A somber update

Not like my other stuff has been sweetness and light, but I was emailing with a coworker and it hit me.  I have to talk about death, again.

More specifically, my own.  You see, we just quietly passed the two year anniversary of my ALS diagnosis.  I beat the odds so far, in a two to five year life expectancy.  But this is year three.  The median.

I’m not trying to be morbid, and I am writing this lightheartedly, but every now and again it’s good to reflect.  I know my symptoms.  They are getting worse.  My arms and hands are weaker, I even had trouble driving Lively today.  It is getting harder to exhale.  I can’t shuffle around very well.  My bathroom functions are all messed up!  All, to be expected.  I’m ok, though, don’t worry about me.

Because of this reflection, I get all serious on the blog and stuff.  Things that I was quiet about before are in the forefront, like faith, abortion, things that really matter.  I am reminded of when four heroes were killed in Benghazi, and I worked counter-terrorism.  If I listened to people’s conversations the next day, I got physically angry at them if they were chatting about the Kardashians instead of the affront to our nation.  I think about things differently, and that focus helped me in my job or family.  I tend to not care about a political big picture that concedes to gain a bit back, but I care about principles.  Killing babies?  Bad!  Stop it!  Abusing minors?  Bad!  Stop it!  Killing our Ambassador?  Bad!  Stop it!  See?

Thank goodness I never tried to work for the state department.

So in this mindset, with a desire to share more of the quantum computer that is my brain with my family, I will be writing about some faith things, and some history things, and my thoughts and failures of my life.  The Confessions of the Joe .  Some, like my sister, wish to know about my time away.  Some might want to know about something else.  I promised I would write about Communion as I wrote about confirmation, but I think I will write about all of them.  I haven’t had holy orders though, so that is speculation.

If you, Reader-land, have things you’d like to hear about, from any topic, now is the time to ask.  And if I go into heresy, well I asked Bishop Athanasius Schneider to read my stuff and keep me from it, but I heard he’s pretty busy.  Fr Noah could!  But we are losing Fr Noah!  No!!!  Fr “Both Barrels” Morey!  I’m going to miss him.

Anyway, my thoughts on suffering and death?  If Bud lite lime is girly?  Yeah, I said it, McChrystal, your beer of choice is girly!  What is the proper pronunciation of the Latin C before an I?  Ask away. If nothing else you guys are going to go down the rabbit hole.