We’re in the new year, 2025, and in my journal entries there is a large gap. There’s a great many days skipped in my prayer journal, the Bible study book I’m reading hasn’t seen pages turned in weeks, and this is familiar ground. There is a constant struggle, a battle, going on not just on earth but in our own hearts and minds.

          I want to grow closer to Jesus. This is a decision made, that turns out I have to make every morning I wake and even throughout the day sometimes. Why is it so hard to focus and go after my king, Jesus? Because choosing Jesus is THE decision, THE eternal decision, that satan, our broken Earth, and our own inner sinful nature go against.

Went several years back to an old book, The Sacred Romance, by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis. The book is over 15 years old now, but it still hits home like a truck crossing into your lane with no warning. I have the book buried in my collection somewhere in one of my tubs of books my wife hides from me claiming to be “organizing.” I had a free credit on Audible, so I just got it on there to listen. The part about arrows brought me face to face with shadows I’d been ignoring to the best of my abilities.

  I write this to say, ‘hey, I get it.’ You’re not alone. Life is hard, and it, honestly, is meant to be that way. The moment Eve decided to disobey, and the moment Adam did nothing to stop her or defend her from Satan’s lies, we fell to a hard life. Their sin ruined things for us all, broke the world, and broke the bond between us and God. Thankfully the story didn’t just end there. God fought for us every step of the way even when we failed him each time.

 Oddly enough I’ve been awaken in the middle of the night/stupidly early morning so many times I think I’m starting to expect it. Can you get PTSD from being woken up to some problem after another? I don’t know, but it feels like it. I was pulled out of a wonderfully deep sleep, again, last week by my wife and oldest son.

          My wife and son, Rainy and Reid, immediately began to tell me that a leak was pouring down into Reid’s room.

As messed up as it is I have two marriages I can speak of. My first was a ‘shotgun’ wedding; where, I knocked up my girlfriend and jumped into a courthouse marriage with her to try and make things right. I was saved, but I did not know Jesus well. I knew the teachings enough to know I was in the wrong. I did not have a relationship with Jesus. I didn’t even know what having a relationship with Jesus meant at the time. I listened to my lust and desires instead of wisdom. The fallout was horrible.

          My second marriage, still going thankfully, is one based on a much better foundation, Jesus.

Sometimes my home is a storm of laughter/joy and sometimes my home is a storm of, well, chaos, frustration, and arguments. I think for some there is this misconception that a Christian based home is supposed to be all sunshine and cool breezes. A Christian home is still a home full of human beings from large to small, young to old, male and female. We humans are flawed sinners that are broken; that, are just coming into this world and don’t know what to do half the time. Christian homes, like most, suffers learning curves, experiences ups and downs, and still deals with struggles. These struggles come as worldly, individual, and family struggles. What is the difference between a worldly home and a Christian home is Jesus.

The battle for one’s soul is an internal one first, and only shows outwardly after the battle’s outcome has been decided.

What was one of the hardest things about Christianity for me to grasp? The internal struggles that I can’t physically see or fight off.

What’s still difficult for me to do? Fight internal battles over my soul and everything that seems to want to help me fail. Thankfully I have Jesus, and he is the best comrade we could ever have.

I’m lost on what to write about, so I’m going to just start with saying things have been kinda steady. Sometimes, life is just another day and maybe I’ve missed something, but not much has happened. I did join Krav Maga with my two boys, and I discovered, again, that I’m aging.

Anxiety, worry, fear, name it one or all of them. I have been facing this issue for some time now. Until recently maybe a few weeks, when I decided no more of this. I’m going to rely on and trust that Jesus loves me. Most of anxious issue comes from me not wanting to fail Jesus, my family, or those I’m trying to help. Do I still have these struggles, yes, for sure. The difference is how I deal with them. Mentally and emotionally, I hand them over to Jesus. Sometimes I have to do this several times a day. I keep refocusing on Jesus. The attacks on my faith and me in general will never truly stop until I’m in heaven. The good news, Jesus will never stop being there, now and in eternity, Jesus will be there.

The morning after hurricane Helene was surprising to me. Journal Entry 7: Thank You, But I'll Be Dying with My Pants On., went over the night Helene hit, and there was a lot going on that night. Still, when I woke up the next morning I didn’t expect to see the destruction. Even more surprising was the randomness of the destruction.

The day of hurricane Helene was kind of boring. I came home from a typical day on the job, and our family did our typical routines. There were some light winds, no rain, and by 8pm that night we sent our kids to bed without a clap of thunder. Rainy and I decided to chill with a movie. Halfway through ‘King Arthur,’ our power went out.

S-o-o-o I may have come to notice something within my prayer journal and these journal entries that I am going to admit with some reluctance; I can be whiny. Yes, I admit to myself and you, I seem to have a tendency to complain about things. I say this with a bit of a laugh at myself; because, I thought with some confidence, that I was not the type to complain and whine about things. Looking back on my writings and my own thoughts tells me otherwise.

I was writing in my prayer journal this weekend, and I was speechless. I’ve stated my desires in my journal, fought with my weaknesses with Jesus, prayed thanks for a great deal in my life, and I just didn’t know what to write. When this happens, I recommend you not close up and move on, but take a moment and let your heart and mind think on Jesus. For me, so far, taking a silent moment to focus on Jesus leads me back to pen and paper and a deeper focus on my desire, Jesus. Some minutes later, a smile came on my face with a thought of amusement, and I wrote, ‘I want to hear you (Jesus) laugh.’

Every man, every woman, has their rough day that we hope doesn’t roll into weeks. I’ve been rolling in the deep for a little bit now myself. Life is not something that is meant to be easy. I know this. For me and my strife it is a need to trust God on one side, a fear of failing my family on the other. The sad fact about it is I have no reason to doubt God. Yet, I am afraid that I will fail God. Failing God, I will fail my family and myself. This . . . fear, plagues me lately and I’m struggling to overcome it. Yet, sunlight pierces my deepness in such simple, complicated, blessings.

I just want a trail to follow. Jesus, please, show me your footprints, so I can know which directions to go, what turns to take, what dead ends to avoid. I’m pulling this kind of analogy from a book I turned to this morning on my Audible library. I love to have a book in my hands, but life and work make Audible a choice that allows me to research and enjoy SO many more books than I’d otherwise have time for. ‘Fathered by God’ is a book that grabbed my attention this morning; because, I have been struggling lately with what to do with my life. I have a question I’ve been asking Jesus for months now, maybe over a year, and this morning I was mentally spent on what to do and I needed Jesus to say something.

Remember Why:

I gave my life to Jesus something around 22 years ago, and I just had a speech by Inky Johnson on YouTube bring me to tears. The video was roughly half an hour long, but he said something that struck me, well he said a lot that struck me, but one that I’ll talk about here is ‘remember why.’ Remember why I went to Jesus to begin with. Funny thing is, though I think of that day once in a while, I hadn’t thought about why I went to him. I went to Jesus to be saved, yes, but what brought me to that point in the first place?

I went to Jesus because of what I was promised, love.