What happens to relationships in the next life? Will we see our loved ones again? Will the widowers be married to their late wife? The latest Widower Wednesday video answers these important afterlife questions.
Hi, it's Wednesday and that means it's time for another video edition of Widower Wednesday. I’m Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a Widower and today I’m going to answer a question that I’ve never publicly answered before and that is what do relationships look like in the next life? Is their marriage in the next life? And what happens to widows and widowers who are married and their spouse dies and they get married again what does that relationship look like in the next life.
The idea for this video was an really good email conversation I had with the viewer that was asking these questions. I'm going to share her question with her permission and my answer to it and we're going to have an interesting conversation.
But before I do that I know a lot of you are looking at the screen here and you're saying, “Abel, what's up with your office the door is open looks like there's a bed in the background there's a like a chest of drawers and stuff. So just to get that out of the way we are actually getting new flooring in our house we're having new carpets and some new flooring put in. As a result we had to move stuff from bedrooms and kind of cram everything into my office. Usually we have lots of room in my office, lots of room to work and to do these videos and other things but I'm kind of really crammed in here today. I'll show you around real quick you can just see like there are beds and chests of drawers and you know all kinds of stuff floating around. I still got to record a video despite that and so it's just kind of really cramped in here but it's okay. By the time I do my next video it'll be gone and I look forward to having my office back.
But the point of this video is what happens with what happens in the next life. What do relationships look like in the next life? How are things going to look with you, Krista, and Julie. Let me read a portion of this email and then I'll answer that question. The email goes like this:
Abel, my widower believes he will see his first wife again in heaven. I struggle with this because I wonder where does this leave me. Sometimes it makes me feel like a temporary—a thing to fill the time until they meet again. How does this work between the three of us? I don't understand how things work. Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks for your thoughts in advance
Yes, actually I have quite a few thoughts. I've never shared them publicly but I'm opening up now. First of all, yes, I believe you will see everyone that you loved in heaven again or the next life .(I'm going to use the the term heaven or next life but you can phrase it however you want. That's how I'm going to use the term but your terminology maybe different.) I believe we're going to see everyone in heaven. It doesn't matter if it's your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, your spouse—everybody! You're going to see them again in heaven which I personally think is a wonderful thing.
We've all lost somebody that we were close to and just think how nice it would be to see that person again, to talk to them and hold them and catch up with them. I’m personally glad for that because I’ll see Krista again but I’ll also see my deceased daughter, Hope. (For those who know that story, she lived for nine days and I only got to hold her for a short period of time. I never got to see her grow up and I think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing that I will have a chance to actually see her again.
I also believe that marriages have the potential to last into the next life so is there a possibility that Krista and I will be together and there’s a possibility that Julie and I will be together. I want to emphasize the word possibly. First of all, I think it's wonderful that you can be with your husband or wife again in heaven and not just be friends but actually be with that person and continue that marriage and have that relationship in the next life.
If you notice when I talk about eternal marriage, I said there's the possibility that it can continue because I just don't think because you're married in this life that it's guaranteed to happen in the next life. I think that in order to have that husband-and-wife relationship in the next life it’s based upon you both keeping your vows and your covenants to each other. I don't think you're going to be forced into being with somebody for eternity that you don't love. For example, if you were unfaithful to your spouse, he or she will be there in the next life but will they really want to be with you? I think you have you know when we when we marry somebody you make promises you make vows to that person to be faithful and loyal and I only believe that your marriage is going to last if you keep those vows. So, if you're a good person and I think you're faithful to your spouse when he or she is alive, then there's a good chance that both of you are going to be together in the next life as husband and wife.
If you want to throw the complication in with me and Krista, you know I was loyal to her she was loyal to me but she killed herself when she was seven months pregnant. So where does that leave her in the next life? I have no idea.
Where does that leave Julie? Is she going to be married to me or is there going to be some other arrangements if I’m with Krista? We both believe that marriages can last forever that they can last in the eternities. If julie was here, I know she'd tell you that she wants her relationship with me to last into the eternities. How things will work about between me and Krista is something that Julie really struggled with when we were dating. Several times it almost caused her end the relationship because she wasn’t sure if she could deal with it.
What happens to relationships in the next life? Will we see our loved ones again? Will the widowers be married to their late wife? The latest Widower Wednesday video answers these important afterlife questions.
I think it's easy to get focused on things that might happen or out of our control. It’s easy to get focused on events or what-ifs. The way Julie and I have come to peace with this is because we both decided to focus on things we could control and how much we love each other instead of how things will work out. As a result, we have this wonderful marriage, we have seven wonderful kids, and are we doing our best to live our lives.
A lot of the you know that we have a book coming out soon and it's told from Julie's point of view. It’s about her struggle with the afterlife questions, and her struggle of feeling like number two, and setting healthy boundaries. It also gets into her story and how she came to peace with eternal marriage questions and some of the answers she received.
Anyway, I focus on being the best husband to her and Julie focuses on being the best wife to me and we both focus on being great parents to our kids, and we just have faith that everything is going to work out. Again, we don't have all the answers or know what our relationship will look like, but we do know this that if I'm not a good husband to Julie and if she's not a good wife to me and we're not good parents to our kids and we make stupid, bad decisions that destroy our marriage, it's not going to really matter what things look like in the next life because either not going to be together or want to be together.
If you have more questions you can type them into the comments below you can also send me an email. Also, subscribe to my YouTube channel so you get notified when more videos are released. Also, if you want to schedule a coaching session you can do that on my website. I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a Widower, and I’ll see you next Wednesday.