my careless contagion

When all is said and done, these pages are a microcosm. So much love. So many questions. So many lines intersecting, reaching out, connecting, diverging, close but never leading anywhere. How many millions of love letters has mankind written? How many lines went unsaid, never acted upon? I wrote my lines. I'm content knowing I tried, loved, waited, did everything I was supposed to do. What they did with my love was never in my hands. I faithfully loved until doors closed forever. Love is beautiful, but it must be chosen, accepted, brought in from the rain. Mine was discarded like an ill-timed valentine, ink bleeding in the rain, tossed about by the wind, wet and matted in a gutter.  Here, loved turned to hate. Hate turned to tears. Tears turned to forgiveness. Forgiveness turned to prayer. Prayer ended in upturned hands to a knowing God and a brokenness that cannot be healed. All the things that were once in my hands are gone. I am left with questions that stretch to the horizon....

Someone wondered aloud how a follower of Christ could be so continually a mess. It resonated. My life is that way. I can account for the years when I went away from God by saying, "It's on me." Much of what I endured was my fault. What about the rest? People look at a Christian's life and wonder why they would want to endure that kind of hardship. Hardships abound, no matter what. If you haven't tasted of it yet, you will. An unmolested life isn't what you think it is. It's God's mercy, giving you time and space to repent. All He has to do is take His hand away and you're in Job's position. Come to think of it, Job's wicked counselor "friends" said the same thing as the sentiment above. They said, "If you do well, your life will go well." Job was a righteous man, so why did he deserve what he went through? He lost literally everything (except his wife, but my guess is she went away too, for a time). Don't get me wron...

Funny thing about the last post is Blogger (Google) flagged it for having triggering content. I'm sorry if anyone was disturbed by reading about my life. And I'm sorry for breathing out trauma inflicted upon me. Sorry reading about my life could be traumatizing to someone. Imagine what it was like to live it. This is not an apology. My life and my reactions will never be an apology to those who hated me enough to harm me. Seeking to understand what happened was a level of kindness most do not possess and which I continually displayed.  It's one thing to get away from a toxic person. It's another thing to get the poison out they put in you. Trauma is stored in our bodies. We carry it with us, unless we separate it from ourselves — dispatching it with precision — or venting, lancing it like a boil. But the root must be destroyed so it doesn't regenerate. Forgiveness kills the root, but the rest has to be bled out. No, I don't want the gym. It's air conditioned...

Maybe you were curious what happened to the guy who had his heart destroyed. Maybe you thought he was a pussy for crashing out over the biggest disappointment of his life. Maybe you never knew the backstory. Wandering through Gatsby’s abandoned mansion, you wondered what transpired. Maybe you just stumbled in. In any case, you’re here. [Could have split into two posts. To save space, I refer to my ex-wife as K and the woman I fell in love with after divorce as C.] There’s a scene in the movie Drive where a bad guy calmly slits a man’s wrist (the right way — the long way) and tells him to sit down, be calm, because, “It’s done, it’s over, there’s no pain.” That’s how I imagined C ending things. I held out my hand for a friendly goodbye handshake, and she slit my wrist cooly, as if it was her duty. But, it wasn’t over, and there was pain. I sat down, bleeding. I’m still here, and it still hurts.   I hate when people experience a small disruption and attach to it spiritual significanc...