Travel blog 01: Abraham and how to take a Win

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I'm not going to tell you about her, because you wouldn't believe me. I don't mean in the sense of wife googles. I am very mature and practical about it. We are objectively a good fit. But I mean, everything that sorrounds us, and our circumstances. The strangeness that we are objectively a good fit.

My brother calls it tin foil hat coincidences. I call it "all right I can take a hint God". It's enough funny little coincidences to make a man with light schizophrenic tendensies break a sweat. There is a bit of making your own luck involved, but even then you still have to accept your own luck. And there is a lot of luck I didn't make.

But mostly I won't tell you about it because she belongs to me and she is precious. And the God lesson in there is the important part of Christianity that no one ever talks about: learning to say, yes please thank you sir.

It's polite to decline a gift once, “no please I couldn't possibly”. It is not polite to keep declining it if he says "I insist". Then the polite thing to do is accept.

When God does nice things for you, give it back to God, because it belongs to him in the first place. But, and this is crucial: if God says "I insist" then you better damn well accept the gift.

When life gives you 100 lemons, give 100 glasses of lemonade back to God.

We visited my dad this weekend and went shooting. A very happy memory. Take your gf to the shooting range where she belongs. The gfs yearn for the shooting range.

My dad is getting old and going full boomer lib derangement. The man who taught me the danger of TV is now living in lala land TV world. But if we spend a day together, we can have little 5 minute moments of real communication here and there. I treasure that.

We still have to have a difficult conversation about his new family and what he is doing. But it will be difficult for him only. If he listens to me it will save his relationship and the future of two people he has involved himself with.

Dad thinks I won't be coming back. He won't listen to me when I tell him we'll be back next year. Part of that is being a wise old man who knows better than me. Part of that is motivated reasoning. Part of that is that it would neat and compartmentalised, provide a tail end, happy ending, "and then my difficult son moved to ultima Thule and lived happily ever after", Frodo off to the undying lands. I grew up and can ride the bike myself, and he is free to enjoy his last years in his little time machine, the VR experience of being a family man in the 90s, without the inconvenient imposition from real life. That won't work of course and he'll be calling me more than usual. That's why it's going to be a difficult conversation for him.

A year ago this would have been tremendously painful for me. Today it is not. Because I know that I love him. And I know the pain is not something he is putting on me. It's spilling over.

One of the myriad lessons of Abraham and Isaak is, god gives you a blessing, what are you supposed to do? Give it back to God. Then if God says "I insist" then you damn better well accept.