Engines

I know there are good women out there.

I see many women in my church who are the sort of woman I wish my wife had been.

I just don’t trust my judgment in such things.

Ah... I don’t want to talk about it. Not interested in another woman.

I guess I’m feeling a little anxious.

I was told today that all the group homes we have been contacting, in hopes of finding a place for Jeremiah, don’t want him because of the fire. There are liability and insurance concerns because of that fire that began in that corner of our church three years ago.

I’m concerned that if I don’t find him a place to live by June, well, the funds that would support him will disappear. I love him. I want to be a part of his life for as long as I’m on the planet, but he should have something stable... something that would keep him safe, and fed, and loved.

Isaac fixed dinner tonight. I have been teaching him how to make meatloaf. This was his third time at it, and he did nearly everything on his own. Nearly no supervision from me.

It’s December. I should be putting up Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, making this particular Christmas particularly special.

The boys need it, and frankly I do too.

I suppose I am beginning to run out of steam.

Hmmmm... odd phrase. “Running out of steam.”

Obviously from the time when steam engines powered everything from trains and tractors to trolleys and factories. The fires had to be stoked continually for the heat to pressurize the boilers. And they were dangerous.

Those boilers blew up all the time. Hammered metal, overlapped and riveted...

More people died on the Sultana than on the Titanic. The steamship had a legal capacity of 376 people, but held over 2,000, mostly Union soldiers returning from Confederate prison camps.


Sheesh... where am I going with this?

I guess I was thinking that I have been pushing myself to do all the things that Brenda and I did to make this house run... all on my own, and the fuel which powered me was mostly the fire of my passions and emotions from the conflagration of my marriage.

Tonight I feel tired.

I just got home from another meeting. I got to work about 6:00 this morning, worked until 4:00. Meeting at 7:00, after raking the leaves in the yard, and doing laundry.

The metaphor of the steam engine is apt. I heap on the things that keep me going, skipping meals, joking with coworkers, stoking the passion of my profession...

But, an external combustion engine was a crude device, not very reliable.

Internal combustion engines work better. The fuel is injected right beside the pistons, right where the work needs to be done, right where the force is most efficient.

I have an internal combustion component in my life. A more efficient engine I don't use enough.

It is so easy to think I am running my life. That I am doing it all. That finding a home for Jeremiah is my job. Feeding my children, keeping the house clean and the bills paid are mine alone...

But, I know, I really know, that in relying upon myself I face almost certain burnout.

Last Friday was our monthly 24 hours of prayer.

My hour went by swiftly, as it always does. I left that room with more energy than when I entered.

One week from today will be the 16th anniversary of Willy’s death.

Can it have been so long already? Can it be that the hurt of that passing still smolders?

I suppose it is the new hurt of losing my wife that makes me a little more melancholy this year. (All the more reason I should make this Christmas special.)

Or... it is the months and months and months of getting less than six hours sleep each night that is finally collecting its long delayed toll?

I wish I were a better man.

I wish I had given her all she needed... emotionally, spiritually, sexually.

Still, she made her mistakes, mistakes that are not mine, I cannot take ownership for them. She lacked integrity in areas that really mattered, and she spent the trust given to her in ways that will make it impossible for her to ever truly trust herself. That is a large price for her to pay.

Back to the engine metaphors... External combustion works by placing heat alongside a water-filled chamber... a crude method for transfering energy.

I know that if I relax into the arms of the divine I will find resources which exceed any fuel I can find on my own. I know that in the power of joy, the power of love, the power of trust in what is intrinsically good, far beyond the apparent good I thought was true, I can run on that internal combustion for all my life.

“Let go, and let God.” It’s one of those trite sayings of AA and Al Anon. And like most trite sayings, it conveys a simple truth.

Let go...

I should let go...

Let go of disappointment... let go of trying to do more than I can... let go of guilt and shame and all the inefficient mechanisms which have powered my life.

I’m 52. It doesn’t matter if I find a home for Jeremiah, or catch up on my bills, or find a partner I can trust.

What matters is that I love God... He loves me... and I am His.

What matters is that I just keep doing the next right thing.

What matters is that I trust.

I cannot trust in people. They are too frail... their own external combustion engines also have the same sort of makeshift repairs on their boilers as mine... and it is those self repairs that are so dangerous.

Just as the thin piece of steel slapped on that boiler in 1865 shoved over 1800 people into eternity, my own self psychoanalysis is an inefficient repair on an inefficient engine that cannot power me all the way up the river of my life.

I need to rely on the power of that is beyond the entropic forces of this universe.

What drivel...

I don’t know what I am saying anymore...

I’m tired.

I’m going to bed.