A Road and Some Water...Coming in 2019

I'm not Charles Dickins...

It was the worst of times and the worst of times.
2018 started off bad, got worse and ended with horror.

I think I cried every day; can't think of a single day that I woke up happy. My life was in turmoil...churning chaos every day, every afternoon, every night. I could write for ages on what I went through, what my child went through, what I put my friends through as they listened to me try to manage hurricane 2018. I don't want to do that today. Today is the last day of this horrible year, the year my little family was blown apart, the year my beautiful man succumbed to demons that had tormented him for so long, the year I became single again. I have lived to see the end of this year, something I really didn't think possible, the pain seemed at times to swallow me up also, but I survived, my child survived, we are here, we are living, we are looking forward. Today is about looking forward...

Back before all this horror started, or rather, the day that this journey to horror began, the Lord woke me with a verse. It was clear to me. It was meant to be shared, and shared with someone who I thought was facing an unimaginable life event...so I shared Isaiah 43:1-2 in a text with our friend. The words of the Lord are as follows:

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are Mine. 
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you."  

I texted those words to our friend and twenty minutes later he took his life.

My husband spent the day trying to make sense of this loss. Later that night, lying by his side, I was trying to help him and it dawned on me that maybe those words had been for my husband instead. It was my husband who really lived the trauma of that day -- perhaps the Lord wanted him to hear those words...so I shared them with him that night. Hoping it was of some comfort.

Three years have passed, and my husband did not recover from his friend's suicide. He fell into depression and alcoholism and never recovered. He never let himself be comforted, never let himself move forward, and two months ago he followed his friend and took his own life.

I still cling to the words of Isaiah. I still claim them, I still feel like those words were meant for both my husband and his friend. I feel they have worked in my life as well.  The word of the Lord is living and breathing and it is a comfort to me.

As the year has been drawing to a close, I have been looking to God's Word for comfort, for inspiration and a hope for the future. Some might think it a coincidence, I chose to believe that it is God, once again, confirming to me that He is with me, He is for me, He is working all things out to good, He is going to see me through the fire, without a scorch, or a smell of smoke. How do I know... that same chapter, chapter 43, in Isaiah, just a few verses down from the above verses...there's a promise for a new year. Read it for yourself, claim if for yourself. Live it for yourself and your family...God is here, God is present, God is in all the details of your life. I know.

Isaiah 43:18- 19
"Do not remember the former things. Or consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. NOW it will spring forth, Will you not know it? I will make a road in the wilderness and streams in the desert."

Here's to a road in my wilderness and water in my desert...and the same for you and yours in 2019.

~beverly