Life was going smoothly for Judith Hall Bean, when out of the blue her husband Gladwyn Eugene Bean passed away.

She considers the loss on March 27, 2015, “the most devastating thing” that’s ever happened to her.

“I couldn’t believe he died and as a result I ended up with some real issues coming to grips with it,” Mrs Hall Bean said. “He had a brain tumour that we discovered years prior, but the last we checked it was benign. He went overseas for a routine procedure and one month after coming back home he died. It was shocking.”

Mrs Hall Bean, a long-time civil servant who is still active on a handful of charitable boards and serves on the Juvenile Panel, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission, thought the answer was to keep busy. But it wasn’t long before she discovered she couldn’t handle this loss in her own strength; she had to lean on her faith.

“I had to renew my faith in God and really ask him the hard questions because I couldn’t understand why that would happen, why He would take my husband,” she

explained.

“He was a young man, who died just shy of his 65th Birthday, and I was strong, but not that strong.”

One day while still in the thick of grieving, Mrs Hall Bean was presented with a gift from a friend — a little plastic frog to keep by her bed.

“It’s funny because I don’t like frogs, but it was to remind me of a simple truth. My friend told me frog stood for Fully Rely on God. Every morning I looked at that frog and would tell myself to rely on God, so when things came my way I could handle it with God’s grace.”

There were lots of challenges after her husband’s death. She found herself in a position of having to live and do things alone after 25 years of marriage, pay for the mortgage on her own and fend for herself.

“I was struggling, but that little frog was something I looked at every day and that kept my faith going,” she said.

Mrs Hall Bean grew up attending New Testament Church of God, but admits her faith became strong by the time she reached her 30s.

She was raised mostly by her grandmother Mary Phillips, but credits her mother Cecilia Hall and stepfather, the late Constable Lynn Hall with ensuring her early educational pursuits were successful.

“My grandmother was an old-time West Indian woman who was very strict and very religious. Nothing went on in her house that was wrong, so things other young people experimented with, I just never did it. I was the ‘goodie two shoes’ out of my siblings.

“I had only one employer for 49 years, my entire working life, and only left my job in Government because I had turned 65 and that was the mandatory retirement age. All this to say, I’m not the person that jumps around from one thing to the next.”

Her faith is no different – she’s remained at her childhood church and today serves as the Protocol Officer organising any official events at the Dundonald Street, Hamilton location.

She admits her faith has always been “very important” to her and, after being asked, she wrestled with the decision of whether to join the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission. Mrs Hall Bean wasn’t sure her congregation would approve, but felt passionate about working with the organisation to train Bermudians to enter a new workforce and assist in stemming the tide of the already existing issue of problem gambling on the island.

“I felt I could make a contribution and also bring to the table my beliefs and faith and those things that make me who I am,” she said.

Her advice to anyone looking to trust God in new situations is to lean in to your faith, even when you feel like giving up.

“Our human nature tells us ‘I can fix this’ and we try to handle it ourselves, but nine times out of ten we don’t have the strength to do it,” she said.

“I’ve had to learn to stay calm and don’t let the anxiety get the best of me.

“When you are going through a loss or a new challenge it can feel like it’s all doom and gloom. You underestimate yourself and what you bring to the table. And as strong as I may appear to be I still struggle. But I’ve seen first-hand that God is in control and will bring you through your trials.

“When it came to losing my husband, I leant on prayer, family and friends and also worked with counsellors to figure out what got me to that point and how I could get past it.”