13th November

I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. But brokenness is supposed to be a Christian virtue, so I guess there’s no disorder. Just a lot of pain… coping with a broken heart. I can’t live like this all the time though, as it’s really not much fun. So how on earth do I move on? I don’t see how I can, as I’m running out of emotional resources. I don’t feel like I can cope any longer. But maybe I’m asking the wrong question. If there is no earthly answer to a lost love, how do I find the heavenly one?  My God says that he will meet all my needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Today I need healing of a broken heart and today I need strength just to carry on with this journey of life. All I can do is keep reaching out to the Lord in prayer, standing on the promises of the Bible, and I must persevere. I will get through this, although I really can’t see an end any time soon. But I live with hope as a cornerstone of faith and I know the love of God has changed my life in every way, so there has to be an end. I will make a completely new start and the more I can let go of the old the better it will be.

And today has been so very painful. But I have persevered, and this morning I did go to my church meeting in Derby City and I was blessed again. For the second week in a row I unexpectedly met an old friend. The guy today was around when Jane and I became Christians way back in 1982, and he was just passing through. But it was good to catch up a little. Then increasingly through the afternoon, despite the distraction of a Brit winning F1, I found myself sinking and starting to cry quite a lot. I’m really fed up of this. I picked my guitar up for a while and that sort of helps and my son cooked fish-pie which was nice but come early evening I had to do something to get out of the house. I didn’t feel able to cope with meeting people I knew so I went along to the evening meeting at Trent Vineyard in Nottingham. There must have been 700+ attending and having a great band to lead the relatively youthful congregation it was all nicely distracting. Until they played Matt Redman’s ‘10,000 Reasons’ which is a track I’ve cried with far too many times on my Kedleston walks… and this evening was no different. But at least in the anonymity of a large crowd I was left to my own devices, which is what I wanted.

I'm thinking tomorrow I may start to prep my motorhome and if the weather’s not too bad I’ll escape to the hills again. Maybe Tuesday, let’s see how I feel then.

Psalm 34:18 ‘The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ (NIV)