Mrs. Frouwe Helenius Venema: de Cock's Wife

From 1834: Hendrik de Cock's Return to the True Church, by Marvin Kamps, chapter 7 “Hendrik de Cock and His Wife”, pages 199-200.

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At the time of her husband’s death, Mrs. De Cock was thirty-nine years of age, and she lived as his widow for the next four years. In April 1846 she became the wife of another Secession pastor, Harm Geerts Poelman.[39] In 1854 she had the joy of seeing her eldest son, Helenius, and her second husband nominated for the same professorship in the newly established Secession seminary in Kampen.[40] Her son was chosen. Her second husband died in October 1854. Frouwe Helenius Venema then entered her second widowhood, which lasted until her death on September 25, 1889.

Helenius writes concerning her burial on September 27:

From the church militant on earth she has entered into the triumphant church, and we may comfort ourselves in the hope and blessed expectation that one day her body will arise from the dust, and she shall eternally enjoy what she so fervently desired, namely, that she might serve the Lord in perfection without any sin.
May her body rest next to the bodies of her two husbands, who passed on before her, in the sleep of death until the day in which the earthly bodies of believers will be made like unto the glorious body of Christ.[41]

Mrs. De Cock was just one of many hundreds of thousands of faithful women throughout history who have served their godly husbands in the service of Christ Jesus their Lord. What a huge debt of gratitude we all owe to godly mothers in Israel, who seek not themselves and their own honor but the honor of our God and the salvation of their children and grandchildren and God’s blessing upon the church of Christ. Often Reformed women have been the spiritual strength of their homes and marriages. These blessed sisters who live a life of submission are often out of sight in the official life of the church institute, yet they are deeply involved in prayer from their pillows and in consecrated labors daily in their God-given positions as wives and mothers.

[39] Van Weerden, Spanningen en Konflicten, 364.
[40] Boerkoel, Delleman, and Den Hartogh, Sola Gratia, 332.
[41] Helenius de Cock, Bladzijden, 38.

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