Early this morning as I heard Jerry rolling back to bed from the bathroom, it dawned on me. This is real. It is not a dream. I lay there, and seemingly for the first time thought to myself ~ he cannot walk. He has only one leg.
There have been other times when he wheeled past me that my mind did not register.
When I look back to the last fifteen years, it seems that it has all been a dream, and I am just waking up to the reality.
How did we get through Mother’s four years of dementia? How did we survive Jerry’s first surgery a month after her death? Where was I when his leg had to be amputated a month later?
And how, for three years after waiting for healing; another surgery and finally healing? Nothing was normal anymore. From one thing to another; diabetes, pain, and other health problems; my brother’s and his wife’s death; Jerry’s brother’s death; his heart attack in December, and more.
What Is Real?
Was it in this dream that my heavenly Father brought me to totally depend on Him?
That is the only thing that I know to be real.
A spiritual life is a cocoon that encases all of the difficulties of this human experience. It is the Father’s gift to us that enables us to endure. When we emerge from this enclosure, we are enabled to bear the realities of this life with the same presence of the Father, but with a greater reality. Everything seems like a dream when I look back, especially as God has worked in us this year to be a witness of His grace through writing and publishing, all of which is the proof that it is His work and not mine.
Transition
This reality is part of our transition from this life to the next.
My brother told me years ago, when, at my new birth I felt like a butterfly, that butterflies do not have a very long life. That statement did not keep the Father from His work in me.
So at this age and stage of my human life, there is a sense of another transition as He continues His work in me. I love Paul’s words in relationship to the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
“But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20:24 KJV
“For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.” 2 Timothy 1:12
We, as His children, are being filled with His grace, and wrapped in His glory, forever.
This is not a dream ~ it is the reality of God’s love for us and in us ~ and enables us to endure all things, and to serve Him and others with joy.
Gracious Father, thank you that we are enclosed within your arms of grace; that nothing can separate us from you and your love. We praise you for your presence in every moment of our lives, even before we are aware of it. I pray that you enable your people today to know your sovereign rule and presence over all things. In Jesus’ name we pray.
(The dream is recorded in TWO FULL PLATES ~ Learning to be a Caregiver, paperback and a free eBook for subscribers.)
O The Deep Deep Love of Jesus
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward,
To thy glorious rest above.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Spread his praise from shore to shore;
How he loveth, ever loveth,
Changeth never, nevermore;
How he watches o’er his loved ones,
Died to call them all his own;
How for them he intercedeth,
Watcheth o’er them from the throne.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Love of ev’ry love the best:
‘Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
‘Tis a haven sweet of rest.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
‘Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me;
And it lifts me up to glory,
For it lifts me up to thee.
