JIM 2.0

I had a rude awakening first thing the other morning when I looked into the bathroom mirror on the dawn of my 67^th birthday.  As I studied the image being reflected back to me, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know the guy I was looking at!  But the more I stared at the guy, the more I began to understand why I feel like I’ve lost ten years of my life. 

When Piper and I along with two of our kids moved to Oklahoma in 2006, my whole life as I had known it changed… although I didn’t realize it at the time.  At first things were fabulous… up until the end of my first school year when the changes going on in my wife began to become more visibly evident to us.  But even then, life was still pretty good for us.  The specialists that we were seeing were confused with the test results and we still hung onto the hope that it was not too major of an event in her life.

I clearly remember joking with one of my coworkers in the breakroom at the Home Depot that I worked at when I turned 55.  Hopefully he wasn’t just pulling my leg, but he kept shaking his head saying that I didn’t look that old… which made me laugh!  Then… as I kept looking over that strange image in my bathroom mirror, I was shocked to think that the next cognizant memory that I could pull up was when I received my Medicare card in the mail when I turned 65!

Now, don’t think I’m losing my marbles here… but the point is that from around 2008 through 2018, the central focus of my daily life was on Piper.  The structures back home that we had depended on previous to moving to Oklahoma had either changed or were no longer existent.  And once I left my full-time job to care for my wife 24/7, the total extent of my life - socially and just about everything else - was her!  For the next eight years her care was my job and my existence centered around her...  and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.  I believe it is what I was called and prepared to do.  I also have come to honestly believe that when she moved on to glory, that we had fully completed the covenant that we entered into on July 12, 1975.

But now here I am in state foreign to where I called home for over 50 years, attempting to start over with a new version of me, which I’ve jokingly been referring to as Jim 2.0!  Suddenly my focus is free to be on anything!  The problem I’m finding out though, is when I think back to how I did things before my life changed when we originally moved out here.  Those ten years since I was 55 are simply a blur to me… So, when I think of a normal life, my memory automatically goes back to when I was in my mid-fifties.  Therefore, whenever I look into the mirror… I normally go into shock because what I am witnessing is not how I see myself.

I’ve been praying about this since that morning glance into the mirror, and had the Lord show me a couple of positive things about the here and now.  The first being that while I am NOT the man I was back then… I’m actually a BETTER version of who that guy was.  There is A LOT more in me now than before… more of God’s Word, more personalized understanding of that Word in me, much more wisdom learned through the expanse of difficult life experiences that I’ve been through over the last ten years and a much deeper, practical and working knowledge of the love, grace and goodness of God. 

The other thing was that although those hard experiences pretty much zapped the color out of my hair, etched a few more wrinkles in my face and caused my knees and hips to pain me at times (she didn't weigh much but I lifted her on multiple occasions everyday for years!)... I am still in pretty good overall health!  Sure, I can’t sit on my knees at the coffee table and play games for as long as my granddaughter would like, but I can still walk my dog for a few miles a day, chase the ball with him, go fishing, preach up a storm and do most of the things that I enjoy doing!  I’ve also learned that for me, life is about continuing on with the practices of faith in God and His Word that carried us through the most difficult times in my life.

Hebrews 11:1 in The Passion Translation sums up where Piper and I stood for 48 years, and where I am planning to stand for the rest of my life on this earth.  In describing faith under the inspiration of the Spirit, the writer of Hebrews declared that “Now faith brings our hopes into reality and becomes the foundation needed to acquire the things we long for. It is all the evidence required to prove what is still unseen.” 

As I’ve been studying this verse from my newest Bible acquisition, I’ve come to understand that the writer is not just talking about faith in general here, but about a very specific, currently active stand of faith that the Believer is taking for the meeting a particular need in his or her life.  It is discussing what the writer is defining as “NOW Faith!”  This revelation is telling me that I can’t just expect to coast through the rest of my physical life!

Even though things are different and confusing for me right now without Piper at my side, I firmly believe that God still has something for me to accomplish in the here and now.  That same burning desire for the ministry that I’ve dealt with my entire life… the same one that most people except my loving wife never understood, that caused me to get bored with all the secular positions I held over the years… is still white-hot inside of me!  

And as for Piper and I in the past and for me today, the only way to be where He wants me to be… in the Right Place at the Right Time, Doing and Saying the Right thing, is through an active, NOW kind of faith in Him!  I’m quickly learning while looking at that stranger in my bathroom mirror, that some things never change but only get BETTER and more POWERFUL with age. 

So… JIM 2.0 is moving forward with all that new and BETTER stuff inside of him!  How about you?

Have a great rest of the week, and as you do… expect to remember that your personalized NOW FAITH in the Word of God is “all the evidence required” for you to prove God’s will for you!