In The Company Of God

How would this widow go on?

- Raylene Nickel, Kief, North Dakota

One cool October morning on the prairie, I sat on the back porch watching the sun rise. The porch faced a yard ringed by stately old cottonwoods and, beyond the trees, a pasture rising to a low hill. My husband, John, and I called the northern end of that hill Prayer Hill. From there, our 468-acre cattle and hay farm looked like a tapestry woven by God’s hands and our own hard work—fields of grass and alfalfa interlaced with trees and wetlands.

John and I spent many mornings on this porch. Whichever of us got here first would call the other to come watch the sun make its appearance. No two dawns were the same. Sometimes the sun streamed through a rift in a cloud bank. Sometimes rays of light shot straight into the sky. Sometimes long shadows leaped from the cottonwoods.

John wasn’t here this morning. A few months earlier, he’d died after a six year battle with malignant melanoma. A battle John had seemed to be winning until last year, when suddenly he grew weak and his pain more nagging.

Now I was alone. Staring out at a farm that had depended on John’s strong body and even stronger spirit— his unshakable faith and optimism. I had depended on John too. I’d worked alongside him, but his strength and ingenuity had kept this ranching operation going. I’d supplemented our income by writing for agricultural magazines. I was strong, but not strong enough to handle the big draft horses John had used to haul hay to the cows in winter.

I felt overwhelmed. Hobbled by grief. Unable to see the path forward. I thought back to another morning, shortly before John went on hospice care, when we sat on this porch and he said to me with uncharacteristic apprehension, “I wonder how much longer it will be. Do you have a plan, Raylene? This isn’t stopping!”

“My only plan is to pray,” I said after a long silence.