What makes me feel this way? I’m sure I’m not the only person who experiences it. Imminent change at hand. Is it something that I’m setting myself for or is it a premonition of something impending that I have no control over?

Getting older has wonderful thoughts of life. The eventual consideration of a short span left over that of when I was a young man could be an ingredient of this feeling. I don’t know for sure.

I’m sure of one thing. I spent several decades trying to be someone I was always feeling like I wasn’t. I concluded in my fifties I was living a fraudulent life. Not to say that what I learned or gained in experience was the same thing, but the conclusion came when I realized I thought I was living my calling in life and found I was an instrument to further someone else’s goals. It actually came down to two people. My ex-wife tried to change me over the years and all it did was cause me to seek avenues that became destructive to me. The relationship wasn’t fulfilling. There was no love in it. Many times I would rehash it and I always arrived at the same conclusion. We were good at running a household, but we really didn’t love each other. I was always looking for it somewhere else and that ran against my strictest sense of what a moral life was supposed to be. The key word “it” is that I should have been in a reciprocal relationship of unconditional love. The relationship I was in came with a battery of conditions. I was not to touch unless given permission. The bedroom was on her terms, not mine. I was not to speak some things or I would be reprimanded. She tried to get me to dress in a certain fashion. Look, I’m a country boy and always will be. I wore jeans and t-shirts almost all my life. I bought dress shirts, sport coats, dozens of ties with dress shoes and socks to match. They hang neatly in my closet still with little or no wear. I’m sure Libby wouldn’t mind if I put some of it on occasionally, but I’m not required as a condition of love.

My sons I love dearly. They are hard-working dedicated men with wives and children. One huge lacking in them is they selfishly don’t want any more children which will end the line of the Rowe family. It dies with them. Projenitorship, is a player in my mind. I guess I can be somewhat selfish to want my family name to be carried on. Why not? It’s an important thing to many men. I still do have a nephew called Isiah. It’s not spelled the same as the Biblical character, but our family has never been one to follow the order of things. We still have someone who can make the name carry on.

The second person who caused me to lose out on my own calling was a pastor who I believed in. The problem is that it was cultish. He would say things like if we were having a meeting with a speaker unless we were dead or dying we were to be there. His sermon on tithing was simple. Thieves don’t tithe. I have my own version of it, but I don’t have this post for that forum. He had a minor in psychology and he knew how to use it, but I had common sense not to allow myself to get too close, but still I left that church an empty husk of who I should have been. His allowed reign over my family and me was a player in the ending of my marriage as well. It kept my wife and I busily apart so often that even if we were compatible we still would not have “worked it out”.

I don’t think God allows for failure. I am not a failure. I was told once that all our failures are fuel to propel us forward into victory in the end. That is where I am now. All the failures of the past have fueled my being to overcome all obstacles that rear their ugly heads against me.

Maybe I’m just rambling on seeing the reality of being older. I don’t have as many years ahead of me as I have had behind me. One thing is for sure. God allowed me to find a woman who KNOWS unconditional love and practices it. I see in her heart there are times she wishes I could be a little more of this or that, but she bears it in her heart to love me just as I am. Hey, I’d be lying if I said she’s totally perfect, but to my heart she is perfect for me. We are two driven individuals who can clash in our opinions, but our love for each other is more important and we always end the day talking out the issues of the day. That I love about her and our relationship. Love between us is more important than the issues of the day.

Really I don’t know what the future holds, but I feel if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that God had made a way in spite of all my transgressions. That’s because I still believe in that higher power that guides my life. He gave me Libby. That is important to remember.