my careless contagion

First, thank you to the Lord for everything that happened this year. God uses everything, even the worst. Learned things. Feel different. More stable. And doing well, even feel mostly healed. Didn't do anything special except waited on God. I have zero ill will for anyone, including myself. Just thankful for blessings and enjoying life (I work outside, so sometimes the weather makes it hard, but a hot bath at the end of the day makes up for it). Looking forward. Making plans, God willing. Staying out of trouble. I know, boring. For anyone who prayed for me, thank you. If you didn’t, well, at least you didn’t pray against me. 😊  Now, the question of the unsent letters to the woman’s ex and kids. I did due diligence to pray, fast, and listen to the Lord.  Based on the information I have, looking at it carefully and logically, the conclusion was I was not to blame for the separation or divorce of the woman I was involved with. She made those decisions independently and for ...

Leave it to me to have further thoughts and no one with whom to share. Until I have a reliable confidante, I will dump here.  Been listening to podcasts and sermons lately on my walks and during work. Interesting one from Derek Prince about the fear of the Lord . He stated that what we fear is our god. It could be anything. I looked inside and realized my personality is designed to protect my wounds, and being wounded was the thing I feared the most, as evidenced by what happened two months ago. I was like Job with the thing he greatly feared.  So much energy was directed at protecting myself I often neglected to follow through with normal Christian behavior, loving those around me, giving of myself, dying to self, etc. Given this revelation, it is sinful to act or react based on the needs of my wound or trauma. That means my recent reaction was sinful. It was an ugly realization, and I prayed God would change my personality if necessary. I also apologize to the one I hurt. I ...

This post isn't about my late, nonexistent relationship with Cindy — the girl I'm in love with — though that is definitely a relationship that existed only in my head. No, this is about the strange phenomenon I call the "phantom relationship," when you do things like you were in a relationship. But you're not in a relationship anymore.  To what can I liken this phenomenon? Let's see. Back in October last year, I had laser eye surgery, which allows me to forego the use of corrective lenses. So, when I applied for a new driver's license this year, I simply had to take a little eye test (which I nervously plodded through), and I got my corrective eyewear designation changed to needing no corrective lenses. That's pretty amazing to a guy who has worn glasses or contacts since he was 12 years old.  The habits ingrained in me from nearly 30 years of using glasses or contacts are hard to break. After my surgery, when I would go to bed, it felt strange ...

For my first 20 years, I thought I'd never be in a relationship and certainly never thought I'd have sex ... mainly because I thought I'd never be in a relationship. And I wasn't the kind of guy who could have casual sex.  Then I enjoyed sex (with all its ups and downs) in spite of myself and the many marital troubles I had for many years. I thought things would continue that way. Naturally, after my separation, the sex ceased. This seemed like new territory for me, but it was just a return to my pre-relationship life. I fought the idea that I've come to accept now: that I will never have sex again. Here's why. I can't, or won't, have sex with a woman I'm not in love with. There's only one woman I love enough to have sex with. She's not in my life. It's a simple equation. No girl = no sex.  Then there's the fact that I'm pretty sure everything stopped working down there. That's a new thing, too. Of course, I have ...

It's safe to say I'm driven. I'm not driven in an ordinary way. I haven't made anything out of myself in my 41 years. It's more like a personal drive, beating myself at something, having my way in some insipid way. It's important for a moment, but there's no real reason for it.  It's a pointless way of being driven. There's no payoff. It's not good for me. I push myself often to the point of fatigue and beyond. I've gone many years with little sleep, and to what end? Do I live in a comfortable house? Do I have a sizeable pension waiting for me? A home in the suburbs? I have nothing.  I have not failed to notice the never-ending stream of people in various media who are also driven. Many of them have horrible backgrounds, stories of neglect, abuse, hardscrabble upbringings, etc. At some point, and perhaps erroneously, I connected the dots. I believe abuse can often lead to being driven.  I watched the Netflix documentary of Quincy Jo...

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...

What you did to her I don't know you. I don't know what you did to her. I just know what she used to be like. You took a virtuous young woman and took and took and took. She would have kept giving, even though you took all. She told me she would have endured any amount of "pain and humiliation" to keep you, to keep you happy, to keep you coming home to her.  I don't know what you did to her, but I see the end result of it, how she's done with life, done with men, just ... done. She'll never trust again the way she trusted you, and never will she lay herself bare and vulnerable in a man's arms again. Whatever you did to her, I don't know, but she'll never be the same. She's always going to have that awareness in the back of her head that she's been done wrong, that she's going to find out any day just how wrong she's been done. You made her a detective when you should have been making her smile. You made her question ever...

Their names are A and B. A is a girl, 13; B is a boy, 8. It's been almost a year and a half since their parents separated. I recall A's mom telling me she overheard her daughter playing and saying something about being from a broken home. This was before the separation. Those words are haunting, and they also foreshadowed the coming sadness.  I don't know the full effect on these children of the separation and divorce of their parents. Surely there had to be signs along the way, clues that they can make sense of now. It's hard for me to try to extrapolate how they're feeling from what little I know about them. What I do know: it's not my world they live in, and I have no right to feel anything toward them. But I feel dead inside when I think of what they've had to go through and what they continue to go through.  There aren't words for what I want to say to them, but I'll try. I know they'll never read this. They'll never know the thous...