christian faith, I wanted to raise them in God’s Word, and needed advice. They suggested Focus on the Family. I have been listening ever since. I am so thankful for your organization and that’s why I support it.”

Linda looks back on her life, with all its tragedies and hardships, and sees God’s faithfulness through it all. “It’s still a journey for me,” she says. “My brothers and sisters from the first church I went to, they just loved me and helped me to apply God’s Word into my life. I brought up something and they said, ‘Give your hurt and pain to the Lord, your pain and your suffering. He knows it but you need to talk to him!’ So I would say to anyone struggling as a parent, to cry out to him. Maybe things won’t change right away, maybe not at all, but we have a hope that is in Christ. We know that our hope is in eternity.”