Happy New Year and… Decade!

In many respects 2019 was one of, if not the most confusing year of my life.  When Piper was alive, I was always pretty focused, goal orientated, enjoyed dreaming about our future and knew what I needed to do and did it… especially when I was caring for her 24/7, over the last eight years of her earthly walk.  After her passing though, I found myself confused and lacking in much of the personal confidence and focus that had been driving me.  Now as the year is coming to its end, I am finding some of that confidence, focus and peace returning to me.  I am beginning to see 2020 as a literal year of new beginnings as I have suddenly found myself walking a path in this life that I neither expected, planned or have walked before.

Now I am settled here in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I’m living in a new house that I own and am getting ready to see what each day of this new season has for me to experience.  In some ways its very daunting, but in others it’s quite exciting… which in itself seems to be my biggest problem right now!  Throughout this last year I have found myself repeatedly bouncing from one opposite emotion to the other!  Excited about what’s ahead one moment and then finding myself concerned and somewhat empty and lost when I consider existence without my life-long, spunky wife at my side.

Going back in thought, previous to 2019, it’s easy to see that the last two decades were a time of drastic change for Piper and I and our family.  Some good and some not too positive! I was laid off in 2002 from my twenty-year tenure with Hewlett Packard and their spin-off company Agilent Technologies when the electronics industry in the United States suddenly crashed and burned.  Following that, our two older children got married and I received the unmistakable call to attend Bible School while we were attending a conference at Rhema in Oklahoma in 2003.  Our two younger children would follow suite in meeting and marrying the love of their lives (at Bible School) when they later attended after I did.

We moved to Oklahoma in 2006 to go to school with the dream of coming back to California and pastoring our own church.  That desire came to a screeching halt when Piper began demonstrating increasing physical symptoms of something a lot worse than what was thought to simply be the passing effects of menopause. Once we began her medical investigations and tests, we entered a course of life that would become totally consuming for the next eleven years.

After graduating and with confusing results from the various brain scans and other multitude of tests that Piper had in Oklahoma, we decided it best to return home to our former life in California.  But as I’ve chronicled in the literally hundreds of blog posts that I’ve written since 2010… things didn’t quite turn out as planned.  The former life we had wasn’t there when we returned!  Almost everything we had come to depend on in our past was no longer in operation.  But we bounced back.  We slowly learned who we could depend on (or not) and developed a new network of family and friends that we could trust and be with in our time of desperate need.

Then in 2014, after months of prayer, we (read that “I”) packed up our belongings and moved us to North Carolina to be closer to three of our four children and their families.  Plus, it afforded us the opportunity to purchase the home of our dreams in the country with about  an acre of property.  Those five years on the East Coast were sweet, had their moments of joy, were filled with lots of miracles, but was also the most trying as well as physically and emotionally straining and draining time that I’d ever experienced in my life.  At the end of 2018, we lost the physical battle for Piper’s life and I found myself in an empty house, without the most important, wonderful and cherished person that I had ever known.

… And then 2019 began to appear on the horizon!  Following a few months of feeling like an absolute zombie, I flew to Oklahoma to spend Christmas with most of our kids who now lived there.  After my return, I threw myself into the task of preparing our dream home for sale, sold it and then moved myself and the dog to Oklahoma… where I am now.

I am truly hoping and believing that this is the last move for me.  That this is home!  I have a ton of plans for upgrades on the house, have returned to my adult Christian roots at church at Rhema, get to see our girls and their families in Broken Arrow on a regular basis and for the first time in who knows how long… live in the same time zone as our boys who reside in Oklahoma City and Mount Juliet, Tennessee!

As 2019 comes to a close and the new decade begins, I am beginning to feel the gears of expectancy turning on the inside of me.  I sense dreams formulating deep within my heart and even though it may seem daunting… I feel that warm and familiar trust in the truth of God and His word returning to my soul.

God reminded me the other morning of Whom I need to be listening to as I begin this new adventure.  While the warm water beat down on my back (I love the shower head and amount of water pressure this house has!)  I heard that all familiar “still small voice” on the inside of me say, "Have I not commanded you Jim? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for I, the LORD your God am with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9 NASB)  “I will never neglect you or abandon you.” (Joshua1:5 God’s Word ©) 

So, need I say anymore?  I have my marching orders… pretty much the same ones He gave me back in 1975 soon after Piper and I got married.  Sure, my life has dramatically changed… but He is still the same as He was in every century that you and I have been alive… and many, many more before that!

In 2020, trust in Him, seek His directions and then follow what He says!  Simple right?

I’m expecting an exciting new decade of life… How about you?