I fully appreciate your desire to do the things you want to do while balancing God, wife and kids, not to mention a job. I, too, struggle with those very same issues. It is especially true of my job’s frequent requirements for me to leave my family for months and some times a year at a time. The guilt that I feel seems to be equal in weight to what Atlas had to put up with.

By the time we reach our tenth anniversary next summer we will have been seperated for nearly 36 months. All because of my job. That is insane. Hopefully, when I retire from this job, I will have the opportunity to wait on her hand and foot until the day that God calls us home. She deserves no less than that. Forty years of such servitude wouldn’t even remotely make up for all the tears and frustration that she feels in the course of just one day, let alone the nearly 1095 days that I will have been gone. Thankfully, I am eligible to retire in a little less than four years. I wonder how many more months I’ll have to lose to the fight to keep everyone else safe and free.

Only God knows. Shalom and may Jesus the Christ keep you and your family safe and together. Remember, every opportunity that you miss to hug your family and tell them that you love them is an opportunity that will never be given back to you. Cherish them.

Your brother in Christ writing from Ur of the Chaldeans,
Jim