Rick Beeman

I wasn’t sure if I should write about this just yet, but I got a few inquiries from my teaser line last night so I probably should let the cat out of the bag. I'm amazed by the support that I get through this blog. Especially for the readers from College and Los Angeles that know me and the pain I went through. It seems there are a lot of people pulling for me to be happy...which is an amazing and appreciated experience for me. I do a lot of online dating here, Its kind of fun and plays to my strengths as a writer. Its hard to meet good Christian girls in Bahrain, because there are so few of them around. So I go to the online world, and that has its own set of obstacles since its quite daunting for the thought of anyone leaving their home and venture into the mysterious world of the Middle East. So God has continually reassured that he had a “perfect” plan for my life and that included the emotional aspect. What is amazing about being here is that I’m alone, but Im very rare...

What a great great day. I haven’t had one of these in awhile so it was very refreshing. The day started off right with finishing the Adam Jones-abduction piece. I so like making movies, especially those that can inspire change in people. That is why I got into the industry. I saw a movie called Cry Freedom in 1988. I was so moved and motivated about Attenborough’s piece on Apartheid, I decided then and there to study this medium and learn how to maximize its influential power. I’ve been doing that on a small scale my entire career, I think now that God is calling me to a larger scale. What I did with this Adam Jones piece is doing just that. Using the medium to enact social change. God called me to change the world. Maybe just maybe, my work can help change the world for this one family. There are talks of making 20,000 copies and distributing them all throughout Bahrain and Qatar. I for this one family would be doing what I set out to be doing in my career. I could be hel...

I am sooooooo tired right now. I haven’t been treating my body very well in the sleep department. I have a tendency to stay up way too late chatting with friends. Its good that the weekend is just about here. I have some potential exciting news to share…not on the location front but other potential news. I always go to fast in everything so prudence is telling me to delay. So I will. I finished up the documentary on Adam today. I was quite pleased the way it turns out. The editor of the newspaper came by my office to look at it. Here we both our leaders of various large media departments each with a common goal to use our medium in order to enact social change. There was this special sense of oneness of purpose. It was true camaraderie. We are going to use the media…to not change the world…at the moment…but we are trying to change the world for one family. For us…that is enough. So however I can help Stan…and he can help me….we have the same common goal. He’s going to...

I was going to write something, but I wound up chatting with a new friend for almost three hours. This internet thingy might catch on. So I don’t want to be burdened down with this blog…or write just for the sake of writing. That wastes your time and mine. I want this to be uplifting and inspirational, not just writing to fill up the page…what’s the point in that. That said…I do think Im addicted to writing in this blog. I do have an addictive personality. At times in my life I’ve been addicted to non-healthy things, which have been chronicled in here. Now I try to channel my personality into being addicted to healthy things, and I think this blog has been very healthy for me. I know it has affected some of you readers out there. So I’ll probably put something in here…or at least try to put something in here everyday…most likely for my own ego. Im afraid if I’ll stop for one day…I would stop forever…which Im sure would make some people happy. But Im not going to do that. I...

I have really been battling being down lately. Im just in a major funk. I know that God is doing a work in me and that I just have to be patient. We had our home church tonight…I like the sound of that so much better than Positive Living group. But the marketing stigma of church would keep people away. We had a big group tonight, 10. For the first time in a long time I almost ran out of food. It was interesting, we had 3 Christians, 5 muslims and two agnostics tonight. The sermon from Joel was just for me. It was about “blooming where you are” and waiting for God’s perfect timing. God is building something in me and waiting for His perfect timing to break it out. So even though Im there to encourage all these other people, instead it was myself that needed the encouragement. I am quite honest with my group, I tell them everything, warts and all. Joel tends to focus on the positive blessings of God which is great. But when I share the negative It kind of proves that Osteen...

Im sitting in an outdoor café waiting for my friend to arrive. Its an Italian style café but none of this Olive Garden look, this is authentic Italian, by Italians. It is very nice. The restaurant must be next to a mosque because the call to prayer just blasted me over the Mosque’s PA system. It was only a 1-2 line call about 30 seconds. The calls in Saudi Arabia go out for 5-10 minutes. I actually kind of like the calls to prayer as its soothing and very colorfully descriptive of the life and faith here. Its too bad they don’t have calls to prayers in the U.S. to remind Christians that they should pray. I wonder how many of us go an entire day without praying even once. I mentioned this before, I have a habit of rolling out of bed before my feet hit the floor to consecrate the day to God. Its my way of physically denying self. Since I have an addictive personality, I’m addicted to starting out my day that way, which isn’t a bad thing. If Christians had a call to prayer whe...

I feel like there has been a cloud hovering over me all weekend. Kind of like a Charlie Brown character or something. But when I take step back and examine my life, I have a lot going for me right now. Im very very fortunate. But why the cloud, when things should be so positive? I have mentioned Im in a bit of a transition period. So I feel like life is on a holding pattern for me. I need routine, but for some reason, Im just kind of floating and waiting. I haven’t been able to get in an exercise or workout routine. That probably adds fuel to the cloud hovering above. I think this might be a season of testing/growth for me. I am moving out of my luxury flat next week. When I first got here, I paid more than I should to get a 3 bedroom flat. I did so with the hopes that my children would come to visit me and I wanted them to have their own room. But when they chose not to come, the extra bedrooms turned into surplus space. Guy lived with me for four months while he was he...

Hey Im not really feeling like doing the whole blog thing tonight. But I will tell you something pretty remarkable that happened. I have a person who called me on Thursday and asked me to find him a divorce lawyer. It broke my heart. So I prayed about it, and God gave me some specific things to say to him and I prayed. So he asked me again this morning. So I prayed about it and thought we should get together. So I won’t get into the crux of the conversation, so by the end of the night, instead of asking for a divorce lawyer, he was asking me where to find a marriage counselor, which I’ll surely be able to do. I could really feel the Holy Spirit move and give me the exact words he needed to hear. Now I am not telling you this to say how great I am, because honestly I believe I had very little to do with it all. It was all the Holy Spirit and I was just willing. If I can help save marriages through this blog or via any other medium I am glad to do it. OK…more tomorrow.

What a great new year’s it was. I think, it was probably one of the best new year’s experiences for me ever. It’s a fitting end to what has truly been a remarkable a year. A year that God showed his faithfulness to me time and time again. It was a year where I reaped what I had sown the previous four years. Professionally and Spiritually it was my best year ever. Psychologically, it was a big comeback year. Healthwise, I’ve never been more fit, or mentally, more attune. The only thing I really didn’t peak at was emotionally. Im still tired of living alone. But I just have to trust God that it will change soon. I think each part of loneliness today, will be multiplied into 10 parts of joy tomorrow. That is just the way that God works. That’s why he holds all your tears in a bottle and counts them. I had several options where to go for New Year’s tonight. But the television show Im trying to get off the ground, Rock N Royal. Seemed to be the best bet. Hassan’s, the music...

I really don’t have much to say tonight. Im becoming pretty anti-social. I like to come home at night and relax. Although I am going out to a big party tomorrow night for new years. I was going to go to the local Bahrain Cinema Club tonight. They show art house movies on Wednesdays. Then I got to chat with Ms. Florida and two hours later we were finished. I would much rather chat/connect with someone online than sit through a movie. I am not an invalid. I do go out often with friends. On a typical week I go out to lunch or dinner 4-5 times with different friends and then play squash 2-3 times a week with different folks. That is in addition to being in close contact with the 20 employees I interact with at my office. That said, my social life online is much greater than my social life in the real world. Why is that? Perhaps its because Im a really fast typist and can express myself much better with typed words. Or because the online thing is my portal of communication ba...

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you can probably tell Im very passionate about a lot of things in this life, my faith, my work, my value system, my children, I’d like to be passionate about a love interest, but I might have to wait on that one. Because of my passion and confidence in God, sometimes my attitude may come across to some as self-righteous. If it does, I apologize because that is not my heart at all. I think the compensate for that, that is why Im so open with my hurts, pains, and frustrations. Its interesting that preachers, unless they are caught, very rarely (at least according to my observations) share their downfalls or struggles. I wonder why that is. Do they need to keep a certain image in tact so their congregation isn’t disillusioned? Are their parishioner’s faith that dependent on God’s conduit? If so, that is pretty sad. Our faith needs to be built upon our own relationship with God, not someone else’s. I think I don’t have that same restricti...

I was having a really down day today. I was just zapped of emotional energy. I go in waves, sometimes Im super positive other times Im a realist. Its important to note that I never go into the pessimistic mode. I think if you are a pessimist and a Christian, something is wrong. I have long talks with a dear friend here who tends towards pessimistic thinking but is one of the strongest most knowledgeable Christians that I know. Something is wrong with that line of thinking. But I don’t think I’ll be able to convince this person of that overnight. God needs to do a work. So the first thing I did today was interview Adam’s mother, Rebecca. Rebecca is in town just for Christmas and couple days after and is heading to Qatar tonight to resume her battle to gain custody of her son. The story is quite tragic and I think the reason why it affected me so much is that her son was physically abducted. Whereas I believe my children were psychologically abducted. So I could relate to he...

A very nice day for me today. It was a day off of work for me today, a holiday. It’s the last day of Ashoora, where the Shiite Muslims beat themselves in penance. The Sunnis don’t celebrate this, as they think it is rather silly. I went by a small village in the afternoon and I saw a bunch of cars. I didn’t think the festivities would be until the evening. So I decided go have a look. In this small village, which looks very middle eastern, they was a big crowd watching the guys in a parade. The Imam (or Mosque pastor/priest) would have a microphone and be singing prayers to Allah, the men in the parade behind him would either respond or rhythmically beat themselves. It was actually kind of cool to listen to, though I don’t believe in what they are doing. There were thousands of me, in this tiny little village. The parade was men about 10 to a row, that must have been 200-300 rows deep. I couldn’t really tell because processional went on and on and on. I watched for about 20...

I ran across some interesting news today. It confirms what I’ve been thinking all along. Forbes magazine, a very reputable magazine ran a survey and declared that Bahrain was the friendliest country in the world. Really? I found that very hard to believe that Bahrain, as tiny as it would be the first at anything. I did not dispute its findings however. Bahrain is an incredibly friendly place, which is even more surprising considering the negative stereotype of the Middle East. I think it hones back to what I’ve been saying since day 1 in the blog, and finally its been validated. Im quite thrilled about that. Yahoo picked up on the story and spread it throughout the Internet. Canada, last year’s winner was #2, and the U.S. was all the way down to #10. Here’s the article if you want more details: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/30/worlds-friendliest-countries-lifestyle-travel-canada-bahrain-hsbc.html Bahrain seems to be 50% Indian. The joke is that if Indians were to leave tha...

It turned out to be a very nice day. You know it feels so good to have the prayers of others. I can physically feel when someone is praying for me. It feels very comforting and relaxing, like a spiritual xanax. I’m very fortunate that I have this blog, and Im very fortunate that others are motivated to pray for me through some of the information that I share on it. I think that is reaping and sowing coming back to me. I’ve made quite an effort to help people over the years and I think this is one way that it is coming back to me. So I want you readers to know two things. You are appreciated. Two, the prayers that you pray for me are going to come back to you eventually. I believe that karma is a biblical principal that works all the time in the form of reaping and sowing. Oh yeah, off-topic, but speaking of Karma, I was in the mall last week, eating next to a guy in a wheel-chair. I noticed the brand name on the wheel chair was…Karma. Can you believe a wheelchair company wo...

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi said that. I adhered to that principle today. I was really feeling sorry for myself. Normally Im pretty positive and loving life but every once in awhile I crash. Thankfully this crash usually only lasts one to two days. Maybe its my emotional time of the month. So I cried out to God. “I don’t like this God, its not very fair. Why aren’t you doing all the things that you said you would do for me faster.” I know the verse in Isaiah, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” You know I’ve been claiming that verse for years now, Im tired of waiting. I expressed all of this to God this morning and throughout the day. I guess you could say Im going through my emotional/spiritual time of the month. I know that God is faithful, I know I will emerge from this funk soon. So this isn’t a sign of rebellion or rejection of God. I just believe that when we are hurting we need to cry out to God. I rejoice...

Im not working on any big projects at the moment at work. Its mainly just managing the company and waiting to hire a couple of new sales reps. This will make sales rep #6 and #7. Its kind of frustrating because the people that I want to hire aren’t necessarily agreed upon by management. Race and religious affiliation are huge factors in hiring here, unfortunately. It’s a commonly accepted practice. The terms all men are created equal doesn’t apply out here. It’s American idealism that is only shared with a small percentage of the global population. The only thing that is close here, is all Muslims are created equal sometimes. That is shown upon during the call to prayer. They line up in a line with no difference in socio-economic status or race. The ritual for praying is that they face mecca and kneel and put their face to the ground, then stand up again. This takes place over and over again for the 30-45 minutes of prayer 5 times a day. If you think about the physicality...

What a wonderful day that it turned out to be. Remember I have been really missing my kids lately. I have this incredible screen saver on the Mac, which takes my photos from iphoto and creates a mosaic, so hundreds of pictures create a mosaic which then morphs into the actual photo. I find myself watching that for long stretches of time. It is mesmerizing and entertaining. The pictures are mostly older, when I was still married. It makes me long for earlier times. The pictures are quite sentimental. I never went through my photo album to delete pictures of X. So she would pop up on the screensaver both individually and as a family every once in awhile. It was so reminiscent of earlier times. I hated to delete those pictures because it felt like I was deleting a part of my history that is/was very dear to me. Maybe by deleting them, I was convincing myself that I was permanently erasing her from my life. I go through these periods where Im still delusional that someday m...

The late night last night is really catching up with me now. I usually hope the Raiders will get blown out early, then I can go to bed and still get a decent night’s sleep. But last night they had the gall to win with :35 seconds left at 3:30 am my time. Of course I had to stay up to watch it. I even screamed when they scored their touchdown. Who screams for a 5 win 9 loss team that has lost more football games over the last six years than anyone in football. Why? I guess because my expectations are so low, that when they generate even the most minute portion of excitement, I have to get my yelp in. But every time I get too enthused with a sports team Im following, I have to remember what Jerry Seinfeld said about sports. We are all rooting for laundry. That’s what is comes down to, we cheer for the uniform and just whomever seems to be wearing it at the time. We just have this inner need to think we are better than someone else. Keep in mind…im describing myself with this...

Nice and quiet day at the office today. I think things are slowing down in December with all the holidays. We have Christmas coming up, but Muslims generally don’t celebrate that, but some do. Our office will be closed for the Christians, but the Hindus, and Muslims still work. I know that seems unfair. But during Ramadan, the Muslims got time off of work and the Christians had to keep going. So it evens out in the end. Im not really sure what holidays the Hindus observe. They have so many Gods in Hinduism. But one thing about the Indians, they are very hard workers and extremely bright. Ashoora is right around the corner. That is the festival where the Shiite Muslims, cut themselves for penance for killing the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson 1300 years ago. It’s a strange festival/observance. I have pictures of last year’s Ashoora in the photo section of this blog. Not too many Muslims work around this holiday. But it’s only a holiday for Shiite Muslims, the Sunni musli...