Pre-Desert Life: My Story

Life before the desert looks sometimes way better than when you were actually living it.

The desert seems even bleaker because you did have something way back when.  It was a place where things made sense, you saw life go from day to day in a rather predictable pattern, and you had a good idea of what the next day would bring.

The desert?  All bets are off when you enter.  All the certainties, all the predictability and all the sense of life goes away.  Really away, not just a temporary cessation.

Eleven years ago, a year before we entered the desert, my husband had an aortic valve replacement.  He recovered really well, and felt healthier than he had in a long time.  

Our lives resumed. 

A year later, the desert called. 

My husband suffered a heart attack, and while on the table, he had a massive stroke.  H was in rehab for eight weeks, and just before the hospital discharged him, the nurse told me I would either have to quit my job or have a homecare nurse come in full time. 

I was teaching at the community college.  I taught writing, Shakespeare, and British literature.  It was challenging, but I loved it.  For my writing classes, grading 4 sets of papers per student, with 3 or more classes with 28 students each got to be wearisome, but I made it work. 

I had no idea that my Shakespeare class that spring would be the last class I would teach at the college. I walked out that last day of class without a clue of the changes that awaited me.  

My husband had his heart attack later that summer.

Our lives changed in a New York minute.

Everything I depended on, including a husband who was able to do so much, was gone.  He had been an instructor at the same college, wrote books on Constitutional law, worked as a software engineer, and loved doing astrophotography.

All gone.  

We applied for medical disability and had no trouble receiving it. Praise God, we were financially able to carry on, thanks to my husband's savvy with investments over the course of his career.   

Life became medical appointments, recovery and trying to get back to normal.

I just assumed he'd recover as well as he did from the first surgery, and we would go back to normal again. 

Wrong. 

The desert isn't like that.  You just don't leave the desert and just go back to Egypt.  Another life awaits you and have no idea what it will be like. You are truly in a new normal, and it will shift from day to day, as you try to figure out what's happening. Once you think you've arrived at normal, life shifts again.

We finally left the home we'd been in for fourteen years, up in the mountains.  Our children were very concerned about how far away we were from all medical care.  Living in the mountains takes good health and stamina, especially with all the driving we did and winters where the snow could be as much as four feet deep.

The house we moved into was a blessing, for it had a lovely view of the mountains, but it wasn't the same.  We missed that house, but it more than that.  We missed our old lives. 

After seven years of being unemployed, my daughter encouraged me to apply as an educational aide at our grandchildren's school.  I applied and then I was asked to be a full time teacher.

By then my husband had resumed teaching (online), writing and being engaged with legal actions that violated the 2nd Amendment.  He kindly cooked dinner, and had a nice cup of tea awaiting me when I got home.  

But caretaking students, parents and a principal was exhausting, and along with grading endless amounts of work, coupled with the caretaking of my husband, proved too much.  I left my job after a year and a half.

When a person has a stroke, it is a challenge to recover from, and a person battles with fatigue, cognitive changes and trying to make sense of it all.  It's its own desert.

Our lives have, since all of this, have not been static.

Just recently, my husband underwent a double bypass and an aortic valve replacement.  He is in recovery now, and he's doing well physically. 

We are knee deep in medical appointments.  I am truly grateful for his recovery and how God has been in this every step of the way, guiding us, bringing us sweet people to help us and a church that has stood by us.  Our family has been wonderful. 

But the desert is exhausting.  It challenges all your assumptions of how life works, and I have on more than one occasion questioned God.

I have been in the dark night of the soul on more than one occasion.

You see, when you are the desert, you lean into God like never before.  I love God, but I have watched a slow fading of my husband, and it cuts me deeply.  We have been married for forty-four years.  The desert has not been kind, although God has.

But the desert tests you about how you see God, what He means to you and what you believe about grace, forgiveness, His sovereignty and His reliability.  

The desert can been merciless, for your soul erupts with endless questions, with no easy answers.  

People have been kind to us, that is for sure, but the greatest loneliness you can feel is with another person.

Was life, pre-desert, easy?  No, and it would be way too easy to romanticize it and make into something it wasn't.  

The desert is a place where you meet God in a way you never thought possible.  

I am still there and I am still meeting Him in ways I never thought possible. 

Next time, we will examine how despite God taking the Israelites out of Egypt, it was way harder to take Egypt out of the Israelites.