Today is my 69th birthday but instead of feeling excited and happy I feel like I am in a desert and a wilderness. Alone In unknown territory. This is the first year in 40 years that Jerry is not here to wish me a happy birthday and make a fuss over me. He always made this day special for me and made me feel special.
Tomorrow will be 7 months since he went home to Jesus. It feels like years but feels like moments have passed since he left. It's very hard to describe how we become so accustom to a way of life and then when it changes we are at a loss on how to navigate this new life. I know the saying that "Time heals old wounds" but it is still such a new wound and not one that I really thought about in detail. I knew for a year before his passing that his health was failing more and more and that the time was coming. It just came so abrupt. Not that I wanted him to suffer any longer but I had no idea of all the after effects of him not being here with me. I had grown to count on him in so many ways for 40 years. I was 95% thankful for him. The other 5% was his human selfishness which we all have. If he were to say the reverse of me I think it would be about 70% to 30% since I am a "high maintenance" woman. Of course that is how I think of myself and he did not agree with me a lot of the time. I know these "first's" will be the hardest but I also know without a shadow of doubt the Lord is beside me helping me set one foot in front of the other, day after day, month after month and hopefully year after year as I learn the lessons of this wilderness experience.
In these past months I have learned about Elijah's three year wilderness experience. I have learned about Paul's three year experience. I am right now learning about Habakkuk and his journey with God. Habakkuk was filled with dread for what was to come for God's people because of their unbelief. They were slaves to the Egyptian for centuries and then walked in the desert for 40 years with God supplying all their needs and yet eventually followed after others gods so God sent the Babylonians to take them captive as slaves, again. The chosen people had turned their backs on Yahweh, again. It was time for them to go back into the wilderness, again, and this time for 70 years. After the 70 years they were freed, again, but then centuries passed as they again followed other gods and left their first love, Jehovah the One True God. So I AM had to send Jesus to stop the repetition. The people were never going to be free of sin without the one final sacrifice, his son. His one and only son whom he loved.
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
Sometime the wilderness experiences are not because we have turned away from our Lord. It is a wilderness experience of learning and growing. When Jesus was in his 40 days of wilderness it was for the testing of his faith in the Father who had sent him to proclaim freedom for the captives. To understand fully that He was here to save the people from their sin once and for all. To give his life for others as the final sacrificial lamb. Two thousand years later we have a hard time understanding all animals that had been sacrificed for the sins of the people for them to only continually turn away from Yahweh again and again. Aren't we the same kind of people today? Don't we call on God when the trouble comes and then turn away when life is running smoothly again? Have God's creation changed their hearts to continually walk in his footsteps? No. We still think of ourselves first in so many areas of life. Our time is ours. Our money is ours. Our possessions are ours. Everything in life is ours. Wrong. Everything is His!
I know this in my heart and mind that all I have is his but there are still times I seek my own selfish ways. I let my tongue lash out. I accuse other's of not being holy and righteous and then I am not holy and righteous. I point a finger at the sins of others without thinking about the sins I am committing right then and there by grumbling and whining about their sins instead of prayer for them. This would be why I am in this desert right now. To learn how to be more like Christ and less like me. Even after 40 years of walking closely with him I still fall short. I still need to learn how to curb my tongue. I still need to hear the Father telling me how I have failed. I still need Jesus to show me the way to walk rightly before him and others. My hope today, here on my 69th birthday that it will not take me three years in the wilderness to learn how to be a better servant of Jehovah Elohim who is I AM. Who is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
