No. 1665: Now February 28, 2026 it is ½ year since my beloved and wonderful wife Berit Nyland Christensen died after 38 years of marriage with me, at the age of 66!

No. 1665:

Now February 28, 2026 it is ½ year since my beloved and wonderful wife Berit Nyland Christensen died after 38 years of marriage with me, at the age of 66!

Berit leaves behind an enormous void and loss.
Where I as a widower remain.
Besides 3 children and 9 grandchildren who have all lost a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
Besides siblings, nieces and nephews and other family.
Picture of Berit, me and our 3 children Benedikte, Sara and Benjamin when they were minors. What a wonderful time this was, now this is the story.

 

 
http://the-heavenly-blog.janchristensen.net/2025/09/no-1651-memorial-to-my-beloved-and.html

It has now been ½ year since Berit died and went to Paradise with Jesus!

It is not that I or anyone else really knows what awaits us after death.
But the scripture is clear on one thing, that we as believers do not die.
We continue our lives, but then in anticipation of the resurrection where we will receive a glorious body.
https://blog.janchristensen.net/2025/11/nr-3518-berit-min-kone-er-dd-er-na-i.html

I think that Berit and I as a married couple had it like Paradise on Earth!

We had three children together. Or to put it more correctly, we have three children together and nine grandchildren.
Where we should have had far more children in hindsight.
Having many children is such a great blessing that I would encourage everyone to have it, especially as believers.

As for the life between Berit and me, we both lived for each other.
Where we lived according to God's word, that was our common desire.
The scripture says, among other things:

Rom. 12. 10 Love one another fervently as brothers and sisters, esteeming others higher than yourselves.
Arne Jordly's translation:
Rom. 12. 10 Show loving closeness to each other, and be foremost in showing each other respect.

This is how Berit and I lived for thirty-eight years!
Where we put the other above ourselves.
Showed each other respect, and sometimes we didn't.
Then we were able to ask for forgiveness, and in that way we resolved any tangles and disagreements.
What a wonderful life together and marriage we had.

It is very demanding then to be alone after such a rich and wonderful life together for almost forty years!

It is true that nothing on this earth lasts forever, not even a marriage.
I realize that I was not prepared in any way for Berit to die so early.
Was I as unprepared for this as it is possible to be?
That was the last thought I had, that Berit would die so early.
God has promised us humans the following:

Psalm 90. 10 The days of our lives are seventy years, and if there is great strength, eighty years, and their glory is trouble and vanity; for we are quickly driven forward, and we fly away.

Berit did not reach the "minimum age", and I had imagined that we would grow old together.

Why this did not happen, I have no real answer to except that there will be assumptions and speculations.
It is clear that there were things that happened beforehand that I see in retrospect as a "God's guidance" that I was not involved in?

I will give a concrete example of this. Which I am very embarrassed and ashamed that I did not understand more then and there.

The summer of 2022, a year before Berit was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Then she broke her foot, or rather her ankle.
Was taken by ambulance to A Hus in Lørenskog where she died three years later of pancreatic cancer.

We have had a man who himself had experienced something similar.
Where he had kidney cancer which had been fatal according to what the doctors told him.
But it was discovered by "coincidence" when he got a kidney stone.
When they were going to operate on it, they found the cancer and removed the kidney and the cancer.
In this way they saved his life, and he is still alive today.

I thought about that incident, and asked Berit if they had scanned her whole body.
When she was lying in the drum.
She said yes, and I settled down with this.
Of course I should have talked to the doctors, and had them scan not just her foot.
But her whole body.
I should and should have shown this, when her brother Knut Harald died at only forty years old from cancer. He died of bone marrow cancer. Berit also died of cancer, so I knew this was in the family. It's unbelievable that I was so focused on the broken ankle.
Not being able to see this in a larger context.
In retrospect, I think this was a "golden" opportunity for Berit for the doctors to catch the pancreatic cancer a year before it was discovered.
Then her prognosis might have been completely different?
Of course, I don't know this 100%.
As I see it today, I was unable to take the signal that the broken ankle was an opportunity to scan Berit, my beloved wife, a year before the disease was discovered.
Then it was really too late for her to have a so-called "successful" operation in August 2023. And lived exactly 2 years after the operation.
If she had had the operation 1 year earlier, isn't it impossible that she would have been alive today?
In the operation in 2023, they took 8 out of 15 lymph nodes that were infected by the cancer.
It "lasted" for 2 years before she was "eaten up" by cancer.

There were also other things that I regret – in retrospect!

There were times when Berit and I did not take active steps towards our own health.
Where exercise and sitting were too much.
And food intake was excessive.
Of course, it is impossible to know such things if this had had a healing effect on Berit.
In retrospect, it is not good to not take care of your own health.
The scripture actually speaks a lot about this.
Among other things here:

Prov. 23. 1 When you sit at table with a prince, then you should pay close attention to who is before you,
2 and put a knife to your throat, if you are greedy.
3 Do not desire his fine dishes, for it is food that can deceive!

This is written about sitting at table with princes.
But it applies to life in general, that one should not overeat.
Where both Berit and I were overweight for a time.
Among other things, this is not good for health. And Berit got cancer in the stomach region.
Where pancreatic cancer is not unlikely, could obesity and too much sitting have influenced this?
Of course, I will never get the answer here on earth, but there is no doubt in my mind that there are reasons that could be the cause.
Where both Berit and I did not do everything right and proper.

The fact is that Berit is dead, and I have become a widower!

Life is very vulnerable, fragile and unpredictable.
There are parts of our lives that I have taken for granted.
And not thought and acted right and proper.
Then it is good to know that God does not love me or anyone because we succeed and get everything done.
On the contrary, it is because we do not make it so that God loves and wants to help us.

God's word says this many, many places. And this must be allowed into your heart when you need it, as I do here and now.

1 John 4:8 Whoever loves is of God, for God is love.

9 In this God showed his love for us: He sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.

10 This is love — not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as the propitiation for our sins.
In retrospect, I see that there were areas in our lives and marriage that were not perfect.
As far as I know, Berit and I did not have anything unresolved with each other.
But that does not mean that there are areas that we could have worked on and talked about.
In the end, I see myself as just as much a nurse as a husband.
Where I fell short, I know that I did everything 100% as best I could then and there.
But still, one feels one's own shortcomings and that there are things that should have been done better and differently.
Here it is good to know that God's perfect grace and forgiveness are what covers a multitude of sins.

When we moved back to Oslo in 2005 it was to "reopen" Smyrna Oslo.

http://the-heavenly-blog.janchristensen.net/2022/05/no-1586-when-we-started-smyrna.html

We started Smyrna Oslo in 1991, where we had some progress.
But we chose to move to Karmøy in 1993 after we had actually had some and good progress with Smyrna Oslo.
It was probably not until 2008-9 that we began having our own meetings after a time in Betaina Lillestrøm as the Pentecostal church here in Lillestrøm.
Now Filadelfia Oslo is running that church.
We never managed to achieve what we achieved in the early 1990s.
In many ways, Smyrna Oslo is not a church today.
But I run the website https://www.janchristensen.net/
And various blogs, of which the Himmelske blog is the most read and well-known.

Even though Berit is now dead, and Smyrna Oslo has never had its renaissance and "resurrected"

I experience that my entire life and ministry as of today as in many ways a failure.
Where everything that Berit and I invested in has not led to progress.
Then I experience that the very message and the preaching/teaching that Berit and I have promoted.
Which God after all is with and behind.
Berit is now in Paradise, and saved for time and eternity.
https://blog.janchristensen.net/2025/11/nr-3518-berit-min-kone-er-dd-er-na-i.html

God calculates differently than we do!

There is a lot that I have been through together with Berit.
I carried her on "eagle wings" as I did with the children.
Especially when they were growing up.
Berit I did everything in my power throughout our life together.
Berit did everything in her power throughout our life together for me and the children.
Later the grandchildren. Not only them, everyone she came into contact with.
What a warm-hearted, warm and good person Berit was.
At the same time, Berit had a wonderful service for Jesus where her manner was Jesus from morning, noon and night.
She loved to testify about Jesus and the gospel.


Where I got to experience as much love, closeness and encouragement as it is practically possible to get from a woman and spouse.
So happy and grateful for the 38 wonderful and magnificent years we had together here on earth.
Could we have had a better life and marriage.
Berit told me right before she died that she could never have had a better husband than me.
I can and will say the same about her.
What more can I say?
We will meet again soon, at Jesus' house.
If I live until Jesus comes again.
Or yes If I die before Jesus comes, then my life and ministry are in the arms of God and Jesus and He has full and complete control, power and dominion!
http://the-heavenly-blog.janchristensen.net/2025/11/no-1657-what-now-jan-kare-what-is-way.html

I am not ashamed of Smyrna Oslo and the message I have preached!

I have tried to preach the whole of God's counsel for salvation.
Where I have held nothing back.
Even though today it is painful to think about and have experienced that Berit was not healed.
It is experienced as a great personal defeat.
Where were you God?
You who are my Father and Berit's Father.
http://the-heavenly-blog.janchristensen.net/2025/09/no-1651-memorial-to-my-beloved-and.html

Final comment:

This is in many ways how I feel about it all, now.
Everything is in many ways destroyed, failed and I am down after Berit died.
I have become a widower, the Smyrna congregation has become nothing.
I am persecuted by various agencies and have been in recent years.
It does not look exactly bright and bright.
Rather dark, demanding and I am depressed and literally alone here in Oslo as I have no family left here.
As the children have chosen to move far away.
The Smyrna congregation is only on "paper" as we do not have regular gatherings or meet.
What I, Berit and the family came to Oslo from Karmøy in 2005.
Has in many ways gone exactly the opposite.
Berit is dead, and at home with Jesus.
The children live far from Oslo and me.
Western Norway, Trøndelag and England are far from Oslo.
It may seem quite as difficult as when Jesus died.
Wasn't that exactly the best thing?
Seen from the outside. But from this perspective, the "defeat" on Calvary.
Then it was the greatest victory.
For me, it is the "greatest" defeat of my life that Berit died.
But even from this perspective, I believe that God has a way.
And he has full and complete control.

Lewi Pethrus writes in the book seierstider - brettningstedier in the chapter seierstro - vorser gleichstorn the following: The victory on Calvary is the victory above all others!

"The great crowds began to desert him when he began to speak of his suffering and death. Even the twelve he had chosen as his apostles deserted him and fled. Before that happened, one of them had succeeded in selling him to his enemies for thirty pieces of silver. The most trusted of them all denied his discipleship three times during his public trial.

He swore that he did not know him. Humanly speaking, the beginning of Christianity ended with its founder hanging alone and abandoned by God and man on a cross between two thieves.
According to Jesus’ enemies, this was the collapse of Christianity at its very beginning, and many of the believing Jews saw in this his defeat forever.

They did not see the plan of God’s salvation that lay behind these seemingly discouraging external events. But in what seemed to be the greatest defeat, lay the greatest victory for God’s cause that has ever been won.

The victory of Calvary is the victory above all others!

The Scripture says that all things work for good to those whom He has called.
Rom. 8. 28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.
http://the-heavenly-blog.janchristensen.net/2026/01/no-1661-becoming-widower-like-me-after.html