M.I.A.

It’s difficult to update this blog without actually being around my family to experience events first-hand. Often the very things that prompt me posting something are things that don’t trigger anything in Tammy, so she doesn’t think to pass it on, or she just forgets when we do talk. This is in NO way a criticism of my wonderful, beautiful, and extremely overwhelmed wife. It’s simply an observation.

As I sat, preparing this blog, I read through my previous post and found that much of what I had been intending to post today, I already posted two months ago. Well, that’s simply not acceptable. How is it that in two months, I’ve learned nothing new or interesting about my family???

Easter came and went. I’ve got nothing. I know they painted eggs, and I got a couple of pictures and a video or two messaged to me… but that’s not something I can readily address myself.

What I’m hoping for is more consistent home-time, so I can experience first-hand the joys, challenges, and excitement of being a father and a husband, not just a paycheck who occasionally sleeps in the house.

Anyway, my daughter remains beautiful, my wife remains wonderful, my job remains irritatingly inconsistent, and life remains a probationary state.

I will say this: The struggle of being away from home has reawakened in me a need (a hunger and thirst, if you will) for the gospel in my life. I’ve found immense strength in prayer and scripture study that I had been lacking in recent months and years, the relatively “prosperous” life giving me a sense of comfort that masked my need for spiritual strength.

I’m remedying that. They say you need to make the best of any situation, and this is possibly the worst situation I’ve ever been in (I cannot express how much more difficult it is to be away from my family than I had thought it would be – and I knew it was going to be tough), so in order to make the best of it, I’m finding myself relying heavily on the Lord. And though it is certainly not any easier, I can say with conviction, I am no longer feeling as hopeless as I had been only a few weeks ago.

“La vita è dura, ma dura poco.” –Italian proverb (coined by yours truly)
“Life is tough, but it’s short.”