To all the readers who are guys

This isn't the Halloween post I had wanted to make.  The original plan was to do something rather bold (read as: utterly insane) with twelve pumpkins. Maybe next year.

Instead...

There's something I need to say to my male friends, to the ones who are husbands and fathers:

Never stop thanking God for what He has given you.

You have no idea how truly blessed you are, to have someone to spend your life serving, cherishing, honoring, and treasuring. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank God for that. Don't let a day go by that you don't thank her for being in your life.

And if you are so blessed as to be a father, never EVER take that for granted! There are some guys out there who would do just about anything, to know what it's like to be the father to a child, if only for just one day. I have most wanted to be a husband and a father. I don't know if that will happen now. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life to have never held a child in my arms, to have loved and comforted it as a father. I will probably never know what it's like to do the "tea party" with a little girl or be there for a son's game. I won't know what it's like to guide and nurture my children and do my best to encourage them to love God and to love others. I dreamed for so long of a home built on love, not one ruled by fear. And now, I don't see that happening.

If you are a husband who has been blessed with a wife, if your are the father of sons or daughters, if you have a home devoted to serving God and each other... then never cease to be thankful for that. You have been given more than all the wealth of this world put together. You have a joy that some pray for but will never know. Don't ever forget that.

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A personal parameter

I have only always fought hardest for those things which I have held most precious and dear.

I do not know how to be otherwise.

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I don't know what to write

Isn't that something.  I have a blog getting close to five thousand posts and over a million and a half readers and I don't know what to write for it.  In the past month and a half I've suddenly wound up with a writing career that until now I could have only dreamed of.  I'm writing more than I ever have before.  I'm finding creativity and drive to write about anything and everything almost.  And I can't write a thing for my own blog.

I went from a nobody who had all that mattered in life, to a somebody in high demand and nothing to show for it.  Now what would the Preacher at Jerusalem have to say about that?

"Meaningless!  Meaningless!"

Yesterday I wrote from the heart and did it for nothing and was the happiest man on the face of the earth. 

Today I write professionally and I give it my heart and make good money, more than I am used to by far, and I'm asking God why He...

"No.  Don't go there Chris.  Don't be angry at Him.  Be frustrated.  You can be frustrated.  You can even have some doubts.  Everyone doubts.  Even Mother Teresa doubted.  But don't be angry at Him.  Job refused to curse God.  Job thanked God and praised Him.  Praise Him for what He has done in the light, remember that during the times in the dark..."

I want to write.  I want to write for me.  I want the Christopher Knight who wrote as deftly and with passion about everything from doggies to dancing to Star Wars to sundry silliness to be here writing and instead tonight at the keyboard, that's not him at all.

The Walking Dead?  Saw the season premiere last week and this week's is still sitting fresh on the DVR.  Don't ask me what I think about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: I haven't watched it at all, though they're also on the DVR just in case.  Gravity?  I want to see it soon.  Every day I tell myself "I'm going to see Gravity today" and it hasn't happened yet.  Because I've been busy with the full-time career God suddenly and without warning landed in my lap.  In part.  Mostly it's because I have seen success and found it wanting.  Boring.

People chase money, they chase celebrity, they chase after fifteen minutes of the spotlight.  If you want a vision of the modern world, witness Jesus turning down Satan's offer for all the kingdoms of this earth... and then a billion-fold hands rising up with screams of "PICK ME!  PICK ME!"

Tolkien was right: immortality within the circles of the world would be a wretched, damnable thing.  It would be the most damnable thing of all.  Fellow Inkling Lewis put it well: that once man had fallen, death was God's merciful way of allowing for an escape.  Took me a long time to realize that.  I was afraid of death for so long, after losing too many people.  Now I accept it.  Appreciate it.  Have found a serenity in it: that death is not a thing of dread but a gift to embrace in due time.

Why shouldn't I embrace that gift when it comes?  I have fought devils without and demons within.  I have seen things that can not be explained.  I have borne secrets that men have slain for.  I have carried responsibilities that none should have been given.  I have loved and lost and hoped and throughout it all I have given every possible iota of effort toward staying true to whatever it is that God has made me to be.

People think they know what it is that will make them happy.  They think it's fame or fortune or money or... something.  The things that more often than not contribute to the modern wretchedness.  And then they become desperate to bargain with God, to deal with Death, for just a few more years or months or even hours of that very wretched nature.

The Preacher was right.  "Meaningless, meaningless..."

I've been writing a poem for some years now.  Its title is "Cursed Recursive".  It is a stream of thoughts from the mind of one with bipolar.  Recursion is a bad thing, we were taught in that C programming class at Elon years ago.  A program can get caught in a recursive loop, if you aren't careful when you're writing it.  And then it just goes on and on and on and on, unable to break.  Unable to break free.  Unable to stop.  Funny.  I barely passed that class, now I understand it better than ever.

People have told me that they missed my writing.  Well, here's some writing.  I don't know what it's about.  Maybe it will make sense later.  Sometimes that happens.  But here it is, for what it's worth.

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Tom Clancy, father of the techno-thriller, has passed away

Tom Clancy was one of the first authors who I would eagerly await the next novel from.  I was a high school sophomore when the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October came out and I read the novel soon afterward.  I spent the next several months and into the summer devouring everything Clancy that I could find.  The night before Hurricane Katrina hit, I curled up with my newly-bought copy of Executive Orders and by the time the storm's outer bands were hitting I couldn't have cared less: Clancy had engrossed me again.

Tom Clancy was a pure American... I'm not going to just say "writer" but also, just leave it at "pure American".  What do I mean by that?  This is a guy who had dreamed as a kid of being a pilot in the United States Navy.  What kept him from having that dream was an eye condition that instantly disqualified him.  Clancy wound up going into the insurance business... but he never quite gave up on his dream.  What did he do?  He started reading and researching United States military aircraft and naval vessels.  He learned everything he could about the government and military of the Soviet Union.  And then he set out to write what President Reagan would later call "the perfect yarn".  Almost thirty years later and The Hunt for Red October is arguably the definitive novel of modern naval warfare.  As well as being one hell of a gripping story.

He couldn't be in the Navy, so he made a phenomenally successful career out of writing about the Navy.  And along the way became perhaps the most prominent icon of the modern Navy.  How many other places in the world could someone have an opportunity to do a thing like that?

Tom Clancy - who gave us Jack Ryan, Marko Ramius, John Clark, Ding Chavez and many other characters in a genre he made all his own if not created single-handed - passed away Tuesday.  He was 66.  At the time of his passing he had another novel due out later this year.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.  Think I'll watch The Hunt for Red October tonight in his memory.

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