My Life Is On Fire

They say the hottest fires forge the best steel. But fire also pretty much devours anything that it touches that isn't steel.

I am not a man of steel.

I haven't posted anything in quite awhile. There's reasons for that, mostly because I no longer have internet at home, and I have to post after-hours at work. That's the main thing. Also, it appears the muse has left me. I haven't been able to produce anything that even closely resembles creative thought in about 9 months, at last count. It's just not in me.

The reason, I suppose, is a good bit of depression. I think I can safely say that I'm at the lowest point that I've been in my life. Even back when I was dealing with an alcoholic parent, life always had the promise of something more, something better. It just doesn't seem thataway these days. Life seems pretty bleak.

To being with, my mom's dying. She's in the last stages of lung cancer. Simply put: this sucks. Those of you out there that have lost a parent know what I'm dealing with. Those that haven't, treasure your time with them. You have no idea how precious that time really is.

So that's bad.

To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure that I have a troubled marriage. I'm not going into a whole lot of detail. This is cathartic, but geez, I don't want everybody to know all my business.

Having done a whole lot of family law, I can understand some divorces. Where a spouse is cheating, beating the other one, etc. I get that. No problems. But where one spouse decides they just don't like you anymore, and treat you like total crap, that I don't get. I don't understand where it went wrong. I don't understand what I did wrong, other than to fall in love with somebody. I guess you can't make somebody love you, no matter what you think or feel.

I know I'm not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But I know where I'm lacking, and I'm working to make up those deficiencies. But it doesn't seem to be enough. In other words, this is out of my hands, and I don't like that one tiny bit. I'm going to keep working on being a better person.

If nothing else, I've gotten the most wonderful little baby out of the deal that you could possibly imagine. I'd like to have a passel more of them, some day. Doesn't look like that's going to happen, either.

Anyway, that's really bad.

Then I get to thinking about how possibly God's pretty much washed his hands of me. There's nothing I can do about all of this, so I give it to God. The problem is, he doesn't seem to be really doing much with the problems, either. My studies and faith would indicate otherwise, but it's hard to feel loved by God when your entire world is collapsing around your ears. If he loves me, this is a darn funny way of showing it.

I can see where people lose their faith. I'd be lying if I said that mine hasn't been weakened a bit. It seems like all the prayers are unanswered. That all the hopes and dreams are being crushed. Do the sins of the father have to visit the son?

So that's really, really bad. I don't doubt that God's there. I can even convince myself that he's going to get me through this mess, sometimes. But I think he's letting this happen for some reason, and that I can't understand.

Fire is the great destroyer. But it also burns away imperfections. Fields blossom after being scorched.

I guess the catch is to see whether or not I'm destroyed, or renewed by the fire. Maybe something better is going to arise from these ashes, like a phoenix. Surviving the inferno is going to be the trick.