---

I have been writing now for about twelve years on this blog. I started it because I am a professional writer (of sorts), and I wanted to use the talents God gave me for something bigger than me.

I became a Christian in college, and that conversion diverted me from any career path I might have wandered down. I should emphasize the wandering, because I wasn’t very career-minded to begin with. I was a truth seeker, and I still am.

I thought I would go into “ministry”. That’s all I really wanted to do, but I wasn’t on a track for ministry. It was a very secular college with very traditionally secular guidance to provide. I was a crazy Christian convert who was reading the Bible and believing it.

I became a student leader of the campus InterVarsity group. We had virtually no oversight. That group of fledgling college students, like myself, was my discipleship group

I was certain about one thing: that God existed, and He had changed me. I didn’t know much of anything else.

I gravitated toward a local independent, Charismatic church about 40 minutes away. I would go to church there many Sundays, but I was a college student preoccupied with the things college students did. I mentored with the head pastor for a short time, but not long enough to make much of a difference.

I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.

These words Paul spoke to the Corinthians heavily influenced me: The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18); and God makes foolishness the wisdom of the age. (1 Cor. 1:20-21) I thought I didn’t need a seminary. In truth, I was afraid that a seminary would try to conform me by the wisdom of the age.

I should have paid more attention to what Paul said to the Corinthians: Greeks look for (worldly wisdom), but the Jews demand signs. (I Cor. 1:22) I wanted signs. It turns out that Paul was right. Worldly wisdom and demanding signs are both misguided paths.

I went off to the East Coast chasing after a church, the legend of which I heard from the man who become my best friend in college. Maybe the best friend I have ever had. A true brother in the Lord, Jesus.

We encouraged each other in that season of our lives. We both had become Christians after leading wild, existentially-angst-filled lives in our youth. We came to the kingdom of God with baggage (who doesn’t?), but we knew that Jesus had the words of life, and we were all in.

I packed my bags for a summer counseling job in a Christian camp on the south side of Like Winnipesaukee like Abraham leaving behind his homeland for the promised land. I didn’t believe I was ever coming back. Only God knew my intentions at the time.

After camp ended and I helped to close it up for the next camping season, I moved a half hour north into the last communal house left over from the Jesus People movement that swept this tourist area in the late 60’s and early 70’s. That movement of the Holy Spirit caught a bunch of migrant hippies in its current and deposited them downstream from wherever they thought they were wandering into Christian communal living.

Those communes were a legend I only heard snippets about when I arrived, but the communal spirit was still in the air. I loved it. I embraced that communal spirit for the next 40 months, and I plugged into the life of that church.

I grew up as person and as a young Christian during that time in many ways. The church was edgy. It was brash. It tried to be authentic. It dared to think big, and I ate it up. But, it wouldn’t last. (It disintegrated and splintered into many fragments not long after we left it.)

I still wanted to be in ministry, though I had no vision. I thought it would just happen. I had heard that a man’s gift makes room for itself. (I think that is in a Proverb somewhere.) But it wasn’t happening for me. I was also young and impatient and impetuous.

I had always longed for love and intimacy. I was a romantic dreamer. I was heavily influenced by Disney stories of life lived happily ever after, but I knew nothing of the promise those stories offered. I still don’t.

I married on a whim, encouraged by “a word spoken over me” that I didn’t understand, but I acted anyway. That determination to act was pivotal.

Just over 40 years have past. I have been married, now, for 39 years. It would be 40 years in November, but my wife left me almost two years ago, and I don’t think we are going to make it to 40.

I am not sure exactly where I am going here today, other than the need I feel to keep things real. I don’t usually focus so much on myself, but I have gotten used to writing to work out the thoughts in my head, and today those thoughts involve trying to make some sense of my life.

I feel like I sound like an angsty teenager uncertain about the future. In reality, I am an angsty middle age man trying to ignore the uncertainty of “starting over”.

I never imagined I would be “here” at my age, not knowing what the future looks like. Clear skies with light rising just over the horizon have turned cloudy and dark. The sense of loss and the emptiness of having traveled so far just to get to this place can be overwhelming.

Life is short. I always say that, but it’s true. “We can’t take anything with us when we go” is also a truism. What else is there if there is no God? What sense can we make of this world if there is nothing else?

I have been impressed with the need over the last several years to lay up treasures in heaven, and to focus my attention away from this world and its cares and concerns. Now that the proverbial rug has been pulled out from under me, I find my footing more treacherous than I imagined.

My prayer has been: “God teach me to do what pleases you, and lead me onto level ground.” I have found it hard, though, to keep my part of the bargain.

Two weekends ago, my children helped me fill a 30 yard dumpster to the brim with almost 40 years of accumulated treasures in various stages of rust and rot. (I am being only a little hyperbolic.) The house is much emptier now, but for an anxious dog and two nonplussed cats.

I miss a more communal life, even with a lack of intimacy to it. Not that I want to move on to a new romantic relationship – not that I had a very romantic relationship to begin with.

I also can’t blame my wife too emphatically. My baggage, though very different than hers, added its own weight to the chains that bound us … and separated us.

I have resisted, or maybe just ignored, solid advice to seek counseling. My father would say that psychologists are more messed up than their patients with the gravitas of the experience he had in representing them in divorce. His realism (and skepticism) wore off on me.

His marriage to my mother seems like a Disney tale, however. They are still in love and committed to each other today, at the age of 87, coming up on 66 years of marriage. He has lived his life well.

I have never been able to hold a candle to my father in any area of my life. I was once an angry, frustrated, rebellious youth who couldn’t live up to my own expectations for myself. I took it out emotionally on my father, but he didn’t even know it, because I internalized it. I was reckless and self-destructive because I couldn’t measure up, but Jesus set me free from those things.

Years later, I spent 20 years working in the same law office with my father, and I loved every minute of it. He was an extremely good attorney, a true gentleman, a formidable trial attorney in all the best ways. He respected the legal process. He respected other people, even as he knew well their weaknesses and could lead them into traps they would spring for themselves.

He was a champion of bullied, oppressed, and controlled women. He often continued to fight their battles long after they could no longer pay him just because it was the right thing to do.

He was a natural leader that people naturally followed. He was the embodiment of wisdom, though he wasn’t naturally a teacher of wisdom. Perhaps, it was wisdom to allow me to learn life’s lessons on my own.

I enjoyed working in the same office with him, though we didn’t often work side by side. He gave me great freedom to be the person I am and to follow my own path. I have always been grateful for that, and not a little wistful that his secrets are still a bit mysterious to me.

I have spent much time over the past two years retracing my steps. I have grieved my past and all the ways I fell short. I am grieving the future I planned for decades that will no longer be a reality. How did I get here? Where am I going? Starting over sucks.

I continue putting one foot in front of the other and plodding forward. I have experienced years living in the dark night of my soul (in truth, not just the last two years), but I have somehow, by the grace of God, continued to plod forward. The ground is steep and difficult, but there is only one way – forward.

If you have read this far, I am sorry I can’t be more philosophical today. I appreciate you struggling along with me on this segment of my journey.

I am not always sure why I keep writing. I started to write because I felt God called me to write. I remind myself of that from time to time, but writing has also become part of who I am. Thank you for letting me keep it real.

I am not sure why I am putting this out into the world, but for my compulsion to write. I am trying to be authentic today. As much as I am presently able.

We do not live perfect stories. They don’t always have happy endings. We are not the captains of our destinies that we pretend to be. Who would write our stories this way?

We struggle somewhere in between the eternity God put into our hearts and the dust under our feet to which our bodies will return. We are perishable seeds clinging to an imperishable hope.