Charlene

I love this picture of Charlene. She looks so peaceful, and happy and content and pretty. We were at the arboretum with Jim and Sue Lindsay.

And I love Charlene. She is intelligent and talented. She loves people – all kinds of people. She loves the Lord and is always ready to put herself out for His purposes. And she is the best cook and baker this side of anywhere.

And I love her new confidence. The success of her new book is challenging her self-image that nothing she does could possibly be right. Too many people are raving about it in the comments on Amazon. I told her this morning that she can’t deliver a muffin to a neighbor without apologizing for it. That’s an exaggeration, of course.

I love her love for adventure. We talk often about our next adventure, whatever it may be. Our life together has been a series of adventures, one after the other. The next one up is our second book tour promoting her book. Whodathunk? 

And I love that she loves me. She has put up with my quirks and shortcomings and odd sense of humor and love of strange music for 55 years and we are in it for the long haul.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Charlene.

Mid-life Crisis Veteran

Blog Post: Mid-life Crisis Veteran

I am preaching Sunday at the Roseville Church and was going through some old files looking for a sermon I am sure I wrote up at one point. I didn’t find it, but I did run across a letter I had written for the Opinion page of the Tallahassee Democrat on Thursday, September 23, 1982, thirty-eight years ago. Thought I’d share it:

It is titled “Midlife Crisis Veteran”.

I am 40 years old and an expert on midlife crisis. I had my first one at 18 and have had one every year and a half since. During that time I have wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, short order cook, an entrepreneur, an emergency medical technician, a Marine Corps pilot, an FBI agent, an inventor, a computer genius, a high school social studies teacher, a large animal vet, a U.S. Senator, the Secretary of Health and Rehabilitative Services, a bunch of things I have forgotten, and a few I don't care to mention in a public forum.

I think that the most significant one was about 4 years back when I came to grips with the fact that all the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else’s name. I have no reason to believe that the last half of my life will be any different from the first in this regard. 

The one stabilizing factor in my life through all this has been my conviction, as Paul expressed in his letter to the Christians at Rome, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you think that's a powerful saying you should read the rest of the letter.

David May