7:00am
I attempt to write a post quite often now, and fail to complete it before the next huge series of events.
God is moving, and sometimes it feels like I don’t have enough time to prepare.
I currently sit in the parking lot awaiting my Bride’s exit. She is about to clock off from her night shift at the hospital and has requested that I pick her up.
This week, the week of New Year’s eve, has been a hugely progressive week in my life.
Christmas was hard. But excruciatingly valuable in our relationship. Christmas eve night, my wife and I stayed up most of the night playing games through text. She had to work that night, but she allowed me, and I believe, desired me, to text all night while she cleaned the rooms of the hospital. We had a really good time until I feel asleep.
I woke alone, Christmas day.
Just udderly oppressed with the feelings of sadness, among other unnecessary emotions.
In that time, Jesus nurtured me. I cried out to Him. I cried hard. And He was there, beginning to end.
He was the only one.
The plans we made were for the four older girls to spend their New Year’s Eve holiday with their daddy, but up to a couple days before, all the details were abstract. I eventually resigned to a single New Year’s Eve party in a cheap hotel in their town. For I could not afford anything more, nor could I figure out the travel.
My impression was that, upon hearing this, their mother was not happy about it. But eventually, with her help, we put some things in stone and the girls made it to my house the day before New Year’s Eve and we celebrated for an entire week.
Then, the plan to rent a car for their return fell through. My truck does not have enough room for all of us and we live a hundred miles apart. So I endeavored to take them back in shifts. Between the first trip with one older child and one younger child, and the second trip of the same design, a snow storm hit making travel a bit perilous.
Nevertheless, we set out, and the two hour trip turned into almost four, but we made it.
At one point in the drive, the truck began to “tinker,” clunk and roll rather unsmoothly. The check engine light began to flash.
A verse had been ruminating in my brain and I used it here;
Philippians 1:28
“Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself.”
We prayed, and the truck kept going.
We arrived wonderfully, but my return trip home was a bit less likely, with the increasing amount of ice and snow. My children, also were not finished hanging out with me, and I must confess, I lingered, hoping to see my Bride a bit more.
We sat and talked, the two younger ones and I.
We read the Proverbs of the day to weigh out if I should ask if my wife wanted to hangout.
I asked…
She answered, “Sure.”
I had not thought that far. I had very much hoped, but after “sure,” I hadn’t the slightest.
Then, before I knew it, the most amazing woman in my life was sitting next to me, in my truck.
Boy was I nervous! In fact, my stomach is unsettled as I write!
Lord guide my steps!
The smoothie shop was closed. Most everything was closed due to the snow storm. So we ended up going to the grocery store.
Let the reader understand; this is the first time my Bride and I went anywhere together in more than 8 months. My head was swirling. Every word mattered. Even the silences in between spoke to her! Not a move I could make was absent of some display of communication. I was nervous, in the way the Bible speaks of Jesus after 40 days of fasting…”He was hungry.” The biggest understatement of the world.
We tripped to a few stores. We had gentle banter and it got progressively easier to breathe.
We ended in the parking lot of her apartment. She did not get out. She stayed.
It was snowing. The roads were getting worse.
But I could not go. I had planned on being rejected and sleeping in my truck. But she was not rejecting.
She was insisting I stay. She was offering a hotel room. She was making all the plans.
Just six months ago, she would not speak to me. When I left home, I spent four months in a men’s ministry another 150 miles south of here. I wrote letters. I read the Bible. I cried. I journaled. I healed.
She faded into the past. Four months ago I moved into my own place. She still did not speak to me.
Eventually, we began texting.
Now, I found myself with her, quite distant…and close, but unable to separate.
We want to be together. We are both afraid of it ending. And I believe neither of us are willing to take a chance on it coming to a close.
She got the hotel room. All 5 daughters came with me. Even my Bride, herself, came to lay on the hotel bed near me.
The fiasco has been amazing.
I will not quit.
My God goes before me, He makes my paths straight, He uses everything the enemy tries, for my good.
I encourage you, do not depend on yourself.
Follow the words in the Bible, they are life.
God is after you.
Until next time…
–Home–
From Death to Life 
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