The Edit | Claire Lee on Finding Purpose After Loss

Claire Lee shares her personal story of finding purpose after unexpectedly losing her husband.

Encouragement and insight in under 15 minutes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I feel like God is doing something new. And God reminded me of the seasons. And God reminded me that just because this happened doesn't mean that He doesn't have goodness for me ahead. And that He doesn't want me to finish out the series and to continue to telling the stories and that He had brought me to this place. And there was a point where I I feel like it was another moment in my life where I had to surrender everything because I felt like so much had been taken with Ed's passing. And so, but I feel like God had put me in this place in this moment to do this and that he had prepared me. And um God reminded me one day I was kind of mad. I felt like the character, I really felt like Naomi sitting there praying and praying to God about what had happened. But I felt like God had reminded me and he said, You're looking at it this way, but I'm but you know, I've never given you more than you can handle. And I said, I will never give you more than you can handle. And God took me back to that time 10 years ago, with um when more than 10, 14 years ago, when um he first got he had a heart problem. And the first time it ever came up was 14 years ago, and he almost died then. And when Austin was born, I had three babies, they were all under five, and God, God's God took me back to that time and he said, you know, I knew you couldn't handle it then. You know, you wouldn't have been able to handle that. And he started to take me through those last 14 years of my life. He took me through, you know, Austin getting sick and having seizures and some other things that had happened throughout our lives, some really difficult things up until the death of my father in 2022. And he was like, You couldn't have handled that, you couldn't have handled taking care of your father and during that time with without him. So I I I I let you have all those years with him. And then and at the end, he's I felt like God said to me, So you couldn't have handled all those things, but you can handle this. And I feel like God has set me up to with all these things that we've done through all these years to put me here in this place to do this, to give me purpose, to um keep me going, to do, to do what he's called me to do. And and I feel like this these projects, whether it's a lady of defiance or defiant ones or uh angels within, all of them, I feel like God has put me into this place to do these. And he's even given me, to my chagrin, a little bit, to you know, uh the uh um a story that mirrors theirs and and you know, but God uses widows. He does, he's told stories of them and he's used them, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah. I love that um you and I talk about that, how so many of our projects touch on widows, and you know, here we are today, and how he also really not only talks about it biblically to make sure that we are serving and caring for the widows and the orphans. You know, and I think though the stories that we get to tell also is not only loving them and caring for them, but really that they are strong and courageous women, that they continue to move and and do things that serve and glorify the kingdom of God. And I think that's you get to bring such a um your voice now brings a whole nother dynamic to the stories that we're telling, and also just to be in community with women who have experienced that, you know. And um, you know, whether it's Shannon Fields or some of the other ladies that you've had, you know, just those conversations with, and part of the women in my world, women who, you know, have lost a husband. And, you know, I think that um the beautiful thing is that I've seen you just grow and and stay so close to the Lord as you've been taking through this journey and and I think he really is preparing you for such a time as this. He's allowing you to be that strong and courageous and bold woman, but never losing sight of the goodness of God through each, you know, each piece of it, each each season.