Now What Am I Supposed To Do?

Proverbs 16; Psalms 119

Four years ago of the date I posted this my wife of nearly 43 passed into the presence of God. One of my sons, one of my daughters, and her sister where with me as she passed. As my son said just after she breathed her last breath, "If there is a God, she is with Him now."

For three and a half years prior my wife and I had each other's care givers. She had a stroke three and a half years before and that eventually turned out to have only mildly affected her and was told that she would likely have another stroke definitely within the next five years. On the other hand I myself had been disabled for well over seven years with chronic hemiplegic migraines, migraines that affected my ability to be consistent in anything more than 15 days a month. Most of my migraines were seen as having a stroke, and only medical tests would tell that I hadn't had a stroke. The last few months before my wife passed these attacks average up to eight per week. No, there was no going to the doctors nearby as most in my area had no experience, no skill, or competence in dealing with migraines, especially hemiplegic migraines.

But the day my wife died, in fact less than an hour before she passed my last migraine ended. After having personally dealt with hemiplegic migraine symptoms for 29 years my migraines just stopped. Only God could do that. Beside the grief of my wife passing there were the scars physically, mentally, and emotionally that began to heal. Within half a year I was able to get my driver's license back. And a year after that I was able to start working again. Life changes drastically when a spouse passes. But being free from disabling illness you've had for 29 years, very literally a miracle, it made me feel like Rip Van Winkle who had slept 20 years, and now everything was basically so different life was completely new in so many ways.

So what's a guy to do? God, what am I supposed to do? As I continue to recover from all those years there have been many things I have learned about myself. Some very eye opening to me. So much of life, love, and marriage had kept from being singled out because for the first time in 45 to 50 years I had no one countering my rough edges, my flaws, right along with the strong parts of my life. As is said in the Word, "love covers a multitude of sins", and that is what my loving wife did. She didn't necessarily cover for me, but kept the really rough edges from being as sharp as they could be. As my children dealt with the loss of their mother, the best believer they knew, they also reflected on me. As C. S. Lewis said in his manuscript on "A Grief Observed" that in our memories we recreate the person through the good memories and the bad memories and that actually changes the reality of who a person was over time. If it weren't for there being a God our memories we mostly remember of my wife would be nothing even close to what we do remember. In her own words she said before she placed her faith in Jesus Christ as her Saviour were, "I knew if I continued the way I was, the things I was doing, I would either be in prison or dead".

Learning so much more about myself from the observations and memories of me alone, even how my children saw me as a father while they were growing up was a bit different than that of my wife. And to bring many of how I did things into perspective my oldest daughter who had worked one on one with autistic children for more than ten years speculated that I also may be on the spectrum. Though I have no professional diagnosis, even so reviewing back over characteristics throughout my life and from online tests on websites of reputable institutions my life leans heavily toward the mild Asperger's end of the spectrum. It is by no means and excuse or defense for anything untoward that I have done or been throughout my life, but rather makes things somewhat more understandable. So with that added complexity again I ask, Lord, what do you want me to do?

All through my life I have heard that God has a plan for your life, something wonderful. Then the understanding some teachers would draw from that is, "You need to find out what God wants you to do, then do it!" What they failed to tell was all the Biblical examples. At seventeen Joseph had a dream telling something that was God's plan for him, but fail to point out that he would be sold by his brothers as a slave, then prison with no hope of seeing how the dream played out for 15 years. As a teenager David was anointed to be king and then spent the better part of a decade or more running from the king. Noah's life was more than half over before God told him what He wanted him to do. He spent 100 years preparing the ark only to use it for a little over a year. Moses' life was 2/3 over before God got his attention to do something he was very afraid to do, go back to Egypt. As the Word tells that God tells him that those who had wanted him dead when he first left were all now dead themselves. (Every movie I have seen about Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt has that part wrong. They all have Moses facing those who once knew him.) Saul (later Paul) spent three years preparing to preach who Jesus is, and when he finally gets back to Jerusalem the apostles tell him to leave, go home. And he does, and is gone for about ten years. This leads to a more correct understanding of God's plan for you life. When He knows you need to know He will make it very clear. A verse that has become very precious to me the last couple of years is this.

[9] The heart of man purposeth his way: but the Lord doth direct his steps.

Proverbs 16:9 GNV

And a verse that also helps make this clear for me is:

[105] NUN. Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

Psalms 119:105 GNV

Oh, to grasp the import of these verses. Yes, God has a plan, but all we need realize that we can only see is how far the light shines before us. We have our purpose, our plan, but the Lord is the one directing our steps. Sometimes an eventual goal is made clear, but most of life in Christ is simply daya by day.

I must say the worse time of my life (unfortunately it was when my older children were growing up), the most despondent I have been wondering what God was doing was after I had spent more years in college that in grade school and high school combined trying to follow what I believed God wanted me to be preparing to do for Him, then every last hope of using any of that preparation to do what I thought was God's will was demolished, taken away. Eventually in my despair I had to go back to understand why I even believed there was a God and why the God of the Holy Scriptures is the God. With all of this in my life and all the challenges of the miracle God did in my life beyond grieving the death of my wife I again have found myself asking,

Now What Am I Supposed To Do?

(TO BE CONTINUED)