20

For the first time I will record our conversation. Watch your language. 😊

Dear Lord,

I stand before You for the 20th time Here and what is still the site of My greatest temporal victory. Thanks to your light and the wisdom you gave me. Thanks to you I conquered doubt, fear, laziness, and strife. I overcame obstacles that I had never escaped from undamaged, and even then managed to lose my way only to see in time you moving my world to save me each time I realized it. Seeing your hand in my life as plain as day, but only when I knew I had failed you and asked for help.

And for each and every one of the 19 times between then and now, Our conversation has begun the same way.

I am lonely, Lord. Please send me my Eve, to bring to my life meaning.

I am unfulfilled, Lord. Please send me my Career to bring to my life purpose.

There was a third prayer for a time, but I ceased being worthy to ask.

Ironic that I chastise Crow for endless cycles. Or not, because I’ve sadly known them even more than she has.

I’ve never even been in a fleeting relationship when the window of May 14 has come around. Although last year for The first time I felt I was on a track towards a career at least.

Do I celebrate that or mourn it?

It’s May 14. Celebrate 🙂

As I walked across the stage that day my whole life was ahead of me. I was filled with promise – and potential. Year after year, it slowly wasted away. Arrogance and anger. Lust and sloth. Of all the areas of my life I had sought to be more than I was, I have failed in literally every single one of them.

Walking around campus in the nicest clothes I have with a $14 cigar to celebrate my failure.

Or not. 🙂 I like looking good and I like my Ashton’s. If that’s failure, I wallow in it just to spite it.

I stand here to celebrate my blessings. To be thankful for them. Because the one area of my life I Forgot to place expectations on myself that day is the one area of my life is the one area I have to be the most thankful for. I look back at the different universes different decisions could have led me too and see potentially painful divorces. Substance abuse. imprisonment. Self righteous hatred of others. Being dead in the gutter.

I see temporal success. Temporal happiness. All bereft of meaning. Because I never stopped to give myself expectations for my relationship with You.

And yes I have so many regrets when it comes to Roads not taken. give me the chance to pick one at random, Though, and I would stay right here.

Honestly don’t know why. It’s not like I’m a very good Christian. But I feel with every fiber of my being that my relationship with You – as flawed and broken as it is – Is the one thing that’s so far I’ve been reasonably successful at. 

And it takes some real arrogance to say that. Successful? Really? Well, now that I’m reading your word again I read about David and Bathsheba.. and realize I’m not doing that bad. Yes even now.

I gave my soul to you. Well back to you. My mind fails you. My heart fails you. here I am supposed to live my life for you and most days go by without me even thinking about you until it’s time to say a blessing.

Mind failure. Soul picks up the slack And we talk for a bit. Why it’s there. 🙂 I pine for someone I can’t have for hours on end and my thoughts turn negative. Angry.  crossing the line at thoughts of Violence I never want to have again. The line between noble protectiveness and selfish jealousy smashed into oblivion. Soul picks up the slack. I ask for forgiveness. Well, most of the time. 🤔

Mind and heart. Career and love. What you have chosen to assist me in avoiding, Much to my chagrin that things don’t just magically work out the way that I worked out the first year I stood here in victory.

I have told you so many times that I cannot wait to stop this stupid tradition. For me to replace this day with the day of my wedding as the happiest day of my life.

And here I am, literally unable to comprehend how others who know you can’t get past themselves to find you. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen. And only with CS Lewis’s masterpiece The Great Divorce was I able to put a finger on why.

So in the one area of my life where I am actually meeting any level of success… And I cannot share you with people I care about… I fail at the only thing I’m actually supposed to be good at.

I claim that this is the only area of my life I am remotely successful. And then fail. Thank you for letting the soul pick up the slack.

And here I am now on the 20th anniversary. Now wounded yet again with self-inflicted wounds brought forth from my own anger and pride and ignorance.

I have wasted 20 years. Wasted. Don’t get me wrong I’m thankful for what I do have that you’ve given me, but the point of having your other half is to be balanced so I can help others by serving You. The point in being successful  is that I can help others by serving you.

At 43, the task of retooling my career to start over in a world so different then the age of Chumbawamba there’s already monumental. And now I have stolen from myself the ability to even learn.  I draw comfort from the fact that now that I have let wisdom replace stupidity it will heal, but… Time is no longer a luxury.

Nor is it yet an enemy, but I sit here… frozen in every aspect of my life save aging… hoping the healing that is taking place will allow me to soon be able to finally start taking care of my parents instead of the other way around.

You showed me Psalms 80. Yes. It helps.  I know you’re here. I know you always have been. I know you have a plan. And I know that I will not accomplish anything until I place my mind and my heart where my soul is.

My mind is easier and harder at the same time.  The key is self discipline; definitely one of my worst flaws. Nowhere near as bad as some people, But bad enough to keep me out of balance.

My heart is new. Raw. Much like the old one, if the deep wounds’ blood calcified into armor. Counterproductive considering the prayers made about five years ago. It had been 16 years since it Truly felt alive. My fear was that I couldn’t feel exhilaration anymore. You have to be able to feel pain to feel exhilaration in love. And I have not met anyone since Flame that could hurt me.

I remember asking you for pain One drunken, lonely night. “Please let me know that I can still feel my heart racing for a woman. So I can know that I can still feel alive. I don’t want to settle. For whatever reasons, being a selfish, noble or a combination of both.” Something stupid like that.

Well, ask you shall receive. Had to give that heart away in exchange for that prayer being answered. The new heart being forged under plunging fire in a sea of tears… it’s strong. Better armored. Far more willing to fire back, But far more indebted to the soul that must and will keep it in check.

There have been plenty of May 14ths that have come and gone with the promise of a new day in someway shape or form. Well this one actually guarantees it for once for better or worse.

This one is the first true major turning point in my life that I will have had since sitting in that chair in that room as I lost forever the grounds to ask for a child.

And here I stand, now having violated the promise I made to you so long ago out of absolute fear after having feltplain as day You in that room deliberately keeping me from her that first night, then afterwards sending me into a wilderness in which it didn’t even matter anymore and I followed up by doing things I would never have imagined because I just didn’t care. 

My heart holds You responsible. It wasn’t supposed to be 17 years for me to find my other half. And I watched so many of my friends do as they pleased… and almost all of them are now in loving family relationships – have not given a crap what your Commandments were.

And the soul picks up the slack. 

You are responsible. And I trust you enough to understand you have your reasons. For the 20th year in a row.

And now I can’t imagine being with a woman that doesn’t set my heart on fire. And I wont. I’d rather die without passion than live pretending it’s there.

If any of this must be changed so that I may fit better into your stupid plan, give me the strength and wisdom to change it.

I now finally know again what it is like to be willing to change myself for love. And so long as the love is true… I have no regrets whatsoever.

A good man does absolutely anything within his power to make his wife happy. I have seen this in so many good men. Sometimes to the extent it backfires because they don’t realize what makes her happy. Especially when she doesn’t have a clue either, lolz 😂

I have only met two women at two very different times in my life that I deemed worthy. And now by sheer coincidence both of them are in my life again, Each Sealed away in one way or another. One I can’t tell how I really feel without crushing her feelings; The other I can’t tell how I really feel without her crushing mine.

So be it.  you made it clear as day long ago that I was not meant to have the normal relationship with a woman that my dad has.

There is literally nothing I can do.

But focus on bringing balance to my mind, my career, and letting your will play out for everything else.

I pray tonight for restoration. Of my mind, body and tired soul.

I pray for clarity in better understanding your will so I don’t waste my now even more precious time left fighting it. 

I pray for those dearest to me to find their way to You because of the turmoil in their lives that I don’t have because my soul always picks up the slack.

And most importantly… I pray to you in thanks… for this stupid childish tradition. Because it is what gave me my soul to begin with.

And for every last one of my uncountable blessings that I have no right to squander by failing to put You first.

Next year. Same time. Same place.

Until the happiest day of my life is finally replaced at last.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Now to pick up a Coke for my rum.

Oh…. and thanks for the cat. 👊😊