I'm Still Here

One of the precious promises of Jesus is stated clearly in Matthew 28:20 (MSG)...I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age. Have you ever felt totally isolated and truly alone? I remember vividly a few times in my life.

As a child I recall being all alone one night. I'm not sure what scared me, but I sat in our big green vinyl chair in the corner of the living room with a hatchet in my hand waiting for my parents' return. I don't know where my older brother was that evening. It was unusual for me to be left home alone. I know everything turned out okay, because I'm still here. I also assure you that had my house been besieged that night by ugly bad guys, I would not have been nearly as creative as Macaulay Culkin in defending my domicile.

Dalton Highway
AlaskaPhotoGraphics

There was a time on my solo road trip from Tennessee to the Arctic Ocean in 2011, that I was terrified for a few moments. I was returning from an overnight visit and morning tour of the oil pipeline at Prudhoe Bay in Deadhorse, AK. Driving the Dalton Highway by myself was the most challenging part of that 12,000+ mile road trip. The Haul Road of Ice Road Truckers' fame wasn't icy as on that History Channel television show. It was filled with potholes, frost heaves, and lots of mud. In spots it was also mostly gravel. That was the case on the south bound ridge back through the Brooks Mountain Range. I literally talked to myself, my Nissan Sentra, and my God as I gently applied the brake numerous times to keep from becoming panicked and sliding out of control. There was nowhere to go but down, way down. I'm certain I didn't plunge off road that day, because I'm still here.

Finally, in December of 2018, I spent my birthday week in the hospital with a gangrenous gall bladder. On one day I was alone for awhile. My wife had stepped out for a few minutes. I was hooked to an I-V, had been instructed many times by her and various medical personnel NOT TO GET UP BY MYSELF! There was a conveniently positioned call button. I was either just too stubborn or doped up on that one occasion. You guessed it, I fell to the tile floor luckily without ripping the tube from my arm. I fell down and I couldn't get up. I lay there and called for help. I know I survived the glaring looks and harsh lectures that followed from more than one source, because I'm still here.

Relying on God in stressful or even terrifying situations is what faith is all about. We are told in Joshua 1:9 (NLT)..."This is my command--be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Furthermore Isaiah 41:10 (MSG) proclaims..."Don't panic. I'm with you. There's no need to fear for I'm your God. I'll give you strength. I'll help you. I'll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you."

Those verses pretty much sum up my childhood home alone terror, my slip sliding away gravel road horror, and my hospital fall trepidation. Allow me to return to the opening verse in Matthew 28 as it fits our current times so well. I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right  up to the end of the PANDEMIC! Take a breath and look around...WE'RE STILL HERE!

Better Late Than Never

Better late than never! That's how I feel about finally beginning my new blog of the book (more like a novella) I've been working on since 2006. That's right, I started that effort 14 years ago. It's still a work in progress. I'm not at all sure it will ever come to a conclusion. To be a real book/novel it would probably need to triple in length, and I don't think I have that much life left in me. It took me so long to get this far. At that same rate of writing pages, I would be 99 at completion.

At least I finally landed on a doable method for self-publication. Imagine! is a fantasy novella in serial blog format about heaven, Jesus, and "in the beginning." Over those 14 years my nose to the grindstone toiling has been sporadic at best. Keying the thoughts and words has been an on and off process with more off than on most weeks. Remember I was working full time and traveling a lot. I had to visit our 11 grandchildren regularly who live in four different states none of which is Tennessee. All of that takes time. Now that I'm retired, I'm back at it with a vengeance! It's taken me nearly three more years of leisure to actually transform this dream into a reality without adding a single page to the manuscript. Oh, well!

That doesn't surprise me much. I was generally one to need a deadline to approach before getting out my grindstone. Except when my heart was really in a project, I would procrastinate until the zero hour was imminent. Two times in my life my actions varied from that wait until it's almost too late scenario with remarkable results.

The first was in my college British History class. When assigned Prime Minister Clement Atlee as my research paper topic, I jumped all over it. Except for some eating and sleeping, I spent the next 36 hours totally absorbed in that assignment mostly in the college library. I guess I wanted to prove something to myself and to my favorite professor Dr. Ray Muncy. I was not a history major, but I could research and write. My diligence paid off with a grade of "A" on the paper. Additionally I won the history research award at semester's end much to the chagrin of all my history-major friends.

The other memory I have of dusting off the grindstone was in planning my Arctic Ocean Road Trip in 2011. With my copy of the Milepost, other maps, and tour guides opened around me, I detailed the 12,000 mile 28-day journey as though my life depended on it. That May/June I had an amazing, once in a lifetime, solo road trip from Columbia, TN, to Deadhorse, AK, on the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay. A main trivia fact I learned first hand. It takes five days to enter Alaska from Tennessee if you average driving 1,100 miles a day. Call me Crazy!

Those two life-changing times aside, my track record is that I work better when a meaningful deadline looms on the immediate horizon. But as with yesterday's start of my serial blog Imagine!, better late than never. Much better!