A Personal Prediction for You...2009 - A Year to Shine.
Posted: Friday, December 26, 2008
by Adam Keegan
I trust, like me, you are eager to get into the new year. This last year may have been hard for you (as for me), financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
I have recently had to move away from a dream and what seemed like a God-given mandate to start a rehab-style retreat in remote Western Australia. We moved away a year & a half before with a 15 month old and a 3 month old baby. There was nothing there just a small clearing (a fire break) in the middle of a few thousand acres of bush. It took 20+ trips in a large truck to move our stuff up there - mostly building materials that had been collected for the venture.
I set to work levelling the ground & erecting sheds, and starting a vegetable patch. A small solar setup gave us enough for a fridge and satelite internet connection. My wife worked hard and spent her energy looking after the kids...who were always keen to help. Everyday things were hard, with our nearest shop 50km away, and no driveway...just 3kms of deep sand that would often leave her bogged with no way of contacting me. Washing of the clothes was done in a borrowed hand-powered tumbler - in dirty red water!
The wind was always working against us - from blowing over 3 loads of freshly washed clothes into the mud, to blowing down new sheds...sometimes 5 times.
Soon my wife was pregnant again and the amazing amount of creatures in this place was becoming apparent - ticks galore, centipedes, scorpions, snakes, lizards, spiders - it was a harsh place! The smallest things became huge - like when we finally got hot running water, we just sat in a bucket under a shower head...emotional at the comfort of a simple hot shower!
When things became too hard we prayed that God would tell us whether He really wanted us here...and every time a miracle would happen...confirming this was to be used by Him to help others. We both had been under the thumb of addiction and new the torment and frustration so tried to hang in there for the sake of others.
We had learned to live with many aspects of this place...but as summer approached we did not know how hard things would get. Christmas day was the first day we had with a toilet, there were no walls on the toilet shed - but it was a lot better than digging holes!
But soon the temperature rose to 50ºC - and with no way to cool down. The water out of the tap was very hot (we had simply laid 3 km of black pipe across the land to get water from a tank) so we couldn't shower until late at night. Then the bees came...millions of them. In the heat they had no water so any sweat of us was their goal. All being mildly allergic the stings that were received took energy - emotional and physical - out of us. Sometimes 3 stings a day. My oldest boy (Jehdeiah) would swell horribly as would my wife, making walking / moving painful for days afterwards. Shower time was rediculous - one of us would hold a thong and swat bees as they tried to get into the shed for the water. We had covered every hole with silicone / flyscreen but still they would get it... Once showered we had to wrap up the kids in towels and run through a thick swarm of bees - around the laundry shed, past the two vans to the annex about 30 meters, once inside the bee killing continued until all done. Only foir my wife after it all to sit on the ed & get stung. It was sooo dis-heartening.
Our emotions wore thin, she wanted to leave I wanted to stay. She craved contact with other people, I wanted to 'succeed' and make it work. Continual close contact in such hard conditions, and bad choices by both of us led to many dis-agreements. We had been there nearly a year & a half now had many relative luxuries - a toilet, phone, hot running water, more electricity and even an air con. I was building a large structure to cover the caravans to helpl with the heat.
But sickness started attacking the kids...sure they had been sick quite regulalry - but this was different. My middle child (Elijah) just wouldn't get better - and the other two were sick as well. It dragged on for two long and became hard to cope. Just when it seemed like they were getting well again they would get sick. Then we travelled to church one day (160km trip) to find it wasn't on...and when we returned our faithful dog was lying there dead.
When I look back now I see clearly a 'SNAP' - that was the stick that broke the camels back. My wife had no fight left. A snake bite - that easily could have been one of our children. It was too hard. She could not cope. I wanted her to - and never gave up - I pushed too hard for too long. Eventually she decided to take the kids down to our parents for a break for help while they were sick. But coming back was too hard.
That was the begining of the end for our 'venture'. She didn't want to come back and I knew if I pushed any harder that our relationship would be un-repairable. We started the plans to move back to suburbia.
Why have I said all this? Most of this was 2006-2007. Well as I stated 2008 has been very hard for me. The 'recovery' from the venture has been a hard long slog. From the issues that came up and needed to be resolved for both of us, to the trust levels between us to the large debt we accumulated to set everything up. We have had to work through many issues and for me personally it has been a real test of faith. Did God really speak to us before we left? Why did He let all these things happen?
We have managed to pay off the debt and are living in relative comfort close to family. But for me it is stifling and I have had to deal with feelings of failure and control (ie having to have to come back). But there is hope for 2009 and I will tell you why...
Jesus, the One who Created us and set us free from addictions, has begun healing me at a level that is hard to comprehend. He originally got my attention my healing an ir-repairable back injury...and set me free from all kinds of addiction. Many, many things changed - but the issues stirred up in the venture have been too big for me. My natural way of coping is to medicate the pain or avoid it by being busy. Anger is quick to surface and old mechanisms are hard to break.
But as I have turned to Jesus, I have yet again experienced His truth and grace. My wife and I have tried to support each other through this time and now are seeing results. God has used an avenue called Theophostic Prayer Ministry to go back in time and heal me of the lies I started to believe at certain events in my life. As the layers of the 'onoin' are pealed back I find excitement starting to surface again at life.
What does all this mean? That in 2009 God is in control! As you trust in Him & let Him heal you of any reasons why you might not be able to trust you will experience His peace. No matter what terrorism takes place, no matter who rises to power, no matter how many people are urdered or what happens to the economy - God is in control!
Don't allow the lies of "you can do it" "you can heal your life" etc to lead you into a year of condemnation and defeat. Relax in the knowledge that when you can't do it - Jesus can!
His love for you is unmeasureable and he longs for you to open to Him in every area of your life.
Turn from sin and turn to Him
for you He went out on a limb
Condemned to die willingly on a tree
in Him you can be totally free
So from now starting with 2009
remember that in Him you can truly Shine!
God Bless you in your Quest for Freedom!
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Wow.....and people think that the show 'Survivor' would be hard to live for 30 some days....I can not imagine, not even a little about living where you are. The heat, the hot water, babies, scorpions...snake bites. mental exhaustion from going from a home in the country out to pretty near desert land....that would be the adjustment that I could not handle, the mental. God Bless you and Your Family. God certainly has given you something special to stay there, courage, strength or whatever it is, because I would be out of there...maybe....maybe after I seen the people there that needed me would make me stay and not be able to leave....so exactly what is your rehab-style retreat all about? I am not quite clear on that. But since it incluseds God It must be all good.......................Good Luck and I will certainly remember your family in my prayers.
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