Rick Beeman

  Inexplicable Hope The surge hit me around 11a, seemingly out of nowhere.  I’ve chronicled the last couple of days have been tough.  I’m really missing my family and grieving at the same time.  This is always made worse after I have the kids and then I have to return them. It’s the extreme of amazing joy to instant sorrow.  It’s quite bizarre really.     It was a remote learning day again for school.  So I stayed up late on Monday doing most of my work so I could have a more relaxing Tuesday.   After I finished the remote learning assignments I headed to the gym at 9:30p.  Why, because I could.  I hadn’t worked out for a couple of days so I wanted to try to make up for lost time.  A new 24/7 Planet Fitness Gym opened really close to my house so it’s very convenient.  Plus, It’s covered under my insurance plan…Win! Normally when I sleep my 10 lb bed hog of a dog Snoopy  sleeps curled up right next to me, I c...

  I feel as if I’m on a roller coaster of emotion.  I had such a spectacular 3 days with my girls.  The thing is, because of the separation my time with them is limited.  So I’m learning to maximize every moment that I have.  I know I should have been doing this all along.    My focus is only on them so I don’t bother writing in the blog or exercising or doing anything else that I normally do when I am alone. Now that I’ve returned them I’m back to feeling alone again.  As high as my high for the past three days was, I’m trying to avoid the low of loneliness.  I know God is there for me and I’ll embrace Him but now I’m just feeling the raw emotion of loss.  It sucks.  So let me recount the good from this past weekend and hopefully that will lift my spirits.   I got the girls on Friday and we like to plan out the weekend’s meals. They like to eat healthy, something I don’t do as much as I should when I’m alone.   ...

  It’s been a tough week as I have documented.  So perhaps my busiest day of the week happened at a good time.  We did have a two hour delay to start because of the icy roads.  It was nice getting an extra bit of sleep in.  It was the first actual day of the semester.  I’m always nervous about the first day as I see how many knowledgeable crew/students I’ll have for our productions.  The good news is that I have two very good and adept editors for both my broadcasting classes.  This means I won’t have to do the extra work and can focus my efforts in other areas.  Plus it seems like the classes are all excited to be there.  I’m trying to establish the reputation as the “broadcast” kids are the cool kids.  It helps that I have several returning students.  They take the lead and help train and teach the new students.  It’s a better experience for them as they develop leadership skills and it’s less work for me.  Win-win....

  Yesterday was intense.  I did not like it.  I can remember the moments in my life where I just stopped and sobbed.  It was surreal because it just doesn’t happen that often.  I felt truly broken while at the same time comforted because God knew ahead of time of how I would feel.  Now you might call that chance encounter I had, a coincidence. You can almost decry any Act of God as a coincidence.  I chose NOT to do so.  If God knows the numbers of hairs on my head (Matthew 10:30) and collects my tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8).  Surely he must care when I am broken in spirit. Yesterday I was truly broken.   I do miss my family.  But God promises that He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3).  That is what I am counting on.  I just have to realize the healing may not come overnight as much as I want it to.  It could be days weeks/months/years.  I have to be prepared for it.  This is...

  I have been writing quite a bit lately about the confounding peace that I am experiencing in the midst of all the unhappiness. I am quite surprised by it all even as I experience brief moments of joy and happiness.  I am trying to keep this all in perspective as I know that there will be good days and bad days and a lot of Blah days.  Today was a bad day.  I’m just really discouraged.  I know intellectually that I’ll get through it and tomorrow will be a better day.  But right now I’m just down.  I can’t do anything to fix my situation or make it better and that is the frustrating part of it all.  The only thing I can do is just not make it any worse and endure.  I have found a good strategy when these moods come upon me (other than the obvious with a lot of prayer and praise) is to call it a day and go to sleep early.  That surprisingly has been quite effective.  Yet at 8:41 pm as I write this, I just can’t bring myself to go to ...

  I am getting comfortable sitting in my discomfort. I was able to make it out today to go exercise after nearly 2 days of being iced in.  For my fear of abandonment issues and my distaste of being alone, I managed fairly well.  I actually had a few moments of joy thrown in there as well.  I have to slowly retrain my brain into my new reality.  I don’t want to embrace it but I also don’t want to mope around for the rest of my life. Feeling sorry for yourself only traps you further into the muck of despair and discontent.  Instead of fighting for yesterday I am attempting to embrace tomorrow.  Along the way I have to be at peace for today.  It’s all a bit poetic but it seems to be working little by little.  I am living out the serenity prayer in real time.  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  With a few setbacks every now and then, I’...