A New Year...

Happy New Year!

I can honestly say that 2012 was absolutely most difficult year in my life. It wasn’t limited to 2012 though.  Last year was an ongoing existence that was not necessarily defined by a date. I was about to write that I am glad it is over, but I can’t bring myself to say that.  Saying I am glad it is over would be saying (on some level) that I am glad Bill is gone.  I would endure it all over again to be able to have him here, hear his voice, touch his hands and hair and look into his kind, gentle eyes that reassured me everyday.  I want to reach out into the endless expanse of heaven and pull my precious husband back into my arms and keep him here until we enter heaven’s gates together. I want to sit and talk to him about all that has happened since the Lord took him Home.  I have so many questions I need to have answered. I want him to fix all the broken things (or at least tell me what to do about them).  Wherever we went we held hands. I want to do that again. Realistically however, even if I could do such a thing I would not allow my selfish heart to inflict him with the misery and suffering he was enduring everyday again. He has earned his reward and entered into paradise where there is no pain and no suffering.  He has been perfectly healed and worships the Lord perfectly.

Between yesterday (December 31 and January 1) and today nothing has changed except the calendar, but then everything has changed.  Today my husband died last year. Yesterday, he died just six months ago. My heart tells me it was yesterday!  Last year is so long ago.  Last year beckons me to accept my past as Bill’s wife has somehow become distant and remote. At first because I now had “all the time in the world” to do things I had missed out on for so long, I could face the future with a degree of anticipation of a new adventure. Actually they are things that Bill and I missed out on for so long. There is a catch to that though.  Everything that I ever wanted to do involved doing those things with Bill; spending uninterrupted hours working in the yard; planning new projects and carrying them out; taking a long or short trip; walking on the beach for hours; renting a cabin in the mountains and take long walks listening to the birds, identifying the plants along the way and admiring the handiwork of God; reinstate family game night; spend more time playing with our grandchildren building blanket tents and reading books together, teaching them about the Lord.  Things that used to matter don’t matter anymore because it only mattered because Bill was here.

A new year - a different life – a vessel that was poured out and used up being softened and reshaped by the master sculptor into something new.  I find myself impatient for the rebuilding and reshaping to be complete and make me whole again.  Not to forget the life and love Bill and I had.  I miss our life together terribly; but I can’t have that life again. I am confident that missing him will never go away. I want the pain to go away. I want the sadness to go away.  I want to be NOW who God intends me to become through this refining process - Oh the foolishness of my heart.  God’s time and schedule are not my time and schedule.  Everything works out according to His Will in His time.  Just as He brought Bill and I and our family through the fire of Bill’s illness to its completion, God will bring us through this fire of grief – In HIS time.  We will emerge from this fire as refined gold.  He promised.

Psalm 8 (KJV)

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

² Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

³ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

⁴ What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

⁵ For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

⁶ Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

⁷ All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

⁸ The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!