Today, against the better judgement of my conscience and pocketbook, I signed up for two half marathons, one in April and one in May, the first will be in Whidbey Island, the second in Olympia, I am very excited. These will be my first official half marathons, and I am hoping to use these to judge how good of shape I am in the hopes of getting ( Read more... )

I want to go on a pilgrimage of sorts. But it is one that will reach beyond the mountain; the mountain is just a step on the way. It is a challenge to get my head straight, get me focused on the tings that matter, and one what I will need to do to complete the pilgrimage. I know what it will be and where it will take me, but what I hope to find ( Read more... )

Pictures are the door way to memories for me; I have many pictures of my friends, thousands. There seems to be a trend lately of my losing the pictures I want most, almost as if those memories of those friends are meant to grow dull, for with out pictures, my poor brain does go dull on the memories until it is as though I am looking in upon them ( Read more... )

The other day I sat down to a meal with a dear friend of mine. As we talked and ate, I spoke of how I was excited to leave the Navy and get back into the “Real World.” My friend turned around and questioned me about my meaning, stating that she felt that the real world is always here and now, that the military is the real world, that there is ( Read more... )

Inevitably there comes a time in our lives where we must make a choice to show kindness and forgive, or withhold kindness and not forgive. All of us come upon these cross roads in our agons and our pursuits of our potential. Weather it be the unintentional or even the intentional hurt delivered from a friend, a lover, a mentor, weather it is a ( Read more... )

I have often said what I am willing to die for. There are many things, I am willing to die for Christ, for my family my mother and father, Katey my sister and her family, Stephen my brother and his family, for my friends Brittany, Roger, Natalie, for Jarred, Ray, for truth, for this country I call home. I was content with this, never thought a ( Read more... )

The two most painful things I have ever experienced in my life are love unreturned and hope lost. I have had much experience with each, and every time I come back to face them in times of trial, I stand lost as though I have never faced them before. Every time panic, then pain, then depression. It is true, I believe, that we are destined to ( Read more... )

I looked out over the sand dunes yesterday and watched the sun set. It was hot even then. I wondered at what the people did when there were no highways, when there were no motor vehicles to make the trip cooler, or at least faster. How does one survive when all that is between them and the next town is miles and miles of hot desert day? How do ( Read more... )

I want to talk about the agon, a word used by the Greeks in days of old that is the root to the word agony. Agon is the Latin word meaning struggle, combat, contest, agony. When I talk of agon, I am not just talking of punishing our physical bodies into submission; yes that is part of it, the training of the body, but that is not the whole of it ( Read more... )

I sit here contemplating what to do with my future as I know that soon I will be out of the Navy. I struggle with not getting a short timers attitude, it is not good to begin with, but on deployment it is just plain dangerous. Short timers stop caring, stop paying attention to the detail, but while a ship is floating in the sea that lack of ( Read more... )