Living in the Desert

This weekend, I have been attending a women's retreat where the theme has been "Christ, Our Living Water," and the discussion of the sessions has been centered around desert living in this life and how to allow Christ, our Living Water, to satisfy us and reshape us into His image.  Everything shared and discussed and sung has been just what I needed.

Throughout the retreat, I have been reminded that a desert is a place where more moisture is lost than what is brought in.  It's a place where you can be burned to death during the day and frozen to death by night.  As an analogy, it's a place where we are out of control and can't help ourselves, but it's a place where God is tangible.  Taking the example of God's presence with the people of Israel in the desert wilderness, God was their shade by day in the form of a cloud and their warmth by night in the form of fire.  He was their meat from the sky and bread from the ground.  He provided their water.

God was the Living Water for the Israelites shaping them into the people he wanted them to be. They fought against Him.  God was not the God they wanted but the God they needed.  Every time they grumbled about Him or their circumstances, He rose to the occasion and provided for their needs despite the fact that they didn't ask nicely.  In the wilderness, God gave them His covanental law in which His first command and the sign of the covenant was REST because "I am the LORD."  He made the Israelites rely on Him on a daily basis by providing Manna that would only sustain them for that day.  If they tried to worry about their tomorrow and take extra manna for the next day, it would be filled with maggots by the morning.  However, God allowed them to collect for the next day before their day of rest because God desired their rest.  God taught His people in the desert that God is enough.  What the Israelites lost sight of is that on the other side of their desert and hardship was freedom, and instead, they longed to return to their slavery.  I was struck by that thought and how often I try to fight against the desert place God has me in and long to go back to the day when I too was bound in slavery of self and sin.  I too forget that on the other side of my desert and hardship is freedom where my heavenly oasis awaits.

Just as the physical water God provided the Israelites in the desert wasn't enough to stop the Israelites from complaining or help them trust God, so too I need more than physical water to sustain me in my desert and keep me from wanting to go back.  Jesus' promise to me from John 7:37-38 is that if I am thirsty, I can come to Him to drink, and if I believe in Him, "streams of living water will flow from within [me]."  I want to gush with His living water.  Just as Jesus offered the woman at the well living water, He offers me the same.  This God-man at the well is the one who fought for Jacob and Israel and me because He loves me.

Two scientific principles of water is that water always wins, and water always makes a way.  Christ, my Living Water, makes a way in my life.  God's love is steadfast -- stubborn, unyielding.  He becomes the water I need.  My sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as God's love.  His water will continue to flow into my life carving me and reshaping me until I am perfectly in His image when I finally see Him face to face.  John Piper said in a devotional that God "is the end of our quest for satisfaction."  God's Living Water is enough for me in my desert living.

Reflect on the truths of the Getty song "Living Waters" we used as our theme song, which so perfectly brings these lessons home:

Are you thirsty
Are you empty
Come and drink these living waters
Tired and broken
Peace unspoken
Rest beside these living waters
Christ is calling
Find refreshing
At the cross of living waters
Lay your life down
All the old gone
Rise up in these living waters  

Chorus:
There’s a river that flows
With mercy and love
Bringing joy to the city of our God
There our hope is secure
Do not fear anymore
Praise the Lord of living waters

Spirit moving
Mercy washing
Healing in these living waters
Lead your children
To the shore line
Life is in these living waters  

CHORUS
Are you thirsty
Are you empty
Come and drink these living waters
Love, forgiveness
Vast and boundless
Christ, He is our living waters 

CHORUS

— WORDS AND MUSIC BY KRISTYN GETTY AND ED CASH©2016 GETTY MUSIC PUBLISHING (BMI) / ALLETROP MUSIC (BMI) (ADMIN BY MUSICSERVIES.ORG)

Photo from Cover of Retreat Booklet from Brick Lane Community Church

Longing for Heaven

As our family circumstances continue to remain so hopeless from my human perspective and as the world around us seems to be in a frenzy over so many issues, I have found myself longing for heaven.  I find myself often sending a prayer to God begging that He come back today.  I hate pain, and I hate sorrow.  I hate struggle, and I hate hardship.  So much of my life seems just that, and I am ready for the hope of salvation and eternal life with my God and Savior.  I am ready for the day when God will wipe away every tear and there will be no more pain or sorrow.

As I studied I Peter in the Fall and II Peter the past three months, I have had much time reading about suffering and the hope of salvation and heaven (I Peter) and how to keep going until the coming day of the Lord (II Peter).  It has given me much time for reflection and has helped remind me that my suffering is not for naught.  God has me in a dry and weary land to grow me and make me more like Him.  He is burning off the dross in the refining fire (I Peter 1:7) until He can see His reflection in my life.  I don't have to go through the fire alone because He is always with me.  At times, I am aware that I am surviving because He is carrying me through the worst of it.  Yet, at times, I find myself longing for the times that God would lead me beside the still waters and cause me to lie down in green pastures.  The dessert is a dry and harsh place to be.  The storm beats down on all sides.  However, God remains sovereign, and my hope of salvation remains.  I just need to keep on trusting and striving to know "Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 2:10).

Until God does return or call me home, I have to take each day as it comes looking to the hope of my salvation as I enter heaven.  Until then, day by day, I find strength to meet my trials here.

My favorite hymn is "Day by Day."  David and I got to play a musical rendition of it in church a few months back.  Reflect on the truths of these words below as you listen to the music:



Day by day, and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He, whose heart is kind beyond all measure,
Gives unto each day what He deems best,
Lovingly its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.

Every day the Lord Himself is near me,
With a special mercy for each hour;
All my cares He fain would bear and cheer me,
He whose name is Counsellor and Pow’r.
The protection of His child and treasure
Is a charge that on Himself He laid;
“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”
This the pledge to me He made.

Help me then, in every tribulation,
So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,
That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,
Offered me within Thy holy Word.
Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,
E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,
One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,
Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Translator: A. L. Skoog; Author: Carolina Sandell (1865)

Closing out Another Chapter

If you have known me over the last eight years, you probably have known that I have been working part time as a pediatric trach/vent nurse working in home health care helping to keep these medically fragile kids out of the hospital.  I have loved my job and the many wonderful people I have met through it.  My patients over the years remain so dear to my heart.  They feel like an extension of my family.

If you've known me over the last almost two years, you will know that I have been unable to work as a pediatric nurse due to injuring my lower back while lifting a patient.  The last two years have been difficult for me as I missed my patients and longed to be able to work again.  Even more so than that, I have had to learn to adjust to my new normal in which I experience chronic lower back pain.  There has not been a day since the injury two years ago in which I have been pain-free.  If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I struggle to sit still or be inactive.  The back pain has done a lot to slow me down and has changed my ability to do the things that I used to enjoy doing.  Also, the extent of my injury puts me in a risky situation where I could potentially be paralyzed if I further injure the area.  That fear alone has kept me from going against doctor's orders over the last two years.  Part of those doctor's orders have included weight lifting restrictions.  From here on out, I can only safely lift 20 pounds from the floor to my chest level without further injuring my back.  What frustrates me the most is that in my therapy, I had been advancing in my ability to lift and was almost at 30 pounds that first year until I was suddenly forced out of physical therapy by the workman's comp insurance.  After acquiring a lawyer and getting re-instated into physical therapy, I found out that I had significantly regressed in my ability to lift, and the worsening of the radiating pain down my leg was discovered to be permanent nerve damage that most likely occurred from the sudden stop of physical therapy.  I have worked hard in therapy since but was discharged this past December after reaching a plateau and resulting in my permanent restrictions of only lifting 20 pounds. 

That being said, I have had a hard time finding a job where I can work as a nurse because of the weight restrictions.  I have yet to find an employer who wants to take a chance on me writing me off as too much of a liability.  I don't know what the future holds or what God has in store for me, but I trust Him to carry out His perfect plan.  Tomorrow, I will be forced to resign from my job as a nurse with my current employer as part of the demands for settlement.  As I sign that paperwork at my hearing, I will be closing out another chapter of my life.  I am sad to see it go, but I am excited to see what God has in store for me as I begin a new chapter.