Harsh Times

 So, we have the global pandemic.  Most people...not all, some are thriving, but a lot of us for sure are in some sort of plague related hurt, be it economic, social, loss of loved ones, whatever.  It is here.

For me the harsh times started long before Covid.  And I got a wheel barrel of shit dumped on me yesterday. So much so my heart literally hurt and I thought I might be having a heart attack.

But I've been here before.  I can't say I'm over joyed to go through this cycle of shit again.  But, I'm 50. There is some solace that I literally won't be around forever so there just isn't enough time to put me through a ten year ringer too many more times.

Anyway, I'm losing my wife.  I will probably lose my son to a degree.  I've lost most of my friends.  My financial and living situation is bleak...and that is the optimistic view.

I know God is there.  I know there is some sort of plan for this.  Maybe my wife will get saved out of the process, but I can't bet on that.  Maybe I need to lose everything so that whatever God has for me has room. But these painful cycles, man I wish I could avoid them.  They take an incredible tole on my psyche when they hit.  They are hard.  But, life is hard, as I'm sure many of you know.  And I've been blessed above and beyond by leaps and bounds more than I deserve.  And, even though my marriage was never that great, I got to enjoy being with my wife when we were on the hills and not the valleys.  Now we go our separate ways.  It breaks my heart.  But she isn't the villain here.  I am perhaps in many ways.  She in some.  Just another tragedy in a sea of tragedies in this fallen world.  More tears in the rain.

I'll muddle through until it is my time to stop.  My attitude is very, very negative right now.  Just being near my wife and son make me cry.  I can't say I really want to be in this world.  I don't see much here for me.  I'm not suicidal just anticipating for when I can lay all these things down.  I have never been more isolated and alone and depressed than I am now.  

Anyway, in the past when things have sucked hard, I turned to a few things for comfort.  God of course, and trust me, He has (or I believe He has) supernaturally calmed me down at times...when my emotion boils and a bleakness falls on me that is wide and deep out of nowhere I get this calm feeling.  In some ways it almost makes me mad because if it wasn't there I probably wouldn't be here either.  

The other things I turn to is old movies and music.  I watched the Terminator on youtube the day before the latest shit dump on my head.  And the theme song is sticking with me for some reason.   So I'm adopting the Terminator theme song as my theme song for the 2020's.  Not that I want to be a killing machine or anything, I absolutely do not.  But I want to be less emotional.  More logic driven.  The Terminator has his purpose...his focus. Other stuff is irrelevant.  So as my old life fades...and it faded hard.  I lost my pets this year, which were valuable members of my family that connected me to the old life that my wife and I tried to lead...the white picket fence life that we failed at.  I also lost my identity in my job. I lost my savings.  My health is shite.  I lost friends.  The old is burned away in the metaphoric nuclear fire.  And out of it arises a creature of purpose, focus, that never gives up and can only be defeated by destruction in carrying out it's purpose.  2020s is retasking, reprogramming, and hardening the brain.  I await for my God for new orders and launch out of the automated factory into the world.  My personal desires and wants engineered out of me.  The human remains on the outside, but the inside is steal determination.  Or I'll just flounder as a fat piece of shit divorced middle aged man...

Anyway, to the 2020s, turning around and giving a big middle finger to the past decade.  Grateful for it's joys, but hating the fuck out of in total.  There are people who I wish I never stumbled across.  Paths I chose poorly.  They lead to an apocalypse...but now the machine arises from the ashes.  My years past many of them squandered...may I now begin to serve with love, grace, a sound mind, and the focus of a Terminator to whatever calling my God has for me these last days...and maybe, there is just a small chance, out of the train wreck of my life, that some good will come of it, and My God might, just might, on that fateful day, whisper to me, despite my horrendous failures, "Well done my good and faithful servant."  Then I can rest for eternity in the rest that has often eluded me in this life. That is my desire and my prayer.  Amen.