Yesterday was hard as I struggled all day with my blood sugar, as it kept dropping well below the safety mark, and our daughter was leaving to make drive back to Lubbock.  Tesia was stressed not only from leaving her folks but her cat decided that it was the day to fine that perfect hiding spot to sleep soundly.  We searched the entire house four times, each, probing into the dark corners of our home to no avail.  When Gizzy sleeps, she sleeps soundly and is dead to the world.  Gizzy on cue at the last possible moment for Tesia to leave appeared as if from thin air with her broken little cheerful meow.  Tina and I got Tesia off with tears in our eyes and returned to our new rhyme of life.  We are working at closing that gap.  We laid in bed last night caressing each other and soothing our worries for our daughter as she traveled through a big storm here in Texas.    Safely at her apartment she texted us a simple word, "Homesy".    With our child safe in her new home, we slept in each other's arms till the morning.

With new gust and vigor we got up and did our walk together and swim.  I got my full hour in this morning as we will be cleaning the pool and adding chemicals that would keep me from my swimming for 24 hours.  I am worried, a little, over the fact I will not be able to swim for 24 hours.  What pushed me this morning to swim that extra 30 minutes was stepping on the scale before my walk and it read 310.4. (Yes! I can now see the scale without much effort and my toes look wonderful too!)  I stepped on it twice more just to be sure and it read 312.6.  My official weigh in is 312, after walk and swim.  As Tina and I walked talked she told me she was very happy to see my face light up when I read that 310.4 and reminded me that I will be there in just a few days at the rate I am going.  Its good to have someone while walking, I told her of a dream I had been having for the past 3 nights.

That dream began on a Sunday morning in late fall a few years from now, I was a minister (I know, some of you just snorted your coffee.  Sorry.)  We were in Maine, living in a small cottage next to my father's larger house, with an big beautiful ocean in our backyard.  Our garden was between the homes and I was there before service picking the last of the tomatoes.  I filled several baskets and took them to church where I gave a sermon on love and children using my garden's harvest as the example.  I know the sermon I gave and wont go into detail here.  I will write it out for myself as I have been doing with other thoughts.  I share those extra thoughts with my wife and others who are interested.  I am not here to preach or sway anyone to my God.  This is for me, is a way to say the words, keep them, I need to say and get them out into the world.  If no one listens, that's OK because I am writing these words so I know where I was along this journey and can see what a fool I may have been and what I was thinking along the way.  To remind me of the journey and what I learned on its path and to keep me from falling into such misery again.

I am a good man and try to do good things but, I will freely admit I am not a man with God and haven't been since I was a very young man.  I turned my back on God for events that sadden my heart greatly and have felt he was punishing me for a great sin I had committed so long ago.  I look back now and see he didn't leave me but I left him.  He blessed me, even in my first marriage we had good times but it was doomed from the start and I knew that in my heart.  God then blessed me with such greatness that I forgot that torment I put myself through.  God brought Tina and Tesia into my life, to fill it with such joys I had never known.  I look back and want to get my heart right with God and return to those joys.  I know I have to get my heart right with him and through his strength in me I can and will defeat my own demons in my head that have held me back for decades.

Christmas of '13