JUST TAKE
THE NEXT STEP Nina Roets-Wide on Widowhood, God's Faithfulness and the Broad Place He Promises

She was 38 years old when her husband was admitted to hospital on a Tuesday. By Thursday morning, she was sitting next to his deathbed. Her boy was 10. Her girl was 5. And the only thing she knew about widows was that they were old and that they lived on the sidelines of life. Nina Roets-Wide had no map for what came next. What she had was a God who had already written the next chapter before she had even lived through the current one.

On Women Voices Episode 7, host Carlett Badenhorst welcomed Nina into the JustGospel studio, a woman she calls her spiritual mother of 18 years, for a conversation that was never going to be comfortable and was never going to be anything less than transformative. Nina did not come with theory. She came with testimony. And there is a very significant difference between the two.

The Week Before: Psalm 23 Kept Coming

In the week before her husband passed away, Nina noticed something she could not quite explain. Psalm 23 kept surfacing in her spirit. Verse 4. The valley of the shadow of death. She was irritated by it, she admitted. It is one of those scriptures everybody quotes without necessarily feeling the weight of it. And yet the Holy Spirit would not let it go.

"When I sat next to his deathbed, I realised: God has got a plan. He knew this even long before I sat here. I don't know what it is. So that became my motto for many, many years: God's got a plan. I don't know what it is. But He's got a plan."

Nina Roets-Wide

That is not a neat, tidy resolution. That is a woman standing in the worst moment of her life, choosing to trust a God whose ways she cannot see. It is arguably the bravest thing a person can do. And Nina did it not once but daily, for years.

Just Take the Next Step

She could not plan for days ahead. Some days she could not plan for the next hour. Finances were a problem. Raising two children in a godly way without their father. Caring for her mother, also a widow, who came to stay. Keeping everything together when everything felt like it was coming apart. Nina's prescription for survival during that season was not a five-year plan. It was one step.

She anchored this in Psalm 25: show me Your ways, Lord. Not a map of the next decade. Just show me the next milestone. Just the next step. If you are reading this in a season that feels impossibly dark, with no sense of direction and no clarity about the future, that is the word for you today. You do not need to see the whole road. You just need to take the next step.

God: Who Are You Really?

What Nina found in the dark was not the God of Sunday school. It was not the God of tidy formulas and expected blessings. She had grown up with a perfectly calibrated faith: tithing, faithfulness, Bible school, the right things done in the right order. And then the formula broke. Her husband was gone. The floodgates had not opened. The food for tomorrow was not guaranteed.

"I found myself at that place: God, who are You? Because I've served You according to the way the Sunday school said. I thought if I do my part, You'll do Your part. And I'm in a dark season. And today, I'm so thankful for those moments. Because that is where I found God, not in the good stuff. But in the really, really tough stuff."

Nina Roets-Wide

Those seasons where our theology does not match our reality, where we have done everything right and the blessing has not arrived the way we expected, those are not evidence that God has failed. They are the invitation to find a God who is bigger than the formula. Nina went looking for Him in the dark, with her keyboard and her scripture and her long sleepless hours, and she found Him. Not as a vending machine. As a Father.

It Is Okay to Be You

After her husband passed away, she received words from God that she would marry again and that she would marry a pastor. Nina's response was unambiguous: absolutely not. She did not fit the mould of a pastor's wife. She does not bake cakes. She does not do quiet. She walks barefoot. She hears the voice of God and cannot contain it. Like Jeremiah, it burns like fire on the inside. The picture she had of a pastor's wife was everything she was not.

She did not speak to God for two or three days. She called it a tantrum. A large one. And when she finally did speak to Him, God's response was not a rebuke. It was a reminder.

"He said: well, I know that about you. And for a moment I was like, oh. Yes. Actually, duh. But when we are in that state, we don't always remember that God knows us through and through. And that He loves us just the way we are. And that it's okay to be you."

Nina Roets-Wide

God did not ask Nina to become someone else. He told her He would give her a man who was ordained as a pastor but would not have a church, because he needed to travel with her to the small towns, the forgotten places, to prophesy and speak life and train. And she threw one small request into the conversation: Lord, if he rides a motorbike, that would really be okay. That would be the sign.

She met Charles. He rides a motorcycle. He is an ordained pastor. He does not have a church. He travels with her. Every detail, already known.

Moses and Joshua: Two Seasons, Two Men, One Plan

Moving from a first marriage to a second, especially when the first was a best friendship, a first love, something irreplaceable, brings its own grief and its own questions. How do you not compare? How do you not keep going back to what you knew? Nina asked God this directly. His answer was not therapeutic. It was revelatory.

God did not erase one season to make room for the next. He used every single part of the story, including the grief, the widow years, the dark hours at the keyboard, the sleepless nights in scripture, to build something that could only be built that way. That is not a God who wastes anything.

Even When We Are Faithless, He Remains

The scripture Nina carried through all of it, through the hospital room, the widow years, the tantrums, the waiting, is one of the most quietly powerful declarations in the New Testament.

His faithfulness is not conditional on ours. That is the anchor. All the times Nina was too tired, too angry, too rejected, too empty to do what she knew God was asking, He did not step back. He remained faithful because that is His character, and He cannot be anything other than what He is. If you are in a season where your faith is thin and your strength is gone, this is the word that holds: He cannot deny Himself.

The Journal, the Fire & the Broad Place

Her husband passed away in 2010. Her mother passed away in 2018. In 2020, the year the world went quiet, Nina went through her mother's belongings, through years of stacked memories and saved things and journals never finished, and she cried many buckets full. Then she found her own journal from 2010. On the first page, she had written a theme for the year. It was Psalm 66 verse 12.

In 2010, in the worst year of her life, something in Nina's spirit had already reached forward and grabbed hold of that promise. She had written it down before she knew what it would cost her to live it. And when she found it a decade later, she understood that God had been pointing to the broad place the whole time. Even when she was in the fire. Even when the water was rising. Even when people had driven over her. He was taking her somewhere open.

"I was a widow for 11 years, even though I received the very first word right after my husband passed away. If God takes His time in your life, remember: He's interested in your character. He's got a place planned for you. He's busy preparing that broad place for you. Don't give up now. Keep going."

Nina Roets-Wide

A Prayer for Every Listener in the Valley

Nina closed her time on Women Voices not with a final insight but with intercession, her hands reaching through the microphone to every listener who is in that place right now. The place of darkness. The place of not knowing how, or when, or if. This is what she prayed:

This testimony was shared live on JustGospel during Women Voices Episode 7, hosted by Carlett Badenhorst on the Joyful Journey Home drive show. Listen live at justgospelrtv.co.za or find the podcast on Spotify.