my careless contagion

Scottsbluff, Neb., is in a neat area of Western Nebraska. You have the cool rock formations, of course, but you also have Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area, which I've wanted to visit for years. You can just imagine the pioneers traveling through here to greater destinations out west, many perishing along the way. The place is rich in history, but I wonder how many stop and check it out as they fly by in their cars to some other place. I was in Scottsbluff Friday, March 12, but not to see the sights. And it was a beautiful and warm day in spite of the forecast for up to 40 inches of snow that weekend. But I wasn't just enjoying the weather.  I was there to get a new vehicle. (Yes, I've gone through a lot of vehicles lately, but my life is unstable in many ways.) There is a reason why my last four vehicles I decided to sell myself. ( Selling my vehicle this time seemed like a hassle I didn't need, so I went the quick route and did a KBB instant cash sale.)  Dealing wit...

I wrote this October 16 but didn't post it. There is something bothering me about it, but I can't put my finger on it. I feel God is working on my heart, and maybe I need to be quiet for a while. I produced a lot of "talking" here but not a whole lot of listening. Here it is, nonetheless. If anyone is still reading, thank you. You endured many of my storms and for really no reason at all. You must have found something worth reading. I can't take credit for that, however, because I pray about what I write. Sometimes our prayers seemingly go out into the ether and never return, so I may never know who read something here that was helpful. Maybe you were simply captured by the drama of it all. But it is time for something new. With the opening of one door, we often close another. This is something I prayed about, so we'll see what the answer is, but it looks like I'm ready to step away from blogger (which is Google). I intend to finish for good the most endur...

Another milestone for this blog! I've reached 400 posts in a little over two years. That equals a post every 2-3 days. That's a lot of writing, which equals a lot of therapy. Thank you for following along! I'm tired of talking about myself. I'm tired in general. Perhaps the bulk of the work is done. Through this reflective writing therapy, considerable insight was gained. Putting my thoughts and feelings here was valuable.  When this blog began, I had no idea where it would take me. I wrote because I didn't have anyone with whom to share my thoughts and feelings. I needed an outlet at a very ugly time in my life. My divorce was the catalyst for this blog, though many things have been discussed since then. I've gone through just about every emotion and have somehow survived, though I am changed. I am a decidedly different human being than when I entered the portal of pain called divorce. As for the dissolution of my marriage, perhaps the best way to sum ...

I'm going to try something a little different with my blog. Okay, maybe it isn't that different. I'm going to talk about some of my memories. They won't look like much at first, but pieced together over time, they will take shape sort of like a mosaic.  The above photo was taken the day after I caught my first fish. My dad got me up early (see my uncombed haystack of hair?) and took this photo along with one of me on my red bike (not pictured in the background; that was my oldest brother's). The picture was taken in the driveway of our Hot Springs home on the hill, so I was between seven and ten years old. I recall being very tired. Mornings, apparently, were not my thing.  My mom cooked the fish after I begged her. It really should have been thrown back, which my dad suggested, but I also begged him to let me keep it, it being my first fish. I believe it is a trout. The Black Hills waterways are stocked with trout, and this fish was caught at Sylvan Lake.  ...

Sunday, Nov. 17, started out well enough. I planned to fast and pray, and that's what I did. The very things I prayed about God answered through His typical overlay of confirmations quickly, so I ended my fast earlier than planned. God likes to use repetition to get our attention sometimes. Whatever works, really. It's possible I could be injecting meaning of my own into Bible verses that seem to stand out to me, but after a while, they pile up and it's hard to ignore. The day ended with quite a  load of information for me to process. I spent a restless night parsing all that information. It feels like I slept only a couple of hours, even though I was exhausted.  The bulk of the information was delivered through text from Cindy about the direction she's headed. While it may not be a surprise to anyone here, she shared that she started dating her ex again a couple of months ago and has gone to counseling with him. I suspected that was happening and even had a drea...

  I'm going to start by apologizing. This post is going to be pretty scattershot. I know this because my thoughts are scattershot right now. I can barely keep things in their proper boxes, much less make sense of them. So, sorry.  A while ago I mentioned three things I wrote on a Post-It note — things I pray about daily that bother me. I won't name them all, but I do want to mention one. Let's just say there are only two things on that Post-It now.  I prayed before this week began that God would allow something very positive to happen in my life this week. And it did. Not only that, but I got to cross one of those dreadful things off my prayer list. My old apartment has been rented, so I no longer have to pay rent for two places. I wondered why God would give me the go-ahead to move into a new place and then have that hang over my head. As it was, I only paid about $150 to cover last month because my landlord used my security deposit to cover the rest. It's h...

  December 16, 2016, was the day she came back into my life. In the following two years, I've seen a whirlwind of changes. I was so happy she was back in my life. As of this writing, she is not in my life anymore. Of all the changes I've seen in the last two years, this is the saddest. I thought once we started talking she would never be out of my life. It's okay, though. My life has taught me to live with the lack of things. And it was too good to be true anyway.   There was a change that took place in me on a recent Sunday. I sat alone in my apartment and something broke in me. It was a giving up. It was a letting go. Whatever you want to call it. I realized something that I should have seen before but didn't.  Stepping back and looking at the carnage from two divorces is sobering. If I could have done anything to help any of those in pain, I would have. What I didn't see was that I was perhaps the one most affected, the most destroyed, the most hurt by t...

Change is inevitable. It's what I need at this moment, even though I've been through piles of it in the last few years. In the last five years, I've changed jobs, moved four times, had a child, gotten a divorce, and am staring at my hands wondering if they're even capable of whatever the next step entails. Change can come from two sources — from someone outside of yourself or from the inside (you). I've realized that the change I need probably won't come from either source, which leaves me with a few possible scenarios. One of the easiest things I can do is to continue on and consider this as good as it gets. I would have to accept everything about myself that needs to change and leave it at that. The next solution would be difficult for me because of my love affair with the truth. I would have to change my state of mind and consider myself free of defects. I wouldn't need change if I was flawless, after all. The last solution is that ...

*Generator, from the album of the same name (released in 1992) by Bad Religion, is one of my favorite Bad Religion songs. Of course, if you were to ask me what my favorite Bad Religion song was when I was in high school, I would have said, "Whichever one I'm listening to right now." Honest, sure, but a pointless answer.  If I'm going to talk about the most influential band in my life, then I have to find a starting point.  I was in an accident during my junior year of high school. While coming back from pheasant hunting with my brother, I slid off an icy road after applying my brakes. My brother Jon wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I was. My little Honda turned sideways and went off the road on the opposite side. If there had been an oncoming car, we would have been toast. Fortunately, we simply rolled onto our top in a ditch. I was suspended upside-down in my seat, flailing about (like a bat, Jon said) trying to "eject" myself. Once I found my se...