This blog has existed in one form or another for maybe 20+ years. It has been a marvelous tool for sharing. What do I share? My sorrows, mostly. I often regret living, though I love my Yahuah. He loves me, and never once told me that my path would be easy. Indeed, it has been difficult from the beginning of my very life. My childhood was hard. I was beaten, slapped, whipped with a steel-tipped belt, with clothes hangars, sticks, a bull whip, extension cords.
But faithful, I was. Contemplative. Thoughtful. I read newspapers when I was just a boy. When I was 10 years old I followed closely the Vietnam war. I read of a man named Buford T Puser on my mother’s sofa one day when I was 15 years old, wondering why a fellow who died far away would be on the front page of a small town local newspaper. A few years later, I saw the movie.
I learned in my growing up that fidelity is rare. People seem obsessed with themselves, loving those who will help them in their pursuit of self, and hating anyone who stands in the way of selfish actions. My friends loved me, I suppose, because I could help them get things they wanted. Notoriety, local hero status, “popularity”. Whatever.
I noticed that the more money I made, the more “friends” I had.
But I had some good friends. A few. A few who would fight for me. Defend me. Friends.
Marriage is different. Sometime in the 1970’s, maybe 1979?, I was busy flipping my motorcycle end over end, a triple-gainer that ended with my back broken and me laying flat on that back checking my fingers, toes and teeth by wriggling the toes as I clung tightly to the grass in a spread-eagled position. I checked my teeth by running my tongue over them. I held that grass in order to prevent any spasms from twisting my back and potentially doing nerve damage.
My friend, Lane McCarty (deceased-2019), rolled up on his motorcycle, scared. But there he was and he cared about me.
As my motorcycle had been flipping end over like, as Lane loved to tell it, Lee Majors crash in the old TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man”, I prayed to Yahuah two things: I wanted an education and I wanted a family.
So perhaps you can imagine how I felt yesterday when my ex-wife and I were in counseling together and she was telling the counselor how my sons dislike me and do not want me back in their lives.
I am so sad over this, because before my ex filed for divorce, I had some good boys. But now that I am a out of their lives, they generally get to do what they want to do, as their mother will appease them in order to take pressure of herself. No discipline. The public school told her that they would take custody of one of my boys if she failed to get him to school again this past semester. And his brother was arrested on felony racketeering charges at age 14, only about four months after she divorced me.
Why did she divorce me? I do not know. There is no actual reason. She is simply not stable, but is quite wealthy and has always been given whatever she wanted. She grew up unsupervised and lived a wicked life, turning things around only after alcoholism almost destroyed her around age 30. That is when I met her, and she came after me with gusto, telling me that she wanted to give me my first son on our second date.
And she lied to me.
Within 90 days of marrying her she was abusing me badly. I’ll spare you that. But her abuse never stopped,. and her desire for me never returned. Not in 15 years.
So I’m hung. My sons, whom I adore, tell her that they don’t want me around any more. Of course not. I make them attend school, go to bed, eat, clean their rooms, get off the digital devices, limit the “spending the night”, make them brush their teeth, and attempt to get them to read.
An example – the 12 yr old asked me this week if I would buy him a new X-Box game. We were in my 4Runner directly across from a game store. I replied that if he started doing the chores that he needed to do in order to earn a new game, I would be happy to buy it for him. So I asked “Are you willing to earn it?” And he replied “No.”
Why did he reply “No”?
Because he knows for certain that he can nag his mother into buying it for him with no effort required. So nope, they do not want me around to mess that up.
Its much more than that, obviously. But had my ex not lied to me before we were married, I would not have married her. That is for sure. And my reasoning proved true.
I’m complaining, aren’t I?
Its the pressure. I’m making some changes in my life, some big ones, and all that plus the thing with my kids not wanting me around is frying my brain.
Want to hear a dream I had 15 years ago? I think I’ll share it with you. But I have to go eat first…
Ahhh, back.
Some background – I had met Meredith already when I had the dream, but I had not married her.
In the dream, I was driving my SUV down a residential street in a super green area with a waterfall beside the road. There was a Porsche 911 parked across from the only house on the road that I could see. Suddenly, a torrential downpour started. It was raining like it was the flood again, and my SUV started swirling around and around, with me furiously fighting for control until a voice spoke clearly “let go of the wheel”. I replied “If I let go, I’ll lose control.” Again the voice said “let go”. Well, I didn’t have control anyway, so I let go and the instant I let go, the rain was gone and I could see three little boys walking away from me on the sidewalk in front of the house.
In the door of the house stood Meredith. She looked disheveled, like she had just gotten out of bed. She was speaking to the boys, who I knew were our sons. Again, we were not married at the time I had this dream.
So I watched as these three boys walked down the street to school, wearing backpacks with earbud wires hanging out, needing haircuts and dressed in jeans. Their heights were all as they are now. The youngest, Nathan, who is age five currently, walked in front, blonde hair flowing in the breeze. Lukas and Michael walked behind him, side by side.
And that was the end of the dream.
The boys in the dream precisely match my sons today. And my only takeaway is that at this time in my life, I must let go of trying to control. I have to let go.
Scary for a control freak like me. But I am sure that the dream is of Yahuah and that I am supposed to let go.
What does that mean, exactly?
Some of you write to me and I appreciate your love for Yahuah. Please pray about this and send me your thoughts, OK? I really need some fellowship on this.
Pray about my new teaching assignment, which begins Monday, March 2nd. I do need a lot of prayer, as I am going through that storm in the dream. I need to let go, but I am afraid of what that means. I need to let go. Am commanded to let go. Help me let go.
“I came to hurl fire into the earth, and what will I if it already has been lit?
But I have a baptism to be immersed in, and how am I pressed until it is done! Do you think that I came to give peace in the earth? No, I say to you, But rather division. For from now on five in one house will have been divided, three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her bride, “and the bride against her mother-in-law.” Luke 12:49-53, Mic. 7:6
