Yet I Live

“Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”

 ― Martha Gellhorn, Travels With Myself and Another 

moluscators

If not for the Lord, my life is lost, my soul buried beneath issues and vanities. In my longing for a father, I find it in Him. He teaches me wisdom and picks me up when I’ve once again skinned my spiritual knees. When I make mistakes, and they’re many, when I choose the wrong road, and that’s often, He forgives, directs, and provides for me. This is my testimony that thus far, I shouldn’t have made it alive, much less profitably, and still I’m here. My way is full of enemies who hate for no reason, other than color, or jealousy, or because I refuse to die. I’ve seen them tapping their foot, looking at their watches wondering, “When will he fade out?” For that I’ll give thanks again to my Daddy, my heavenly father, who puts light back into the burnt out shell of me. The devils know me as I walk past, whispering “Thissss issss he who left us and yet lives!” Yes, I live, at times only a breath away from crossing over to the evil camps of malignant foreboding that shudder with anger at my betrayal. My body belongs to that camp but with the help of my Father, I’m able to choose whether or not I stay there. That choice is my everlasting evidence that God is real, for where He to be my fantasy, surely you’d read of the savagery of my soul and the punishment of madness that overcame my mind. Thank you Father for the self control you give me and teach me to use. Those choices are hard, and as with all discipline, painful. I press on, with no turning back, to see what things will be revealed in the blasted lands of my life.

A Question of Manhood

 “That paper–it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in.” ― Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie 

punemployment

General malaise. That’s what the doctor said. The medical term didn’t mean a thing to me, what was important was the why?  What’s lost is a purpose, duty, and usefulness. When I lost my abilities and thereby my job, I lost more than money. My reputation took a hit, with my ego falling hard soon after, then, a darkness, like a twilight that makes it hard to see unless I look away from the object. Men commit suicide in these moments. Subtle injuries to self esteem, normally peeling away like water off the leaves, cut deeper and stay longer. My image was built and maintained by the acquisition of wealth. When money leaves, my foundation rocks and shakes leaving me unbalanced and with the lingering question, “What now?”, “What will I do?”, “What else am I good at?” People make career changes all the time, but what is my calling, mylife’s ambition? What will I be satisfied with? There are no easy answers, just a raw pain, like a burn on my soul, evidenced by the blush of shame on my cheeks as I struggle to answer the question that makes a man a man, “What do you do for a living?”