Livin' Small

When I was in my mid fifties I sat down to writing my life’s story. I likened it to the introduction to the life of Beowulf. In the end, all a man has is his story. His story will last forever as long as it perpetuates itself in others. At that time I wrote feverishly for days and weeks coming up with well over one hundred pages and then suddenly stopped where I was about twenty-seven or so years old in my life and laid it down to not write any more. It’s all published in another blog I called “Musings of an Old Man”. I hid it from public view and kept it for what appears to be this time in my life when I feel to pick it back up and hopefully finish it.

The difference between then and now is that before it was expressing who I was from my standpoint. Now, as I pick it back up I want to continue it with the focal point being what God has done to bring me almost twenty years later. These almost twenty years have been down into the depths of darkness. At the end of the first writing I went into depression. I suffered panic or anxiety attacks. The reason for this was mostly from my own undoing. I left God behind because I lost sight of His goal for me in life. It was a time I came to know what darkness felt like. I don’t wish it on anyone. 

I did a lot of things from that fall that made it almost impossible to get up. I can see from this vantage point now how people lose out in life and never regain a footing to live a viable life. I can see the utter feeling of loss and being destitute. I feel as though God gave me over to the evil one to process me in the most formidable way. I did things that I dare not revisit. I wrote dark poetry. The angst of my heart proved me to be the lowest of life forms. I did things no Christian would or should do.

That writing was accessible via my blog online. It was a key to open a door to a new life. When I was married thirty-seven years I walked away from my marriage. At this same time I met the woman that is now my wife of almost nine years. She met me through reading that blog. She had emailed me telling me she never knew me, but she had been best friends with my brother in high school where I had graduated from the year before she moved there. We started writing each other and eventually met. She ended her thirty-two year marriage. I must say this. I had not been happily married nor according to her , she had not been either. We spent many nights, weekends and months just talking about who we were and doing things together. We were instant in love. She was fifty-two and I was fifty-eight. What we had is not the norm. We have been inseparable for fifteen years now and as I said married almost nine of those years. That love between us may have initiated in lust, but it became a firm foundation of respect and caring for one another that doesn’t happen when two older people meet under our circumstances. Up until we married most people would get wide-eyed to know we weren’t married. Most thought we’d been married for years.

I’ve come to realize that God’s plan can come in any form He choses. They can come even through our darkest days. His plan will form itself even in our indiscretions. It lends to the Biblical saying “if I make my bed in Hell, He is there” as being a reality. My wife and I had no intention in the beginning of our relationship of ever going to church, yet that is where we found ourselves. We have grown together even more and our commitment to God became a reality in us as well. We came through three churches to which our third found us becoming ordained ministers. I had recommitted my life to God and made good on my ministry schooling from decades past. My wife went through the requirements to be ordained. I went a further step by going to a university that accredited me as a Chaplain. I was also blessed to attend an accreditation class for suicide awareness and prevention. There is no bragging to be done except to God. He had proven that once and for all He is preeminent in our lives and will do as He desires to see that we will be fruitful in His Kingdom. 

I am slowing down now committing myself to the children I take to and from school and I’m the Visitation Chaplain for our church. My wife leads the Seasoned Adults Living Triumphantly (SALT) group (50+). You cannot get away from God. He is committed to what He desires and will see it through no matter how hard we try to destroy it. We are living proof.

So. The “Musings of an Old Man” has been retitled “Walking From Small to Glory”. Small is the community where I grew up and Glory is where I’m heading. I never realized the impact that early writing would have on my life. I’ve started editting those writings and will pick up where I left off and hopefully finish it before I do go to Glory. That is a place, you know.