Like a rose that continuously blooms will be His revelation to us in that brilliant, Eternal Day. We will not be interested in golf. Or skiing or fly-fishing, or any other pastime of this world as we know it.

The unfolding of His inner being will be a constant source of Everlasting Joy and Glory to us. We will never become 'bored'. The bible says, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, what God has prepared for the hearts of those who love Him.”

Oh how I thirst, Oh how I long for that day…

To be let out of this concentration camp world of futility and groaning, Romans chapter eight says, “The whole of creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” Groaning, therefore is a normal part of living in this abnormal world subject to the ravages of sin.

At last to be truly free. Freedom from pain being high, high, high on my list but perhaps more importantly, free from the futility of sin.

To be free from temptation's constant barrage. To be free from regret and every form of fear. It is beyond imagining. And yet this is the inevitable destination of every soul that loves God. It is the destiny that is set before me. A destiny more sure and true than anything on Earth. This destiny was the original intention for all of creation.

We look at the spirit world as an ethereal place. As if those who have passed on are like a mist or will of the wisps wandering in the dark. We think it is they who would pass through us… As if it is us that have the material reality and they who are, “Like smoke in a glass… “

The true reality is just the opposite. Our eyes are too weak to see their substantiality. Our bodies pass through theirs. We are the failing flesh, we are the mists…

Isaiah says, “All flesh is like grass… The grass withers, the flower fades. The people are grass…” Fading in the sun… Withering in the frost… Standing lifeless through the winters of our lives... Grass... The weakness and futility are all ours… The pain and suffering…Ours.

This is not taking into account those who die in their sins and the destination Jesus says waits for them. Hell itself… In the face of this truth I truly am horrified… “Oh please just let Lazurus dip the tip of his little finger in water to bring me some relief here.” begs the rich man in Jesus’ parable.

To those who are in THAT place nothing can be said.

There can be no hope there… No room to breathe there...

I at least, can experience, for three to five hours a day, the bliss of sleep. There is nothing for them there but the gnashing of teeth and ultimate despair. In the light of this, and many other afflictions and diseases people are going through all over the world, I am truly blessed. I have many things to be thankful for.

I am far, far, far from the hopeless state of the truly, for all eternity, LOST.

In the long, long, nights of nausea I listen to my dear, sweet, lovely, faithful hearted wife sleeping and I realize a blessing few have. A growing, thriving marriage, a certainty of a lifelong relationship. Much of society's problems turn on the epidemic of broken marriages and broken family relationships…

I have NO broken, or even bent relationships in my family. My children are all fairly well behaved and are all healthy.

I have no heartbreaking addictions to fight with... Or rather, lose to, as is the case with addiction. On a purely psychological / personal level I am blessed tremendously.

I have literally dozens of supporting relationships at Church and feel tremendously loved by many people. Frequently people I don't even know tell me they are praying for me because, “So and so told me you are having trouble.” I play the saxophone in song service and feel a wonderful release and anointing of the Holy Spirit during worship. The creative process of making music is an endlessly satisfying pleasure…

BUT… This agony…

I have gone through many different reactions, emotions, depressions, and despair. I've had moments of the bleakest hopelessness…

Last summer my middle son Travis wanted to go camping with a friend of his and their family. I decided to come along for a night. It was an hour and a half drive to the lake and I was following their car with Travis and his friend Zachary in my car.

I began feeling so dizzy and ill, sssooo much pain and exhaustion, I thought I might literally drive off the road. One of the more difficult symptoms is hard to describe. My eyesight goes wacko on me. Everything appears to sort of, blend in or wash out. It all becomes kind of two-dimensional looking and spatial distortion sets in. (When this gets really severe I begin to think I might really be going insane…)

Anyway, I realized the camping trip was not going to happen for me so I flashed my headlights until I got Zach's parents to pull over. I sent my son on with them, then stopped and rested. I Waited a while hoping that my eyesight would return to normal.

After thirty minutes or so I felt a tiny bit better so I began driving home. Literally crying aloud with pain I pushed on, hoping I could stay on the road.

It was a beautiful summer day in July. I was driving along the Santiam River, an unspoiled trout stream dancing in the sun. People everywhere were driving with convertible tops down, boats behind campers, cyclists and fisherman enjoying the day and I, like the plague among them grimly clinging to the steering wheel in tears and praying, “God, please help, keep me on the road please.” I pulled my car over and plodded down a logging road to river. I was thinking, “Might as well do a little fly fishing while I'm up here. Maybe in the process, the Chess game of fishing, the concentration and the art of the cast I can forget some of the pain...”

No such luck.

Down there on the sparkling water, (I caught some nice trout too) there was no relief, no enjoyment, and no peace. Just more groaning, burdens and nausea.

Life was detestable to me. Life was an unbearable trial and I truly, at that moment, did not want to go on. With such longing I looked at the swiftly flowing water and thought of drowning, of suicide… Of just… Letting go… Slipping into the water and forcing myself to breathe in…

To truly take on the wings of an eagle and end this captivity…

To finally…

Be at rest…

I swear I've never wanted anything in my entire life more than I wanted to cease to exist at that moment... A kind of lust for death began to steal upon me… I allowed my mind to fantasize about what it would be like. To just lay down and slip away from all the pain.

How cruel and hardhearted God must be to look upon such immense suffering and do nothing…

How bleak the rest of my life looked from that standpoint. An hour or two passed as I, completely desolate and broken, at rock bottom, wept pouring my heart out like water before the Lord, begging, pleading for His intervention.

The worst part about it is, knowing that that experience of rock bottom is going to be, and Is, the very condition of my life from now on... To finally give in to the fact of my disability as a PERMANENT condition and realize that rock bottom is where I'll dwell from now on.

I am static and stale... Raw and hurting, yet still here...

Out of the reach of men. Out of the understanding of anyone but those who are traveling trapped in the same prison I am in but not by any means out of the reach of God's wonderful hand…

He dwells with me…

My voice is detestable to me and if I could, I would flee from my own self but I am stuck with me... Trapped with me... The Lord Almighty though… He loves me even so… He is here with me even so… He weeps with me and carries me even so… I can never be detestable to Him. I can never be beyond the reach of his love. And for this reason and no other I choose life. The love of God.

“To be or not to be… Is it nobler to suffer the pangs of outrageous fortune, etc.” "To be" is the only real choice.

The only point that I can see to it all… The only purpose and meaning that I can discover can be found and seen only by God himself. It means absolutely nothing to me. It is like rotten eggs to me but to Him, from His perspective, ithas tremendous meaning and significance. (I only see the desert, the dungeon and nothing else...)

He, from the highest standpoint, the Lord of time itself, observing my beginning and end, observing, even now the eternal joy that I will someday rejoice in, imparts meaning to my life. And by faith alone I must accept this... Or give up...

Like a painter working on a masterpiece He paints me. He molds and moves me. This truth, though a comfort, is not bread to me though. To know that, like George Bailey from the famous film, 'It's a wonderful life,' my life is helping others and that the world is a better place because I live, (and suffer) does not give me life in this moment.

Again I turn to my main theme…

“HE IS WITH ME HE IS WITH ME HE IS WITH ME.”

This is bread, this is hope, and this is life indeed.

I cannot be separated from this truth. Romans chapter eight says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

His Spirit in us . . .

Now to attempt to express the inexpressible . . . To try and put into words this sense of dwelling, this nearness of God to my soul, this place, deep in my being, where He has made a place for himself.

How can I bring it up? How can I possibly say it . . .?

I’ve tried to imagine describing the color blue to a blind man . . . What would I say? “It looks like . . . What’s that . . .? Describe ‘look . . .?’ OK . . . To look is to sense a shape at a distance . . . I’m sorry, a ‘shape’ is the outline of an object . . . Now, blue is a . . . Cool color . . . It’s like a cool drink on a hot day . . . “ etc. It can’t be done, yet in all this writing this is what I want to do more than anything else. I want to truly encourage anyone reading this to delve deeply into His heart.

It is impossible to imagine that He is too good. My dreams of His grace are too shallow . . . The place that He dwells in me is way deeper than my emotions . . . Way deeper than my feelings of depression and resentment . . . A place way deeper than any pain or any trial. (You see, in attempting to describe the ‘dwelling-ness’ of God within me I miss the mark and describe what it’s deeper than, but not the place itself.)