The last year has been quite remarkable. Upheaval and turmoil. Joy and gratification. Pain and meaning. Suicidal thoughts of absolute regret followed by thoughts of pure meaning and spiritual purpose.
I’ve come back to a place in my mind often, wondering: “If I knew then what I know now, would I still confront my employers? Would I plead with them for what I considered paramount to the ministry and health of our church?” The result of that conversation was heartbreaking, yet exciting nonetheless. I was trusting God and listening to the Holy Spirit, standing up for injustice and doing my best to honor the king while he was so clearly naked. The excitement of it all lay in the unknown. A restart! How wonderful! But that anticipation gave way to bitter sorrow soon after every expectation was dashed and every idea thwarted. None of the road turned the way I imagined and took far longer to travel.
So when I ask myself, “Would I still have done it, if I knew then what I know now,” some of the chief things that affirm my decision are: seeing my children thrive and mature faster and in greater ways than I ever could have dreamed; my love and admiration for the Lord and His Word grown exponentially; my wife’s dreams coming true again and again; and, sadly, knowing how many former “friends” were willing to portray my wife and myself as “devil-worshipers”, “brain-washers”, and “sickly deranged from the effects of Covid”. (What a wonderful and sorrowful thing it can be to know what people really think of you!)
So I move onward, and the healing has been rich and lengthy. I find joy on the mountainside working with a saw and hammer alongside my father. I find purpose holding a hen in her sad, final moments. I find hope watching my kids face their fears. I find comfort in my wife’s soft arms.
Exhausting. Yes, indeed. This is exhausting, working with my hands. So much so, that I’ve barely written a thing on this website. Whatever sort of routine there has been was balanced around teaching my children, tilling my land, building structures, restoring a farmhouse, and finding a community. But now, at the end of what seemed like the first “season”—a Season of Foundation, let’s call it—I find the elbow room for a new routine. One that includes regular public writing.
Don’t misinterpret my words. I’ve been faithful to write every day, just as Hemingway suggested. But those things are deep in a journal that someone will have to lift from my cold fingers when I’m long gone.
Instead of my mere musings on the morning rise, I plan on jotting down the public things for subscribers to read again. Sermons and nuggets. Poetry and journal entries.
Greater still, I’ve come to realize the Dolor Series needs a significant overhaul. I’ve mulled it over for a few months now. How can I find inspiration in the thing I left behind? Whilst Florida weighs such a significant part of my heart, the truth is that I’ve moved toward something far heavier, and live in my true home, now—the one I realize I was made for all along. I have already begun the preliminary research on how to do this rewrite and will begin immediately. In the meantime, the first manuscript will remain up for you to enjoy, but slowly the chapters will evolve and some disappear altogether, only to be replaced by much more resilient and, hopefully, better writing.
Aside from that little thought and update on where I am, here are some further things I’ve journaled in the month of June:
It is by abandonment and recklessness that I hear the Voice of God and see the manifested Heart of the Father.
Oh, what if all the days of my life could be spent with the Father! May I not rush to work, but rush to Your presence.
People want to be followers of Jesus’ Movement, rather than Jesus Himself. To follow Jesus means to leave everything. To follow a movement requires only a little time or money.
A prayer for myself leads to selfishness, which leads to rebellion, which leads to witchcraft. A prayer for his friends is what led Job out of hell. So, pray for others, I tell myself.
The soft, scared and seared, politically correct, self-help factory that most churches are turning into would never have made it out of the first century. The Church is meant to be fiery. Help us, Lord. Raise up leaders and pastors that are unafraid and full of the Gospel.
A raven represents wisdom and death. She is a bird overlooked, yet always heard. A bird thriving and never dying. Bring the ravens and they shall feed us.
Perhaps why I love fiction so much is that Instructional Books seem to get people from A-Z too quickly, when most of us need years or decades to finally get over ourselves and learn the lesson. Good fiction takes people on the journey, and that journey may be interpreted at different times of our lives.
To search for personal justice is the root of atheism, because it leans on my own understanding instead of the Lord. It longs for things to be made right and my life appeased. But it shall never be on the earth or with earthly people. Justice lies only in Heaven and from God. Desiring a life that makes me “feel good” about everything is petty. Instead, enter into the Master’s Happiness and stop caring and waiting for everything to “make sense”.
Do now what you will have to do then.
I feel almost guilty for my lack of apparent love for others. I fear I have grown cold. But in my heart I feel I have grown up. Few people now warm my soul like Christ does. And even fewer do I turn toward. I do not despise others. Namely, I find joy in everyone I interact with. There is just no sense of need for them like I need Heaven.
Florida is barely a memory. And yet I do not feel at home in Tennessee yet. I wonder if that means I have no home on earth.
The world keeps screaming “self, self, self,” but John said, “He must increase, I must decrease.”
It takes effort to be noble. Which is why it is worth it. Everywhere I look, Christians are sacrificing integrity, honor and nobility for convenience and pleasure. Alcohol, lewdness, marijuana/CBD, therapy, cheating, shortcuts, bitterness, backbiting. These things are far from the Kingdom of God. All things are lawful, but, surely, not all things are beneficial. At some point, we must decide to strive toward nobility.
I wonder if ever I could fully trust in God. How desperate I am to become desperate!
Keith G. Alderman 