my careless contagion

Let's start with a joke! Was it funny? I guess that depends on your sense of humor. Many will laugh because the punchline is unexpected. Unexpected things make us laugh for some reason. It made me laugh, and perhaps because the girl appears Slavic, and they are known for having a rather severe take on reality (no BS). So, here I am in a tank top, dude .  Two things have been tangled in my thoughts for some time. The first is what I feel God answered about the girl and my missed opportunity. I feel He told me to move to where she lives last summer, but I did not. I was disobedient because I was scared of a non-existent pandemic. I didn't know how that would play out, but all things are in God's hands. I believe if I had been obedient, it is possible we would have eventually been together and He would have blessed us. Maybe I'm just hanging onto my delusion, but that's what I feel in my spirit. (She probably disagrees, but all I know is what I feel God said.) It doesn...

Perhaps I've been unclear. In all these lines, have I obscured the truth? Let me cut to the chase and clarify. This is my last post about this until time expires. If this is maddening to me, then I'm sure it's at least confusing and annoying for everyone else. Her name is Cindy. She came into my life unexpectedly. Love blossomed unexpectedly. I didn't expect her to stay, which is the only thing I saw coming (or, going, as the case may be).  I never wanted her to get divorced. There, I said it. I did not foresee her getting a divorce, nor did I want that for her. But, why, you ask; if you're in love with a woman, wouldn't you want to be with her? I can be in love with her and not be with her. If a man truly loves a woman, he wants her to be happy, and divorce is the opposite of happiness. I didn't want to see her go through that, nor did I want to see her children go through that, and even her ex, even though my humble opinion is he doesn't deserv...

Nebraska, you're not for everyone. But on this road trip, you were home to a great and unexpected blessing. Yes, I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to uncover what went wrong in my life. Not only that, but my expectations for this trip turned out to be inferior to how it actually unraveled.  It's clear, as I sit down to write this — the final post of my Nebraska retrospective — God chose to bless me on this trip. But you know what? It wouldn't have happened had I not said that prayer and put it in His hands. While the outcome may have looked obvious to anyone else, to me it did not look obvious. All I knew is I did not want to run afoul of God's plan or timing. That last sentence contains what I have learned in the last 20-plus years since I lived in Nebraska. Things are better left in God's hands than my own.  What went wrong all those years ago? I pushed God out of my life, leaving me to make dreadful decisions which took me far from His care....

No, Nebraska is not for everyone. It's widely derided for being "flyover country," for being flat (it's the 20th flattest state, not even close to being the flattest — Florida), for being "cow country," "corn country," and for having a proud college football heritage but failing to live up to that heritage for, oh, about 20 years. But, hey, I hear they have a proper football coach again. And they've always had some of the finest mollisols on the planet. Nebraska, a heckuva place. I had never seen a blizzard before moving to Nebraska at the age of 10. I had never had a snow day. I got both of those within days of moving there in 1987. I can still recall the wonder of driving around town after the blizzard with the snow piled high in the middle of the streets. We couldn't see cars on the other side of the road! Yeah, Nebraska is not for everyone. Nine years of my life were spent here. These were years filled with many changes, now that...