³ And he was afraid, and got up and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah; and he left his servant there. ⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked for himself to die, and said, “Enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” ⁵ Then he lay down and fell asleep under a broom tree; but behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat!” ⁶ And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a round loaf of bread baked on hot coals, and a pitcher of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷ But the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him, and said, “Arise, eat; because the journey is too long for you.” ⁸ So he arose and ate and drank, and he journeyed in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.  ~ 1 Kings 19:3-8, NASB

Behold, I am going to do something new,
Now it will spring up;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.  ~ Isaiah 43:19, NASB 

    

    

     Neither Triston nor Zemora had figured out that they were in a spiritual winter season – a kind of wilderness. That’s why they did not know they hadn’t seen a spiritual spring season for some time. Though delayed, it would come again. In the meantime, their spiritual winter season – spiritual wilderness – was cold, dark, and bleak. It affected them and their sons.

     While they were in their spiritual wilderness, they had forgotten that Pastor Brooks had taught them that YeHoVaH was a seasonal God who allowed His Children to experience spiritual winters. They had also forgotten that Pastor Brooks had taught them that any compulsory spiritual growth would always follow time spent in any kind of wilderness – especially a spiritual winter season.

     He had additionally taught them that a spiritual wilderness was one in which everything that could go wrong would go wrong, but this Divine Truth was just something else that Triston and Zemora had forgotten. Because this married couple was oblivious to the fact that they had been behaving like spiritually immature believers who had become spiritually stagnant, they had no idea that they were spiritually naked and hungry.

     In their wilderness, Zemora’s life would be threatened by an armed robber and by the love of her life. Triston’s life would be threatened by a malignant growth and by the love of his life. Once they both stopped putting in the required effort – everything they should have done to save their marriage – Triston and Zemora not only lost loved ones but also lost faith in YeHoVaH.

     For years, Zemora was convinced that Triston could not hear the swelling brokenness and pain in her voice, and Triston was convinced that Zemora would never forgive his repeated displays of gross insensitivity and ecclesiastical reservations. The truth was she and he were not only deaf but also blind because neither could hear nor see how the other person’s brokenness and pain or insensitivity and reservations were slowly but surely crumbling their spiritual houses.

     The extended pressure against their spiritual foundation walls’ already existing unrepaired breaches would soon cause them to crack, and those cracks would eventually lead to a severely shaken marital relationship.

~ The above-concluding paragraphs are from CHAPTER EIGHT: Lesser Half – my fictional novel’s manuscript.