Yes, I know, I’ve been silent and AWOL for a couple of weeks. I’ve been pre-occupied with things of the mind which I hope will be at least partially explained by what follows.

There are two things in my life that are so intertwined with emotions, both joy filled and grief stricken which I am, at times, incapable of separating. I am, by nature a very visual person; a fact which makes one of those two things seem somewhat improbable. Those two things are history, my history, and music; the improbable.

Once I got beyond the basic rudiments of reading in the first grade, and the simplicity of “Dick and Jane” and “See Spot Run,” I became fascinated with history. The fascination was so intense at times that I wished I could have lived in the times of past heroes and heroines. The desire to live in the past became so absorbing that I became known to all as a “daydreamer.” The times I desired to visit and the histories I wanted to be a part of varied from Ancient Egypt, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan and the glory of Rome to the civilizations of central America, the American Revolution and of course, the American west of the 19th century. If desire alone could have created a time machine then I would have been credited with its invention. That, of course, is not a part of my history.

When I was writing down my own history in “Dear Mom and Dad” I relied on the memories of my mind, the memories evoked by the notes buried in Day Timers and letters from the past, as well as thousands of photographs, to piece together a realistic picture of my history. The problem with notes and pictures alone is that they frequently do not generate the critical ingredient in accurate memory of the emotions of the time. It’s akin to watching a silent movie. For me it’s the music of the time which is the yeast that causes the flat bread of my history to rise.

I simply see no use in reviewing my own history without benefit of the sounds of the music that was so prevalent at the time, even though the complete memory created by the music often results in profound sadness and melancholy. But that is not the real problem for me. My problem is an insatiable craving for knowledge of the future; what will my history include next year, next month, next week; even tomorrow?

Intellectually I know that spending so much as a nano-second on what the future holds is a complete waste of the precious time I have left, but try as I might I inevitably find myself consumed with an insatiable desire to know the future. I cannot begin to count the times I have found myself not just pondering what the future holds for me, but obsessing over it at times. In “Dear Mom and Dad” I quoted a saying of unknown origin not once but a couple of times, which is, “Worry is only the interest you pay on trouble before you have it.” One would think that by now I would have that so ingrained in my being that I would be incapable of worry, but that’s not the case.

If my faith were as strong as I like to think it is, that faith would have put an end to worrying for me. The truth of the matter is that my faith in God is totally unshaken. My faith in my understanding of God and his plan for me, however, is quite shaky at times and the past few weeks have been one of those times. My solution has been to review my own history. The way I chose to do that was to complete a project I’d started, but had been reluctant to continue because of the memories I knew would be resurrected in the process . I devoted most of a week to scanning all the pictures of Marilyn that were in 2 huge albums of 400 plus pictures each. As I worked, I listened to her extensive collection of music. The combination of the visual history in the photographs and the music she loved; a sort of living in the past, helped me avoid the debilitating worry over my own future history; namely was there a job in my future history or eviction from my home?

On the wall above my desk is a framed quote from Proverbs. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do and He will show you which path to take.”

When will I ever learn? Worry was indeed the interest I paid on trouble I never had.

There are two things I have in common with Mom which stand out. The first thing bothered me for years, and the second thing only bothers me occasionally, but has frequently been an asset . The first thing was a physical issue. George didn’t look a thing like Dad. Dad was tall and large; not fat at all, just large. George on the other hand was small like Mom and fine featured; not at all suited for the role of star football player or wrestling champion. It was a fact that affected his self-image for years. His/our body was far more suited to me. The second thing I have in common with Mom is far more pervasive.

I’ve considered, off and on for years, that Mom was genetically disposed to certain tendencies which are common among squirrels and pack rats. Mom saved everything. Her home is filled to the brim with artwork and decorations which all have a special memory attached to them. They are either from trips abroad, family members or they represent special occasions in her life. I have definitely inherited that trait … in spades as they say.

I save everything. I still have clothes I had in high school. I have every picture ever taken of me. I have cowboy hats and boots that are over 35 years old. I have 33 1/3 rpm LP records that I bought mail order when I was freshman in college in 1962, and joined the Columbia Record Club. I have books like The Art of Dating which Mom gave me when I was 13.

There is, on one of the book shelves in my family room, a book titled Jorn, by a Danish author of boy’s adventure books, which I’ve had since I was in the third grade. And last but not least … The Ransome Expedition to Loch Ness, written by my brother’s oldest and dearest friend, David Porter. It’s something he did just so he could say he’d written a mystery novel. He dedicated it to Mom and Dad and self published; something rather uncommon in the mid 1970’s.

There are a lot of other books on my book shelves, nearly all of which I have read, and many of them twice. That should give you a better idea of what squirrel I am. I always felt that the habit should give my children a sense of security, in that they were safe from abandonment because of their father’s habit of never throwing anything away.

My bride took thousands of photographs over the years … I still have all those, but the task to organize a portion of my past, which I got a notion to tackle this morning, was indeed an awesome (hate that word but it fits here) task.

In my bedroom is a cabinet which contains more of the things I don’t throw away, like my Day Timers going back 13 years. (The rest, going back to 1971 are in boxes in a closet.) But, today was all business … business cards. In the cabinet with the Day Timers is an orange plastic box about 2 inches deep, 7 inches wide and 15 inches long. It’s been in that cabinet for as long as I’ve had the cabinet, 30 years, give or take a year. The contents of the orange plastic box are cards … business cards. When I originally expropriated that box from Marilyn’s lab I converted it to a sort of card index and originally arranged everything alphabetically, of course.

If I could garner 2 cards from someone I put one under their name and one under the company name. This would have been great if I’d maintained it over the years since, but no, that didn’t happen. What did happen was that I continued collecting cards and after a certain pile accumulated on my desk I would toss the pile on top of that box, always thinking I’d get around to organizing them someday. Today was someday; I started sorting cards around 10:00 AM and finished about 6:00 PM.

As close as I can figure, there are about 2,000 cards. They go back to the late ‘60’s or early ‘70’s. In addition, there were a number of boxes of cards left over from previous employments. Last, but certainly not least, was a collection of George’s business cards dating back to the early ‘70’s; 26 different jobs and business ventures in the span of about 45 years. The amazing fact about all of this is that I can actually remember most of the people, whose names appear on the cards.

Yes, the term’s pack rat and squirrel certainly are applicable. Why am I telling you this? The purpose is to answer the question I’m asked most frequently is: “How do you remember all the details in your memoir?” I don’t remember them … I save them for later; kind of like a squirrel storing nuts for a long winter. They could come in handy someday.

The problem with history is remembering it. Of course, if you remember it you then have to remember it correctly for it to be of any positive value.

There is someone in my family who has a degree in history; in fact there are two people in my family who have degrees in history. They both have a bad habit of editing and embellishing their own histories to a nearly bizarre degree. The effect of this is that when either one of them opens their mouth I can’t help but see a cloud of question marks forming in front of them. There is usually, although not always, an element of truth to what they are saying, and after a lifetime of exposure to extravagant stretches of reality I have learned to discount ninety percent of what either of them say on just about any subject. It’s sad actually, because I think they cheat themselves out of some of life’s
most valuable lessons by failing to accurately remember their own histories, and the lessons therein. They also cheat all those around them, when they fail to relay their experiences accurately.

As a recovering alcoholic I had to learn early in my sobriety the damage I had done to my own life by not remembering my history accurately. While still practicing my disease, which is what some alcoholics call drinking, (and practice is a pretty accurate word because I never did get where I could do it right) I just needed a simple memory test. All I had to do was remember that when I drank one, then two, three … a couple of dozen always followed, accompanied by a lapse of memory about the history lesson just reviewed.

One of the basics to history is that if you don’t remember it, and remember it accurately, you will repeat it. Naturally, we all like to think we are special, don’t we? I did, but a caring sponsor slapped me upside of the head, figuratively, and dissuaded me of that notion quickly. Unique in this world maybe … but special? No! Now I am still an alcoholic, but I’m a recovering alcoholic because someone cared about me enough to make me remember my history accurately. So, how do I apply that to my life today? After all it has been twenty-one years since I took that course.

Today my history reminds me that I should look before I leap. History has shown that my leaping has often led to longing … for things the way they used to be; for do-overs, rewind and re-play. Life just doesn’t work that way. Does that mean that we can know in advance the outcome of every action? Only in math, chemistry and physics; the so-called exact sciences. Sometimes though we are faced with limited choices, with no easy options because of the point in our history, combined with the history of others, at which we have arrived. In world history this situation has come to be known as The Rubicon.

The Rubicon is a river in northern Italy that marked the separation of Italy and Gaul. Roman law decreed that returning generals and their armies had to part company before crossing the Rubicon. If the commanding general did not surrender his command before crossing the river, it was considered an act of treason and war against Rome. Even more important was the fact that there was no forgiveness once the Rubicon had
been crossed; no “Whoops I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” There was no running back across the river and saying, “I’m sorry, my mistake. Can we just forget I did that and go back to things the way they were? Huh, please?” When a general crossed the Rubicon as a general he was … committed.

The nature of the river itself, which was to change course with regularity every time there was a heavy rain, provided no excuse for re-consideration. Just because the river was not now where it was when the general left on his expedition of conquest several years earlier made no difference. The Rubicon was The Rubicon regardless of where it happened to be flowing that year. In 49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and
as he did he uttered the phrase, “alea iacta est” – the die is cast. We all know, or should know, the eventual outcome of that effort; “Et tu Brute?”

Is there anyone in our world; the LGBT … DG world, that has not crossed The Rubicon? Is there anyone in our world who has not had to face the reality of their own history in coming to the decision to wade into the river, knowing what waited on the far side? The act of crossing The Rubicon for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered and dual-gendered is not the tough part. Living or dying with the consequences like Julius Caesar did is the tough part. You cross the river, get a little wet, dry off, grab your sword and shield live with the decision. There is one segment of our community however that can’t pull it off that way.

The true trans-sexual has a crossing that is something akin to crossing where the water is deepest and swiftest. They have to shed their armor and abandon their weapons because trying to cross with those will surely pull them under before they reach the other side. Even if they could get across with weapons and armor intact the weapons would be rusty and the armor definitely wouldn’t fit anymore. Some come out on the other side rejuvenated and ready to take on the imperial city. Some are so exhausted they can go no further. And there are some who ignore the warnings, try to cross with all their armor and weapons and drown before they reach the other side.

Wherever The Rubicon was running when you reached it, however swift it was running when you stepped into it, how muddy the water or how deep, there are others just ahead of you to prove it can be crossed and others behind waiting for you to show them it can be crossed. Just don’t forget … it is The Rubicon. It will be a part of history, yours and the worlds and where it flows today will most likely be different tomorrow.

The process of writing “Dear Mom and Dad” was an experience that I wouldn’t want to have to go through again. Not because it was painful, which it was much of the time. It is something that I would recommend, however, for anyone who is in search of the truth of their life. I learned two things in the process of writing about this unusual life.
The first was when I realized upon completing the initial 750+ page draft that if it was actually published, people who’d been a part of my life would know if I was being honest. That led to the first major edit, which was done with the thought that each page would be a record of the reality of the time, and not a memory revised to ease a conscience.
The second thing I learned was what the effect of writing in the third person had on the way I looked at the life George had led. In every memoir or autobiography I’ve ever read it has been written from the “I did” standpoint. I wrote from my viewpoint, as having been there, watching and waiting as George went through all his successes and failures. In other words it was, in reality a biography which eventually morphed into an autobiography. Thus it really was a memoir and not biographical in nature. I believe that writing from that viewpoint added an element of objectivity that would have been impossible otherwise. That thought makes me think that a companion book should be written about me … by “George.”
It isn’t natural for human beings to see themselves in a flawless mirror. We all want the magic mirror the wicked queen peered into each day and asked, “Who’s the fairest of them all?” Unfortunately the mirrors of our lives tend to magnify our faults and not our beauties. It’s a characteristic that has made millionaires out of countless plastic surgeons. But, those are merely the visible flaws. It’s the hidden flaws, the flaws which are represented in our self-image view of “how” we are not “what” we are.
The process of writing “Dear Mom and Dad” brought that point home to me in clear unmistakable terms. I was forced to take a hard look at the effect wishful thinking had, as opposed to the effect reality thinking would have had on the results of my life. I had to face the fact that many things might have been different if I’d been as aware of the importance of seeing the facets of my life in focus as I do now.
The last sentence of “Dear Mom and Dad” is a quote from an old “Dennis the Menace” cartoon. “Wish I was three again knowing what I know now.” While that is an accurate reflection of many feelings it is also misleading in one respect. I would not be the person I am today if I’d lived any other way. I am the sum total of all the successes as well as all the failures. Yes there are times when I wish Superman would reverse the rotation of the earth once again and turn back the clock in the process, but all in all I’m happy with my life and the only thing I don’t like is absence of our bride.
At any given moment I may waiver in my contentment with the way life has turned out but overall I believe it is progressing exactly the way God intends it to. If there would be any advantage to starting over “knowing what I know now” it would be to let Abba have His way much sooner. But then of course, for all I know this has been … His Way.

If there are tears on your monitor please forgive me. I made the mistake of inserting a certain CD in the player yesterday. It had been sometime since I listened to Evie Karlsson’s “Our ReCollections” CD. It was one of Marilyn’s favorites and in the last months of her life she listened to it over and over. Maybe it was the combination of the music, Evie’s unique sound, pictures of Marilyn on the wall or the combination, but whatever it was, the memories that came together brought a flood of tears.
Music was Marilyn’s abiding passion, along with her photography, but even her camera was a distant second to her collection of music. A testament to her patience was her tolerance for the total inability of her prince to hear the words of a song and hold the meaning close to his heart.
The important things in her life were, in order, her son, her music, her camera and her work. Her prince’s place in that order was a variable. At times he was ahead of music and at other times he could slip as far down the order as last place, but he was never in first position. That was Peter’s place … always.
I struggled for the 22 years of our marriage to hear the words of the songs that were so dear to her heart and yet I never heard them. I can hear a song on the radio and tell you when it came out; the year always, occasionally the season. I can tell you where I was the first time I heard it, because the sounds always evoke a picture in my mind. However ask me the title, the artist’s name or the words beyond the chorus and I draw a blank.
At times the memories that spring to mind can seem completely irrelevant. I never listened to music at all until I was a senior in high school and then it was music chosen by Gayle while we were “getting acquainted” in the front seat of Dad’s Lincoln. That music was the ultimate in romantic; “KLUB Sprinkles Stardust” to strings and brass tunes like Bobby Hackett’s “Night Love”.
Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole and The Beach Boys always remind me of The Lagoon amusement park north at Farmington, Utah. Those memories are all from the very early ‘60’s. The only other thing I remember from that time frame is a visit to Vince’s apartment in Salt Lake City one evening in ’63. Vince was the one who turned me into a Mathis/King Cole fan, but when he put on a recording by his latest musical discovery I thought he’d totally lost it. Bob Dylan? How in the world did my best friend’s taste in music take such a fall?
After that, my mental music library is practically empty, with a few exceptions, until the early ‘70’s. The only music from the late ’60s I remember is “Baja” by the Astronauts from Boulder, Colorado, and all I really remember is the sound of that record. I had to look up the name of that instrumental just now. Little LeRoy VanDyke’s “The Auctioneer” fits in there, probably because the worst hangover of our life began the morning after his performance at Sky High Stampede in Monte Vista, Colorado in July of ’68..
Other songs such as “Knights in White Satin” by Chicago elicit memories of the past and have their place in my memory but only the melody and refrain; never the words. The odd thing about the emotions evoked by musical memories is that they are nearly always happy, pleasant memories. True, there are some melancholy moments, but they are few. That was the nature of my/our musical mentality … until Marilyn’s death.
I sometimes wonder if she had a conversation about me with Abba soon after her arrival in His presence, about what she might have wished for me, now that she was no longer there to steer me along. If He asked her what she wished for my future I suspect that the most important thing for her, was for me to be able to hear the words, and just as important, to feel the words of all those songs she loved, and the ones I cherished.
Why do I suspect that? I suspect that because it wasn’t long after she left us that I realized I was actually hearing the words. It wasn’t a conscious effort. It just happened. So, yesterday when I heard Evie singing, once again, “Live for Jesus” and “Special Delivery”, the river of tears that never seems to run dry, overflowed once again. That is the only music that makes me cry. I think it will be a long time before I listen to her again. Marilyn never liked it when I cried.

You know this isn’t the first time I have taken a look at the list that I maintain about ideas to expound on and thought, “For crying out loud, (one of my grandmother’s favorite exclamations) what in the world was I thinking?” This is no exception, other than it did give me an idea. It may be the same idea but who knows? I certainly don’t. Anyway, sometime back I wrote in my list of ideas, “Alice in Wonderland!” I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but I know what comes to mind now.
It has been a long time since I saw Alice in Wonderland, but it is not one of those movies you easily forget having seen. However, in my case remembering that I’ve seen something and remembering exactly what I’ve seen are not necessarily the same. So, before going any further with the thought, I decided that it was incumbent on me to watch it once more. It’s amazing what the memory can do with reality.
As the story begins, there is this beautiful little blonde girl with big beautiful blue eyes, in a perfectly fitting blue dress and a white pinafore. She’s sitting in a tree playing with a kitten. Someone, a governess it appears, is reading to her from a history book. Alice isn’t happy with the way things are going in her world, and expresses the desire for her own little world in the first song of the movie, “A World of My Own.” The lyrics impart her idea of what she would like in a world that was suited just to her. How many times have I considered what a world of my own design would be like?
For starters, how about looking like Alice? Well, maybe Alice in her twenties would be more appropriate. Like Alice, I certainly wouldn’t want people telling me what acceptable behavior was. There was a time when I wanted people in my world to be just as comfortable with Georgia as they were with George. (That’s assuming, of course, that they were as comfortable with George as I liked to think they were.) If I woke up on any given morning and wanted to go to work as Georgia that would be perfectly acceptable, and in fact encouraged, because after all, employers would be delighted with the diversity that I brought to my job. Spouses would be equally delighted with both parts of their spouse’s persona. (Well, I was designing a “perfect” world wasn’t I?) And my children would find me absolutely terrific either way. (A “perfect” world, remember?) Well, anyway I’m getting sidetracked.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a “White Rabbit” comes racing into Alice’s world, and Alice finding herself overcome with curiosity about the “White Rabbit,” and where he’s going, races after him. She squeezes through a very tight hole under a tree and continues her pursuit of the “White Rabbit” into his world. She becomes so wrapped up explaining this pursuit to her kitten she doesn’t pay attention to where she’s going and suddenly finds that she has gone too far. She is beyond the edge and tumbles down and down and down into another world. I was a “White Rabbit” that came racing into George’s world once. I remember that one of Dad’s favorite cartoon strips was “Pogo.” In one particular episode was a line that he loved to quote, Pogo utters the line, “We have met the enemy and they is us.” Well, “George had met the White Rabbit and it was me”. The White Rabbit in George’s life was me, and George crawled into the hole and didn’t pay any attention to where he was going, went over the edge and in a freefall into another world; Georgia’s world.
At that point in my life, and it was a much younger point, over thirty years ago, I felt I was pretty much indestructible and that I could handle just about anything that came my way. I was so absorbed with the pursuit of whom I was that I ended up in a pretty screwy world. I did some pretty screwy things. The first thing Alice ran into was a door; which opened to a smaller door, which opened to a smaller door, and so on until the last door which was just large enough for her to fit through on her knees. This last door opened into a large empty room with one very small door on the opposite wall and through which the “White Rabbit” was just disappearing. In my case I kept going through door after door, each one of which was a little more difficult to go through; a little tighter fit. In other words each experience as Georgia was a little further beyond the past I had known. I was behaving just as a young Alice; immature and totally self-absorbed in my quest for the “White Rabbit”.
The door on the other side of the room had a talking door knob that had the solutions to her dilemma. I find it somehow odd that in her attempt to get through that final door the solutions kept changing. Then, finally it was her tears, brought on by frustration, that washed her through the keyhole into “Wonderland”. If my bride was here to tell you about it, I’m sure that she would tell you that is pretty much what happened to me. It wasn’t so much a flood of tears that carried me into “Wonderland” as it was a flood of emotions, which of course are always behind a flood of tears. My explanations as to what was happening in our lives kept changing and my solutions kept changing in pace with the changing explanations. The problem with all of these explanations was that I was in much the same predicament as Alice when she was trying to get directions from the caterpillar. Instead of giving her directions he kept demanding, “Explain yourself.” Alice’s response was pretty telling.
“I can’t explain myself … because I’m not myself.”
At that point in my life I was not myself, at least not the self that I was accustomed to and in spite of the comfort level I felt I could not explain it anymore than Alice could. The situation was not made any easier by the fact that, like the Cheshire cat who presented a perfect representation of my life, Georgia kept disappearing in parts and reappearing in parts. When Alice asked for directions the cat’s response was, “It doesn’t matter which way you go … unless of course you want to find the ‘White Rabbit.'” She was told to visit the “Mad Hatter and the March Hare”. My Mad Hatter and March Hare turned out to be a couple of psychologists who didn’t have any better grip on things than the Hatter and the Hare. Going to them turned out to be an experience like the one Alice had when the trail kept disappearing behind her and then finally disappeared everywhere except where she was standing at the moment. At that point she just sat down and cried. That’s what visiting with psychologists made me want to do. I saw no way forward and couldn’t go back the way I’d come.
Somewhere in the dialogue Alice comments that she will “write a book about this place … if I ever get out of here.” Before she gets out of there she goes through a “trial” at the hands of the Queen of Hearts. All through the trial the queen keeps shouting “Off with her head”. There were many times that my bride shouted “Off with her head”. In the end I returned to “reality” just as Alice did. But in Alice’s world we are left with the feeling that she remained forever in the reality she had tried to escape when she visited Wonderland. In my reality I eventually revisited what I had been trying to find, as opposed to trying to escape, all those years ago. But this time it was with a far better understanding than the one I had the first time. I had fifteen years to think about, and consider the mistakes of the first visit, and the wrong forks in the road. Most important I had a grip on reality the second trip. The difference that made was to make Wonderland a reality that could be experienced and lived on a daily basis. All that was required was for “Georgia” to grow up so that I could recognize the difference between silly dreams and livable aspirations.

Really! Which way does the door swing? That’s a question that’s been popping up in my head for a very long time. It has to do with choices, realizations, efforts, and careful consideration of how these things affect the path, or paths we take in life. You see, there have been years of my life spent, or a better description might be “wasted”, that I engaged in fruitless efforts to “get somewhere.” I can’t begin to remember, much less recount all the attempts to “get somewhere” in life only to look back and realize how wrong my assumptions about what was required had been.
I have no clear idea why I associate the notion of which way a door swings with “Alice in Wonderland” but I do. Maybe it has to do with all the doors she had to pass through in her quest to catch up with the “White Rabbit.” But that’s a whole nother subject all together. What I’m dealing with here is the realization of how my choices affected the efforts I expended much of my life on. The reality was that early in my life, I was convinced that happiness and joy were totally dependent on my efforts to succeed. My efforts to succeed were completely dependent on my understanding of how much effort should be put into accomplishing the particular goal to make it worthwhile.
Some choices made required much more effort than I was willing to make and so the choices were deemed either bad choices, or choices that were not clearly thought through beforehand. Other choices were given all the effort I could muster for as long as I could sustain the effort. Many were a combination of both. The point of all the choices was to find happiness and happiness was dependent on the relative success of the effort. Success was always measured in dollars and cents. After all that’s the way I had been I had been taught that the world worked.
The door that led to happiness as defined by success just wouldn’t open. I watched as people all around me were opening doors with ease, but try as I may my doors wouldn’t budge. Then one day it suddenly occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I needed help. The result was akin to a child who had been struggling to open a door by herself, and had repeatedly turned down offers of help from Dad, finally saying, “Please show me how to open this door.” Dad simply tells her to stand aside as He reaches for the door knob, turns it and swings the door open with ease. She/I had been trying to open the door the wrong way all along. It opened out, not in. All the pulling and straining to open the door simply required a gentle push.
How many doors had I spent so much time trying to open could have been opened had I just paid attention to which way the door was hinged? At first, I wanted to race back along life’s hallway to see if all those unopened doors could have been opened if I’d only tried to open them in a different direction. But of course this is reality and not a video so there is no rewind button. I could only move on to the next door which beckoned on the other side of the room. Beyond that door was the realization that I was the only person who could define what my happiness would be.
Beyond the next door was my definition of happiness and it was defined by the talent and purpose Dad (read that, God) had assigned to me. When I figured out which way the next door swung, I found myself in a world where my happiness came in knowing what to do with my talent and applying it to my purpose.
It all became so simple when I finally understood that the doors in my life seldom swing the same way the doors of other people swing.

If you know me at all, you know that the issue of “faith” is at the heart of so much that I think and talk about. Well this is not going to be an exception. I talk about faith in “Dear Mom and Dad” a number of times; starting with the sermon delivered on August 18th 1963 by Reverend Mark H. Miller. It took a long time for the concept which he presented to soak in.
The concept, as I understood it then, was a matter of will power. Did I have the will power to facilitate the results and benefits of maximum faith? In other words, as Dad put it, did I want faith “bad enough?” The experiences in my life that followed had no faith at all; lots of wishful thinking, but no faith at all. My experiences became a matter of repeated disappointments and a sense that I just wasn’t good enough, or just didn’t have the will required to succeed. An addiction to alcohol and the havoc wreaked by the effects of alcoholism ultimately led me to a better understanding; not a perfect understanding mind you, but a considerably better understanding of faith and its benefits.
The understanding which I eventually acquired came in bits and pieces. Sometimes the pieces were big and sometimes the bits were tiny, but they came. The crux of what I eventually understood was that, at least for me, faith of any kind required two key elements. The first was surrender, resignation of my will. That took a lot of work. In AA meetings I repeatedly heard people refer to “taking their will back” and the results of doing that, which were always dismal. In my case it was a matter of expecting my ambitions and desires to become reality. It just didn’t register that since I’d surrendered my will that my ambitions and desires had to accompany my will. Surrender isn’t a matter of just not fighting the inevitable anymore, and just sitting down on the battlefield and never moving. It meant that I had to give up my aspirations for outcome of the conflict and accept a new direction for my life.
The second element of understanding the requirements of faith was trust. Trust didn’t come easy for me. I was suspicious of God. I was fearful of what would follow surrender. Would I, like surrendering soldiers be placed in a stockade surrounded by guards and barbed wire? Obviously it would have been a “virtual” stockade and not a physical stockade, but would I be placed in a “stockade” nevertheless? Would I be subjected to a lengthy period of re-education and indoctrination? Each of life’s inevitable potholes was construed as part of that process. After all I’d been taught to believe that misbehavior was always followed by punishment and/or discipline. It took a long time for me to quit emotionally flinching each time I realized I’d “misbehaved.” I finally quit thinking of God as a demanding, punishing parent, and instead began to trust Him as a loving parent whose primary interest was in seeing that I recognized my own worth and abilities.
And now back to faith. For me, faith is a difficult concept to live within and can only be fully applied to my life when I completely surrender the outcome of my life, the current efforts and situations, and then place complete trust in Abba. Do I always remember to do so? Not hardly! I only find peace and beneficial outcome to whatever situation, pleasant or unpleasant, when, as they say in AA, I “turn it over;” surrender and trust; have faith.

Okay, I know I’m a little slow with a new post this week, but hopefully you will somewhat understand the reason when you’re through reading it.
The last six weeks have brought home some forgotten elements of how we react to events in our lives. I had forgotten, or at least paid little attention to, a lesson that was learned over twenty years ago. Six weeks ago I chronicled the sudden interruption in my life as a result of a simple leak in the water supply line on the toilet in my bathroom. Since the initial clean up at that time, absolutely nothing had been done to begin putting my home back in order. I had learned to live without electricity in two-thirds of the downstairs and the appearance of a disaster area there, and in a portion of my bedroom. I said, “learned to live with,” I did not, however, say that I’d become comfortable or happy with it.
Twenty-five years ago I landed my first job in the home remodeling industry and was fully expecting to learn new things about construction and kitchen and bath remodeling, which I did. The lesson which I had no idea was waiting for me was one which I was slow to learn.
I would meet some absolutely lovely people along the way. They would tell me what they had in mind for their home; I would visit the home and gather all the information necessary to begin making the changes and improvements they had in mind. Drawings would be prepared, eventually they would approve of what was proposed, a contract would be drawn up stating in detail what was to be done, what each element was going to cost and they would give me a deposit so the process could proceed. During this phase, the relationship I had with them would be excellent. Soon, however, as the time for the actual process of doing the work neared, one of them and at times both of them, would begin to morph into what I considered nut cases. Dr. and Mrs. Jekyll would become Mr. and Mrs. Hyde.
I couldn’t understand for the life of me what had happened. Had I done something to offend them? Had they misunderstood something in the contract and were now having second thoughts? It was baffling to say the least. I don’t remember what event or series of events occurred, which finally triggered a revelation for me, but eventually I did figure out what was happening.
Home is our refuge. Home is where we retreat from the eyes and ears of the world. Home is where we generally feel the safest and most protected. Home is where we can shed everything from our clothes to our pretenses in absolute safety if that’s what we choose to do. Home is our nest and that is what it’s all about.
It made not a whit of difference to my customers that they had asked for it, paid for it, invited us to disrupt their lives, because they didn’t foresee the emotions and feelings that would be generated by the process of some total stranger coming into their home and, to all intents and purposes, trashing it. Having a total stranger, which in the case of tradesmen can mean a rather scruffy looking character, regardless of how nice they are, or how respectful they are, in your home and in some cases in the very inner sanctum of the master bath, will tend to drive even the most understanding and perceptive of us, crazy; just plain crazy.

What I eventually learned to do was, upon the signing of the contract I
would tell them that quite possibly they would begin to feel nervous and
distraught about what was about to happen. I would tell them that in all likelihood
they would feel violated and upset. I would then tell them that when that
happened they should call me, I would hold the phone at arm’s length, they
could shout and scream for a bit and then we would get on with improving their
home. Often I would get a call from the homeowner telling me that they were
indeed nervous and thanks for the warning. Never once did I have to hold the
phone at arm’s length after that.
The understanding that I eventually acquired by a process resembling osmosis was, however, pretty much academic until one morning in the late summer of 1996 when our own nest was suddenly disrupted by a faulty valve on a water softener. We awakened that morning to a truly “sunken” living room. I quickly learned what it was to have total strangers all over our home, at what seemed to be all hours of the day and night. I felt violated. I felt vulnerable and unsafe. Now at last, I was truly empathetic to the emotions experienced by my customers, especially those whose homes and lives were disrupted by the unexpected such as a flood, or worse fire. In those cases, more than the inconvenience of disruption, the loss of precious possessions is tragic.
So, even though I’ve been there, done that before, it’s been an unnerving six weeks and counting. I find that to bring perspective to my life it’s necessary for me to consider what the people in the path of Hurricane Sandy have been forced to endure; damage far worse than I’ve suffered. And the horror of what the victims of the terror in Boston last Monday leaves me with a sense of shame that I should have uttered even the slightest complaint for the events of my life. Their “homes” have been damaged far worse than anything I can imagine, and will never be the same again; not ever. There is no way to give advance notice of such horror, and tragedy, such I was able to give to my customers. Given the alternative; thank you Abba for the blessing of a mere leak in my bathroom.

Years ago, when I was much younger and under the impression that I was much wiser, I had a revelation. The revelation was the result of wishful thinking, the associated anticipation that always resulted, and the subsequent disappointment when the anticipated occurrence failed to materialize. On the other hand life seemed to be filled with events that were totally unforeseen.
Who knows how many years I engaged in what Granny referred to as daydreaming, and never, not one single solitary time, did the wishful thoughts materialize into reality. Instead, life seemed to be a never-ending series of unexpected events. I finally reached a conclusion that would become a never-ending source of unhappiness.
I concluded that since dreams never materialized into happy events and unhappy events were always seemed to be the result of a failure to anticipate, that I should forever give up anticipating a bright future and instead concentrate on all the things that could conceivably go wrong. It was my own version of reverse psychology.
If I found myself daydreaming about a possible happy event, I would immediately force myself to conjure up every conceivable disaster imaginable, whether it related to the original daydream or not. The idea of course was that if I concentrated on disaster and unhappy events they would never materialize and it actually seemed to work. Of course, the unintended result was that I was terminally miserable.
In a speech at Wayne State University in the mid ‘60s, Dr. Wayne Dyer described the phenomenon this way: suppose you have a flat tire and find you have no jack, but you have a friend who lives nearby. You start walking to his house and as you walk you began preparing yourself for disappointment like, “he won’t be home”, “he won’t have a jack even if he is home,” “he won’t come to the door,” “he won’t let you borrow the jack even if he is home and answers the door, because you borrowed something else once never returned it.” When you finally get to his home and he comes to the door you are so tuned to the negative, you say, “Oh keep your damned jack.” And you leave without the jack.
Well, that was my life in a nutshell. It should have been no big surprise to find that I was a hopeless alcoholic by the time I was 40 years old. Today I don’t waste time conjuring up potential disasters. Instead, I prefer to focus on actual current disasters, like the flood in my townhouse, and continually remind myself of my all-time favorite saying, “Worry is only the interest you pay on trouble before you have it.”