30th January

Happy Birthday Dave?

Another challenging day. Yes I don’t feel very happy at all, despite all the birthday greetings from my family. And actually I’ve been fighting off tears for most of the day. I just want to be with Jane. And I can’t, probably for a very, very long time. So long that I most likely will have forgotten what it feels like to be with her. This is a rubbish way to live. Looking back, looking forward, and ignoring the value to be found in each and every day. Yearning for the impossible rather than living for the achievable. In many ways I’ve been privileged to live a blessed life and for much of it I’ve known happiness. My future destiny in heaven will also be filled with joy for sure, but I’m not there just yet. It’s just today I’m quite miserable. And I shouldn’t be. Sad yes, miserable no! But, but, but… I know there are many reasons to feel low. Yet for every single one of them there is a way to reach out to the Lord and embrace his peace, his love and his joy. I can’t live in the past and I can’t live in the future, so I have to live for today, as I walk forwards. And somehow I need today to become a little better; I need to see it differently, I need a new focus, a new way of seeing God at work in my life. I need to engage in God’s plan for my life. And surely that begins by recognising who God is, the author of life, the one who holds man’s destiny within the grasp of his hands, and the one who breathes life into the lifeless. Yes in many ways I feel as though my life has ended, and certainly, the way of life I’ve enjoyed for several decades is now changing beyond all recognition. Yet whilst I struggle to welcome the change, I have no choice. I have to embrace each new day with determination and hope. Hope that the goodness of God will prevail over the despair of this man.

And it can only be in God’s strength that I persevere. I’m finished, my strength has gone. My health is all messed up with Chronic Fatigue and pretty much every effort I make to engage in meaningful activity results in a worsening of my condition. I can’t give up though as staying as I am is just not an option. I will press into God and take hold of his goodness. And I will share his goodness with all that cross my path. But first I will taste of it afresh myself. For he is my delight, he is my treasure, he is my all sufficient one. Today I’m hurting. It’s my ‘special’ birthday, my 60th; a new decade is set before me. A decade without knowing the love of the wife of my youth. Somehow I must stir myself to reach out to the Lord for his gift of love. My heart is broken in a way that only he can mend and I have every confidence that he will, so I intend to live a long life. And that life is only worth living with love, for God is love.

1 Corinthians 13:8 ‘Love never fails.’ (NIV)