Thank you Father for this new day. Thank you for life. Thank you for your continued help. Thank you all who continue to follow the blogs and pray for us.

Some times are harder than others to write. It has been that way recently. Our care group went to Cannon Beach for a weekend. It was nice to spend time with them and also with all but our oldest child. And then for valentines, our daughter and I got Thai food and spent time together, which was nice. But behind it all is still an emptiness that I am having a hard time shaking. It isn’t as though I expect Theresa to be there or to just show up. It is so much more than that. It is hard to explain. Maybe it’s like losing the ability to see colors so everything is black, white, and gray. The spark, the purpose in going places, doing things is missing. I feel I go through the motions of living but am not really living. It is the problem of comparing what once was to what is now. If I had never been married, never had a fulfilling marriage, then I probably wouldn’t experiencing what I am. It is the comparison of what you had and what you lost that is hard.

Once you experience the joys of marriage – of a deep connection, the joys of growing a family together, the satisfaction of a companion to do all of life with and then that “with” isn’t there anymore – the void looms so large. You have to learn how to live again, but actually you really don’t want to, because what you had was so good. Now you have to learn not to be a unit, to have that seat next to you empty, or the right side of the bed unused. The mundane tasks of life were never mundane with your spouse. The planning of trips or holidays were as fun as the event. We could weather anything together.

I don’t want to do the rest of my life on Earth without Theresa, but I have to. That is what makes it hard. I still crave the “with”, the “together” and I either stubbornly don’t want to move forward or I am still in the grieving process and in time I will be able to see in color again, find joy and contentment. But for now I am “not running on all cylinders”, inefficient, and have a part of me missing.

What I see clear enough is that we crave what God is. He is love, He is faithfulness, He doesn’t change, He won’t leave us, He offers eternity “with”, in relationship with him. We crave deeper meaningful relationships, we don’t want our enjoyable times to end, we don’t want change. Again we crave what God is and what He offers to us. With loss, we are brought face to face with the absence of what we had, the absence of what God offers. This loss causes us grief and anguish – yet nothing in comparison of what God experiences when His creation chooses to not cash in on His offer for communion with Him now and forever more.

God’s offer of complete erasure of our sins, of being made clean, of starting afresh, a clean slate, of intimacy with Him has been unchanged – the same, through the millennia. His example of relationship and recipe of intimacy is unmatched. He teaches us to Love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love those around us as we love ourselves. He uses marriage to teach us of His love, how to serve, how to put others first and also how to forgive. We crave what God is, and can’t imaging the absence of Him – yet actually we get a taste of it when we experience loss, the absence of what was so good in our lives. I think this is partially why we are destined to experience loss. All of us will experience it, but not all of us will learn what we should from it. Some will curse God, be angry with him and allow the hurt to separate. Others will accept it, and allow it to draw us nearer to the lover of our soul and the one who will make all things right in the end.

I would agree with Socrates’ quote “the unexamined life is not worth living”, but from a spiritual/meaning point of view. I think we get habitualized to easily, go through the motions, become distracted, self focused, and influenced by our culture and those around us. We don’t think about purpose or meaning or why we were born in such times. We need to live more intentionally, to do good and encourage continually. We need to see our marriages as the crucibles of learning godliness, of putting on Christ.

I don’t like loss one bit. I hate death and separation. Thanks be to God that it is only temporary and one day soon He will make all things new and we will have a blessed reunion.

Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers. May you crave more of what God has to offer.