my careless contagion

I spent a lot of time on this blog giving space to my own words. Today is different. Today I got the following in my inbox. I publish it here because I can't form my own words. I am beyond devastated. I replied to it, of course, but that was for me. Now this is for her. This is what Cindy wrote to me last night, which I read this morning. The above photo is one of my favorites. Maybe that's her now, finally at peace about me. Free. I hope so.  *** Hi Joshua, I don't know how to put everything into words that I've been processing in my mind for the last few weeks, but I'm going to do it as clearly as I can. My cousin said something last week that really brought some clarity to my situation with you and me. She was talking about how she was so undecided when her now-husband was pursuing her. She would be all in with him and then pull back and go through that cycle over and over again. Sound familiar? She recounted the story in Mark 11, when the Pharisees were asking J...

There were two great events that shaped the last two years of my life. The first was my separation and divorce from my wife which was a relationship that lasted more than 20 years. The second was a brief but beautiful encounter during my separation and divorce with a woman I've known since I was ten years old. We have a history I won't go into here. The love we had blossomed without warning at either the perfect time or the worst time. I haven't decided which. By the time she was divorced, it was safe to say our relationship had ended. It was a double dose of grief for me to see the end of two intense relationships in such a short amount of time. I thought I was going to die. Some days, I wished I would. To compound these feelings, I also feel intense remorse for having a relationship with a woman during such a critical time. She was going through a separation and divorce as well. I felt I impacted her decision-making in a negative way. She even told me I was "10...

I watched the movie Passengers because it has Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in it. I figured, what could go wrong?  Well, plenty. I guess this is where I should say, "spoiler alert." Most of the movie you feel incredibly sorry for Chris' character, then Jennifer's, then both! It's a love story set in space. Their spaceship is bound for a distant planet and they are in hibernation for 120 years. Tragically, Chris wakes up and finds he has 90 more years to go; his pod had a failure and he is doomed to spend the rest of his life on this ship alone. After a year of this, and after becoming suicidal, he falls in love with a sleeping passenger, Jennifer's character. He wakes her up, which is the most horrible thing a person could do, really. He lets her believe her pod failed, of course, until an android bartender spills the beans. When she realizes he doomed her to living and dying on this ship, she kicks his ass. Rightly so. It was a selfish act, utterl...