Woke up really early today, 5:30 A, and headed down to CrossWinds church to meet up with my old Friday morning men’s group. This group is led by my great friend James. It is a group that I had gone to faithfully the year I lived in California right before moving to Bahrain. When I say faithfully, I meant every other week, for when I lived in California, I always flew back to Houston for the 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend visitation. I only missed one weekend, and that was because I had to close on buying my house on a non-visitation weekend, and surprise surprise X didn’t want to switch. I have made an extreme effort to stay in my kids lives even across the world but it seems like the harder I try to worse it becomes. You’d think any ex-spouse would realize that the relationship with the birth parent is so important to support. Unfortunately, I don’t have that relationship. That is why I need your prayers. It seems like my relationship with my children gets worse and worse as she puts her spin on things. I can’t win. But I know that God answers prayers and my prayer is that I can be reconciled to my children. Im getting a little ahead of myself here. So it was nice to meet up with the guys this morning. It was my good friend Mark that was one of the first divorced guys to tell me…”Thanks for sharing your story. I thought my divorce/ex was bad, but after hearing your story, I realize don’t have it so bad.” It was a compliment, because I try not to let anything that she does affect me anymore. However, when the kids are involved it does get to me…every time. That is the hard part to deal with here. All the guys were really interested to hear how God was using me over there, what life was like, and what the future held. They are dear friends and it was so nice to catch up with them.
After the group, I headed home, grabbed the Czech and the parents and headed towards Monterey. It was a lovely drive up there as we drove through Santa Cruz. We had a fabulous lunch at Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay Inn, I believe. Right on the Ocean and the golf course. Then we went for a scenic drive down the 17 mile drive and Highway 1. If ever I needed a reminder that California is the greatest state in the U.S. this was it. Some of the scenery was breathtaking. Dramatic vistas where the water crashes against the rocks. Some of the scenes are truly breathtaking. I’ll try to post some pictures on this page in a couple of days. Im way behind in the picture arena. Then we all headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Arguably it is the best aquarium in the world. I had been in kind of a funk all day and finally it hit me why. The last time I was at the Aquarium and Monterey is four years ago, when I was married with my kids. We had such a magical day there. I was very melancholy missing them and not being able to connect with them during this season. I saw some children doing dives in the wave pool and I could only remember when my daughter did that years ago. So my time at the aquarium was quite bittersweet.
After the Aquarium we stopped at In N Out burger. This was my first trip to In N Out in about 9 months. For those of you readers in the Middle East, Im so sorry you never had the opportunity to taste a delicious In N Out burther. Its truly amazing fast food. I think I need to go there tomorrow as well to get it out of my system.
I have to cut this short tonight. The Czech has an early flight back to NC tomorrow. I can’t believe a week has passed so suddenly. Im also on a plane heading back to Bahrain tomorrow. I might now be able to blog for a day or two as the length of the flight and the loss of the day, makes it difficult to be consistent. I’ll log in when I can.
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