Rick Beeman

  It’s been such a strange, different and wonderful day. I remember getting the impression last night as I went to sleep that tomorrow was going to be a good day.  Sometimes God speaks to me to warn me of impending difficult days or impending good days.  Most of the time these thoughts or feelings turn out to be accurate.  But I scoffed at this notion.  How could it be possibly be a good day?  I was alone with the prospect of being snowed in for the entire day with everything around me closed or at least I thought it was closed. Last night I drove around Raleigh around 8 pm looking to buy eggs.  I couldn’t find any.  Either the stores were closed or they were out of eggs, bread and milk.    I slept in, and kept sleeping and stayed in bed for another two hours.  Normally on a Sunday I get up for church but church was all online today.  So i stayed in bed until I felt somewhat slothful.  I got up and my street was blank...

  It’s been a rough couple of days for me. Nothing much has changed.  However, the grief seems to come in waves.  This time it was accompanied by sorrow.  I think the impending winter storm was a reminder to me that I’m on my own.  My core fear is the fear of abandonment (which I’ve learned from lots of therapy) and right now I’m feeling it.  I know that God has never will ever abandon me as he promised “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  (Hebrews 13:5 and a few other places).  So I’m relying on that promise to see me through this time.  I know this period of sorrow is temporary and I’m not over reacting to it.  Instead I’m trying to do something different.  Normally when we feel pain we want to fix it immediately or as soon as we can.  But this emotional/psychological pain is different.  I can’t fix it immediately.  I know I can’t fix my situation, I can only make it worse.  So I’m trying to do something ...

  Is it possible to have a good week and a horrible week at the same time? Is it possible to filled with grief/dread while also being filled with Hope simultaneously. Sometimes I am a living, breathing, walking dichotomy.  I feel as if I’m a locomotive riding the rail of sorrow on my left and and a rail of peace on my right.  It doesn’t make any sense.  It’s been a very difficult week but I’m trying not to over react.  Some people have questioned my motives in writing this blog.  I’m not trying to elicit sympathy nor am I trying to win in the court of opinion. It reminds me of when I wrote in the original iteration of this blog when I lived in Bahrain.  I had a reader that started disputing my notions of God.  So we went to Fuddrucker’s to meet and talk.  Instead of an argument of who is the true God Allah or Jehovah, I instead talked about what is wrong with me and what is right with my God.  This so disarmed him that he started regular...

  It has been a really hard week/month/year. I mentioned yesterday about the Spiritual Novocaine that has sustained my peace through a very trying time.  I’m still trying to balance hope amidst the growing reality that encompasses me.  It’s a delicate balance to keep my hopes up while not getting my hopes too far up.  Seems confusing?  Welcome to my life.  I’ve been so disappointed in my own actions which in part led to my present circumstances.  So I guess I’m trying to protect myself from even more disappointments.  I’m hoping this is rock bottom.  I just am loathe to discover if there are any sublevels to rock bottom.  I remember going through my first divorce.  Every time I thought I hit rock bottom there were still a few more sub-levels which I stumbled to.  The difference this time, instead of praying for restoration, which I am, I am instead focusing my prayers on seeking God at every opportunity.  My faith is wholl...

  By all accounts I should be an absolute mess right now.  Perhaps tomorrow I will be.  But for today, I’m filled with such an uneasy peace that doesn’t really make much logical sense.  It has been an incredibly difficult week emotionally speaking.  My greatest fear in life is happening right before my eyes.  It’s like a slow moving car crash that I’m unable to do anything about as much as I try.  If I would have been in this position just six months ago, I probably would’ve needed some type of anti-depression medication just to survive.  For now, the sense of unease is palatable because at this point it seemingly seems unavoidable.  My wife and I are in the process of separating all of our shared accounts, divesting financially and socially of our all our family connections, assets come next.  Think of getting off netflix, insurance, phone plans.  So this separation is getting real.  It went from Theoretical to Practical this ...

  Yesterday was a really bad day for me.  The grief seems to come in waves and yesterday was a Tsunami.  I deliberately did not want to write because who wants to read more about me crying in my keyboard. (Apparently I have several readers from the Netherlands that do,  I don’t know how this gets all over the world but I’m thankful)  I had been having a lot of hopeful yet even happy days recently.  But yesterday the separation/divorce escalated from theoretical to more practical. It’s becoming more of a sad reality even though I’m constantly praying for miracles to occur.   It shook me to me core as I don’t want this.  I don’t want any of it.  But my vote no longer counts.  One person in this marriage knows this is a really bad idea and the other person doesn’t know it yet but will someday.  So I did the only thing I know to do that works.  I waited.  Then I prayed.  I praised God.  It didn’t fix my attitude or d...

  It’s been awhile since I blogged. I honestly missed sharing but I wanted to make sure I kept my priorities in the right place, thus the absence.  I had the kids a good chunk of the winter break from school and it was fabulous.  My focus was entirely on them.  There was just a lot of giggling and joy spread around.  From the despair of this past year for me it was such a welcome change.  I was anticipating a huge drop off in despair/grieving once I dropped the kids off.  You see, I loved being married, I loved being a great dad, I loved being a family.  To have that ripped away has been very painful.  I’m doing the only thing I know to do and that is to lean into my faith.  I don’t have any answers right now and I don’t know what the future holds.  I only know the promise that “Seek First the Kingdom and His Righteousness and ALL these things will be added unto you.”  I’m seeing that play out in real time.  God is faithfu...

  I’ve had an abundance of pendulum swinging days this past year. It seems like I’m living the life of extremes from the despair to the hopeful on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.  The swings have been so extreme that at times I feel emotionally bipolar.  Intellectually, I know that God will see me through this.  I know that I’m supposed to live a life reflecting the fruits of the spirit, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness and Self-control.  I know when I’m living my life right, which I am and plan on continuing to do so, I will exhibit those traits in my life on a consistent basis in the future.  No where on that list is loneliness, depression, despair, hopelessness which I sometimes experience.  So I know those emotions/feelings are not from God. I have to trudge through until the real fruits re-emerge which they invariably will and have at many times these past few months.  So I asked Chat GPT if I was crazy.  Th...

  I figured today would be better and it certainly was. I just need to anticipate the horrible days and incorporate them into my routine as part of the recovery process.  I’m thankful that these horrible days are becoming fewer and far between.  I’m grateful to be making significant psychological progress.  6 months ago it was 6 and ½ horrible days and a ½ decent day.  Then it switched to 5 horrible days and 2 decent ones.  The closer I got to chasing God the more the horrible days inverted with the good days.  I’m thankful that I’m up to 5 good days to every 2 bad days now.  I aim to keep the streak headed in the right direction.  The positive part for me is that the good days are NOT dictated by circumstance.  Thus they are more achievable with consistency.  The thing I’m doing is “Seeking God with all my heart, soul and mind” on a continuous basis.   All these things are slowly being added unto me.   Today was a ve...

  I should have seen this coming.  I tried to prepare myself even.  But today I’m just so discouraged.  Perhaps its because I had such a wonderful weekend.  I mean it was a spectacular weekend with my girls coming on the heels of feeling hopeful and optimistic that my life may have finally turned around.  I remember an old sermon from TD Jakes that I heard exhorting, “Don’t let your highs get too high or your lows get too low.”  I leaned into my highs because it just felt so good being a kind of family this weekend.  Now I’m facing the consequence of the emotional bounce back the opposite way.  Maybe I should work on not letting my lows get too low again.   Nothing consequential happened to me today either way.  Maybe its simply because I miss my girls.  Their absence reminds me that I’m alone without a full time family. If you do have a family, cherish them.  I thought I was doing that but apparently I was doing it t...