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....

This is not a joke, though some may laugh. My blog feels like a joke, but it is a place to pause and reflect or, in this case, examine. And maybe find a solution. Betty and Veronica are characters in the Archie comics universe, which I grew up with. Archie is a ginger buffoon, forever caught between competing love interests of two girls. I use the names Betty and Veronica because the girls in question have the same name. I cannot, for the life of me, choose one. It's distressing. I pushed both away at different times, and with the same result. They are unshakable, and I like them both.  Who cares, right? Bro is cooking. Here's why this matters. There is some weird, perverse voodoo with this blog, where, if I write about a woman, she often disappears. So, in order to solve the problem of having two girls interested in me (first time for everything), I will write about them and see who disappears. Call it a test. At this point, I don't care how it is resolved. I go back and f...

The day was hot, hotter than usual. My mind was running so fast for so long, time got away from me. I found myself driving away from everything and straight to your beckoning shores. Lucky to find a space, I parked, pausing to catch my breath, my heart beating fast with anticipation. Quickly, I walked to the sandy shore. Some were sunbathing. Kids laughed in the water. A mother closely watched her toddler in the shallow water. Finding a bare spot on the sand, I emptied my pockets, wrapped everything in my shirt, laying it by my shoes.  I desperately want to see you, feel you, jump into you like the waters spreading before me. Without thinking, I ran into the surf, a childlike smile spreading across my face, until my knees couldn't clear the surface. Diving in, I felt the full embrace of your waters, tasted the salinity of your warm waves, and darted back to the surface where I opened my eyes wide at the big, blue sky. I was in you, and all the way.  Sometimes I ache for you, w...

The movie I Still Believe (2020) is important for a few reasons. It highlights things every Christian goes through if they follow the Lord. You will have loss. You will have questions. You will be broken. If you are following God but haven't experienced those yet, don't let my words deter you. It is worth it, dear, if you let God redeem those moments. And it will make sense someday. I rewatched the movie recently, this time with my son. The first time I watched, I was house-sitting for the woman I wrote about so much on this blog, the one who decided to exit my life last year for good and forever. When I watched it the first time, I had the thought God might allow the same sort of thing to happen to me with the thing I loved the most in this world, just as he did Jeremy Camp, who lost his wife to cancer. To watch the movie again was surreal, as it took me back to that moment. What transpired since that evening roughly two years ago when I relaxed with the family dog in the liv...

You, me, and the sea. I feel you there at the shore, like you are waves lapping at the sand, sometimes quietly, other times more insistent. There is a power in you, drawing me back, making me stay, causing me to sit and stare out over you. Imagining you. Conjuring you. Your colors are emeralds and blues of various hues, and a depth that recedes into the darkest water. I like to meet you in the newness of morning. When I walk up to your edge, your warm waters welcome, then dare me to step in further. I comply until I am in over my head and you are salty on my lips, dripping off my eyelashes and running down my face. Submerged in you, I smile at the sky.  I met you in the year that was my worst, yet you made it worthwhile. There was a golden quality to you, like the sparkle in a child's eyes undimmed by the world. It was like looking at the sun. I had to close my eyes. Life intrudes, but I was drawn back to your shore. The air is different with you. The sky is bigger. The light brigh...

In all my years and in all my thinking about the woman I would someday meet, I never knew she would be as amazing as you. Had I known, I would have abandoned fantasies and dead ends, sought you in every street and every avenue. Had I known you’d have such captivating green eyes, I would have shunned the gaze of so many women. Had I known you’d come to me, I would have waited patiently.  I never knew you’d come from so far away, that you’d have so much love and passion to give. I never knew your kisses would be so tender, your mind so dirty, your body so fit, your mind even fitter.  I never knew you’d be a petite brunette minx who would make me laugh more than anyone else, who would always turn a bad day around. I never knew how quickly you would capture my restless heart and flood my soul with hope. I didn’t know you would appear during the worst year of my life, shining light in my darkest hour.  I never knew I’d fall in love so fast and so hard, when I thought falling i...

You don't have to watch the movie Blade Runner 2049 to know who the character Joi is. In case you don't, Joi is an AI hologram girlfriend of the main character, K. This movie is the sequel to the original Blade Runner (1982) with Harrison Ford, who seems to be spending his golden years reviving franchises he made legendary. The Blade Runner movies' inspiration was Philip K. Dick's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But, what I want to focus on is the planned obsolesce of male-female relationships, which Joi represents. There's even a scene where K's connection with Joi is the only way he can have sex with a real girl. (Joi's hologram overlaps the girl.) That represents a lot: porn, fantasy, conflation, AI, whatever. It's impossible to have a relationship with a real woman without an intermediary.  There's more going on with AI, but I want to look at how it applies to men and women specifically. It's a dumpster fire out there, if you're...

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...