To start my day I kiss my honey and roll out of bed. Toast and coffee and the morning news while sitting on the couch get me moving. Libby and I plan on church at eight thirty. We make it in time with no time to spare. It was a good hour with church friends and a good service about the planting of seeds.

After church, a stop by the Pig for some link sausage and some bacon and I’m back home and Libby is off to see her children in Greenville. I ate the sausage and bacon on bread and watch a little bit of TV.

After two days of walking, talking and shopping, the parade, the drive to Morehead City and back, I’m pooped. My head hurts and my eyes are burning, so what do I do? I go back to bed around eleven and sleep till almost four.

Dealing with the death of my brother and contending with my attorney over a new court date has sapped me of most of my mental energy and it has affected me physically.

Last weekend I did something I did not know if I could do or not and that was the most exhausting. It was a whirlwind day of going to church in my old church where I grew up and then down the road to the Christian Church which was across the road from where I grew up. They were having homecoming and had an open invitation for all from the Baptist Church to come have lunch with them.

I saw many people I had not seen in like forty years or less for some others. It took me on a trip on the Way-Back machine. Then at two in the afternoon we gathered for a Memorial Service for my brother Mike. He had become my closest brother over the last several years. Not that I didn’t have some sort of liking to him before that. It’s just that growing up he was six years younger and when you’re sixteen and he’ s ten, you just don’t let the “kid brother” hang with the older crowd. By the later years we’d lost Tim and Danny. That left him and me and the youngest brother Jamie “Tad”. Tad lives in Hawaii. I never really had anything in relation to him. He was just learning to walk when I left for the Army. Nineteen years separates the getting to know someone simply because of that much age difference. Now it’s the Alpha and the Omega. Him and me. That’s all that’s left of a family of seven. Mom and dad have been gone for a good while.

I’m not going to bemoan the obvious other than I’m the oldest of the family that’s left and I don’t plan on going anywhere for quite some time yet. I feel that God changed my life to what it is now for reason of keeping me alive. I was dying in the previous life I had. Libby came along and brought me back around. I love my sons, but I could not live with my wife any longer. That I won’t go into. Enough said.

Libby has given me a very positive outlook on life and unlike some couples on their second relationship I feel like I cannot continue to live without her. She says the same about me. I feel as though I knew her in a previous life and we’d just picked up where we left off. We sing the same songs at the same time as though on queue without thought. We think the same things that can only be described and that of an extraordinary happening, like I’m no regular patron of Sonic Drive-in, yet the other day I was thinking a foot long coney and some tates tots would be good. When I said this to Libby she turned to me with a look and said, “I was thinking the same thing. We’d never both been to the Sonic together in over three years of being together. We’d never even mentioned in that time of going there.

I sit here waiting for her to return from Greenville, hoping she had a good day with her son and daughter. I’m sure her son is still a bit skeptical of me, but rest assured I think he’s a hard working, well disciplined young man who knows responsibility. He has the same growing pains of learning life, but he handles it pretty good.

Lib’s daughter, Beverly, has had her ups and downs, but she has a full-time job and supports herself and her son of twelve years old. I hope her only the best as I do her son. I would not interfere with Lib and her children. They are important to her as any mom would be. I just wish I had a relationship with my sons, but I don’t see that happening until I’m so sick I can’t enjoy their company or I die. They took their mom’s side in the divorce and refuse to believe I have done what I did to preserve myself.

I was slowly losing my faculties with anxiety attacks and depression. I made decisions that weren’t the best. I had burned out from serving in a church that eventually found its way to me with the axe. I’d finally become the husk that I’d seen many others come to be. It was hardly a month after my separation that the pastor who’d I’d served for decades died of a heart attack at his desk. I cannot say he was anything but a great teacher of the Word, but he was terrible with people. I often wondered why many good preachers who sought him out would disappear without so much as a wisp. I knew, but didn’t express why. They’d found him to be a bore and full of self-loathing. I credit him this because of him being an only child. I don’t believe he ever developed social skills. Anyone reading this that knew him may not want to say so, but I can rest assured they know of what I speak.

My wife of those days was cast to the wind when his daughter graduated from college. Nepotism comes to mind. After so many years of dedication to the church she felt abandoned and it led her on a downward spiral into depression. They had a “Julie” Sunday and everyone told her how important she was, yet all of that rang like a spoon clanging in an empty can. I was embarrassed not only for her, but myself as well. I knew from that my days were numbered in this church.

I can’t say I’m without blame in things. I misjudged a situation and got myself in too deep and had to repent, yet I had been stung with remorse over it. I never recovered fully. I had been marked. I also have had other issues and all of it has taken a course to recovery of which I have come to know makes for a hard life, yet now I’ve made my peace with God over it all. I just wish my family would realize they can’t live with unforgiveness in their hearts. It will only lead them to an early grave. I want a relationship with my sons, yet I’m not going force myself upon them. They have to want to see me.

So here it is. It’s Sunday evening 20131111 and I’ve had a much deserved day today. God has blessed me and I’ve talked to Libby and she’s had a good day with her children and is on her way home. I’m rested and in my right mind. My heart is clear and I hold not one single thing against anyone. I have my girl on the way home and the other three, Paige, Sarah and Fiesta lying on the couch with me asleep.

I hope all who read this know one thing. No matter how dark it gets, daylight is on the way. Get your sunglasses out.