Rick Beeman

  A strange sensation just swept over me.  It was familiar but I haven’t felt it in awhile.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened to me today.  It was the very definition of routine.  Yet I had a good day.  I’m still alone, I still miss my children, I still miss the family that I used to have, yet it was a good day.  I’ve been wracked by guilt, self-condemnation and loneliness for months now.  I didn’t feel them today.  What is confounding to me is that I have hope or maybe I’ve rediscovered hope. Logic says that I shouldn’t be hopeful because nothing changed from yesterday.    The only thing that I’ve been doing lately is Seeking God first and trusting him for rest.  Today I felt the dividends of that.  I’m not happy.  That much is clear, but today I was ok not being happy.  Today I was OK feeling Peace and Joy.  They seem to go hand in hand.  I must be doing something right.  I’m not one to judge...

This is the third part in a series where I am examining my life in detail.  This is in part to evaluate my past so I can learn from my mistakes as well as give me hope for the future.  I have answered who am I? and What have I done?  Now I will examine marriage and relationships.  I was very fortunate to grow up in a God fearing home.  I understand that I won the genetic lottery as I lived a very privileged life growing up.  I didn’t really appreciate all the blessings that I had, and I don’t think many kids do.  For me it was just normal.  I think if you have a healthy childhood, no matter how you grow up, rich or poor that is normal to you.  I have taken many parenting classes over the years.  I have surmised from these several things.  But the principal thing is unity for a parent.  The most important aspect of being a mother or a father is for the husband to love the wife and likewise.  This will give the...

#2 What a surprise! I flew back in November to surprise Jennifer…and boy were we both surprised. We had been so careful as to “protect” ourselves. Then my last night there…well we got a little… how shall I say this, less fastidious on the consequences for a few good reasons. Well they seemed good at the time anyways. After all, we still wanted to travel the world, and being situated in Dubai (right in the middle of everything) made that all possible. So this is a little PG-13 in the form of imagery, nevertheless, afterwards I turned to her and proclaimed. I think I just made you pregnant. She of course blew me off. I didn’t really want to believe it myself. So I fly back to Dubai the next day. As Im having my morning chat with God, I very clearly and matter of factly heard Him say, “Jennifer’s pregnant.” So all of sudden, I start convincing myself maybe I can’t really hear from God. Then He clearly said “Whether you want to accept it right now or not, she’s pregnant. Yo...

It’s the weekend for me. This usually means very long talks with Jennifer. We are now less than a week away from her being here. Im pretty excited about it. The only visitors I’ve had have been my parents. While they were nice to have…something tells me I’m going to have a lot more fun with Jenni. I stayed up til 4 am talking with her. Then again at 9 am (my time) and we spoke for another two hours. I just can’t get enough of her. That is such a good feeling to have. I went to lunch with Pat. He really is a good guy to talk to. I told you he is the coach out here for the Professional basketball league of Bahrain. He’s been coaching internationally his entire career. It’s a pretty good gig. He gets to see the world and meet all sorts of people. Throughout his career he told me that in all the leagues he has coached, his teams have won 20 championships. By any measure that is impressive. Especially because each stop he has he has to learn a whole new team, immediately. ...

Whew…what a tough day. The pressure is so thick at the office you can really feel it. Or maybe I can just feel it. It is suffocating. There is so much pressure to get work in, but then I have to finish the work we do have. I have to finish, and have it approved before I can access the funds. Im finding it much harder to get that process done over here. I had two meetings today to hopefully get the two big projects Im working on signed off so we can get the cash in. But the one meeting was postponed for another week. Then the big meeting didn’t go as well as I had planned either. They are caught up with the minute details. They wanted a lot of little things changed. Overall they were happy with the project. But then one person chimed in at the end questioning the philosophy of the main aspect of the project. I held my breath, because if he would have gotten his wish, we’re talking major major changes. But they all realized that they are up against a real deadline. There ...