“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8 NLT)
“No, I discipline my body and make it a slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:27 BSB)
“Casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NKJV)
Christmas was my second “First” that I walked through without the love of my life. I had a great time with my kids and grandkids, but as was to be expected, it just wasn’t the same. As the decorations were being put away the thought hit me that the best thing I could do would be to jump back into the online ministry that I had placed on hold to focus on getting through Melody’s departure.
I am one who loves to dive into New Year’s resolutions, so I decided it was time to jump into planning for 2022. While sitting in my living room with pen in hand I sensed that Daddy wanted me to slow down. As my duaghter’s can attest, up to this point I had been moving at a rapid pace in “forgetting what is behind and pressing forward.” I seemed to hear deep inside, “slow down son. Let’s take this one step at a time. I have some things to take you through before you start running again.” This was the first internal glimpse of what I am writing about.
What I realize today is, while full recovery from the death of a loved one is different for everyone, one thing that is universal is that it will take about 12 months to live through the first cycle of living life without that person’s participation. Living “alone” through things like holidays, birthdays, joint activities, going to the grandkids activities, Church (and on and on the list goes), takes that full year. Each of these moments come with the opportunity to choose between allowing the the hurt of loss to spiral into grief, depression, anger, or a gambit of negative emotions; or the opportunity to grow closer to the only one who has the power to set me free from the pain.
I have heard from many sources that grief comes in “waves”. These “waves” can at times be spontaneous, but more often than not they are triggered by events, sights, sounds, smells, anything that had become a familiar reminder of the one that held such a predominant place in my heart, mind, and life. I have experienced “waves” through these “12 months of firsts”, but by the Grace of God, they have been changed. By receiving the Word of my Daddy (both that which has been recorded in Scripture, and the “still small voice” with which He speaks within my spirit), meditating on those Words day and night, allowing them to renew my mind (especially in the area of my emotions), and choosing to speak them continually, He has miraculously tranformed those “waves of grief” into “waves of Joy.”
I have learned that as long as I keep my focus on Daddy, and His Word, I am able to live grief free. However, I do have an adversary who’s deepest desire is to kill me. If he can’t do that, his greatest thrill is to deceive and destract me so that he can find a way to steal what my Daddy has given me, and destroy my life. We need to talk about this devil of an enemy, but not for too long as he isn’t worth the time nd energy it takes to focus on him. He is a defeated foe whose teeth ansd claws have been ripped out.
I also have what the Bible calls “flesh.” While I am a brand new person in my spirit (“saved”, a new creation, a species of being that never existed before), my soul (mind, intellect, emotions, and will) is still in the process of being “saved” (renewed, washed with the Word, learning to think and feel like my Daddy), and my body (“flesh”, tabernacle, tent, earthsuit) in which “sin” still dwells, is being “quickened” (enlivened, strengthened, mortality being swallowed up by immortality). In short, when I allow either my enemy, or my flesh, to take my focus off Daddy and His Word, and begin to think, speak, and act out of the “loss’ that I have experienced, in no time at all the waves slip back into the grief that the enemy wants so badly to use to steal, kill, and destroy.
Enough for now…