It seems impossible. We fall in love, marry, make a vow to love, honor, and cherish “until death do us part,” and then it happens: death parts us from our greatest love. What do we do? Where is God? How can we go on? How can we ever love again? Some people are finding God after the death of the one you love.
The week of Gina Kell’s tenth anniversary with her husband, Matt, he was diagnosed with cancer. It took three years for the cancer to take him. He died on Christmas, 2005.
Matt had been friends since childhood with a woman named Cathy Spehn. Gina met Cathy during the last year of Matt’s life.
Meanwhile, after Cathy developed a headache that would not go away, her husband Michael took her to the emergency room and doctors discovered she had inoperable brain cancer. Cathy was adamant that Michael, a basketball coach, call Gina Kell and teach her sons how to play basketball. The last day of her life Cathy told Michael, “Call Gina Kell.” Cathy died two months after Matt on February 28, 2006.
Gina felt compelled to attend Cathy’s funeral—at the same funeral home where Matt’s funeral had been. Michael saw her, and, even though he had never met her, guessed who she was, hugged her, and asked if she would sit with him for a few minutes. She did. Michael asked her, “How are you doing? How are your kids? I need to know.”
Gina assured him they were doing fine.
A few weeks later, they connected, along with all their kids (five in all), for pizza. Two years later Michael and Gina married. They’ve recently told their story in the book The Color of Rain.
You can read an excerpt of their book in this article “ ‘The Color of Rain’: Two families start over as one”. Today at MSNBC says, “Michael and Gina Spehn share their remarkable story of faith, hope and love in the wake of tragedy.”
Are you grieving? God cares. He can write a love story just for you, and you can become someone who is finding God after the death of the one you love.