Still here

... just busy with work, family and friends.

Wait: read that again... especially the last part.

"Family and friends".

Something new for me.

Part of finding pasture, I guess.

For most of my life, two things always either made me scoff, or at least feel puzzled:

- if their house was threatened, people would grab their photo albums; and
- people would say, "I want to be with my family."

Neither of those ever made any sense to me.

Oh, I have plenty of photo albums ... don't get me wrong ... but none from my 20-year marriage. It never occurred to me.

Even while I was in it, I didn't want to remember. In fact, the only way I could remain was to put it out of my mind. Daily, hourly, by the year.

And family ... for so many years, that meant "purgatory." The emotional torture might end someday, but, in the meantime ...

God has given me a new life. I'm starting to cherish photographs. And family - what's left of mine, and the burgeoning one I shall eventually join - is precious to me.

I'm blessed with health and the means to keep clean and sleep in private, but for a long time I was no less wandering and confused than any one sees on the streets, tugging along their cart of worldly possessions. My hunger, desolation and notions were just as keen, if of a different kind.

Who's to say that God cannot rescue anyone who will allow Him access to their heart, mind and soul?

And who's to say that God isn't working on the most confused person you know?

Be God to them, to the degree you can and still be safe. Be consistently loving, cheerful, and kind. And pray. He is there, in the darkest, most bewildering life. He never forgets His own. He never lets them go, so long as they recognize Him in any form.