2025-06-20 My Wife’s Birthday

Father’s Day was last Sunday, and was very difficult for me. It is hard for most people to conceptualize, but being in the presence of other families who carry on their public lives in a relatively pleasant manner is a painful reminder of my own missing wife and children. It didn’t help that the Vacation Bible School kids were up front at church singing songs as well.

Further, today would be my wife’s birthday. I can’t celebrate it.

However, I have come to some sobering truths that give me more peace than I’ve had before this point, most of it bound around the truths represented within a few key passages throughout the Bible.

A. God Gives Us Our Position

I am now an outcast among society, living in my car to make the finances last as long as possible in the absence of any income.

However, one truth that permeates throughout Scripture is that our position is entirely God’s domain:

• Lamentations 3:37-39 – Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Do not both adversity and good come from the mouth of the Most High? Why should any mortal man complain, in view of his sins?

If that sinful state not clear, the uncomfortable and inescapable truth that should bind us all under a heavy burden is our mutual participation in sins that drive us away from any possible goodness:

• Romans 2:9-11 – There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek; but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Greek. For God does not show favoritism.
• Romans 3:22b-23 – There is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, …

Humanity deserved much worse, and it was an act of God’s grace that He didn’t wipe out humanity at some earlier point:

• Romans 3:25 – God presented Him as the atoning sacrifice through faith in His blood, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand.

Yeshua the Christ, in an act of profound generosity, fulfilled the Hebrew role of both High Priest and blood sacrifice, creating a permanent fulfillment for the sins we otherwise would have been required to make constant blood payment for:

• Hebrews 9:11-14 – But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come, He went through the greater andmore perfect tabernacle that is not made by hands and is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by the blood of goats and calves, but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that their bodies are clean, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God!

As a Christian, the responsibilities shift profoundly for us. Hebrews 10-12 make it abundantly clear how to respond:

• Hold resolutely to the hope we profess.
• Consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.
• Don’t neglect meeting together, irrespective of what others may do.
• Encourage one another, especially as the world becomes evil.
• Pursue peace and holiness with everyone.
• All of this is motivated by faith, which translates literally in the Greek as “trust”.

And, in all of this, we are to keep enduring:

• Hebrews 12:7-9 – Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you do not experience discipline like everyone else, then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Furthermore, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Should we not much more submit to the Father of our spirits and live?
• Lamentations 3:31-33 – For the Lord will not cast us off forever. Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion according to His abundant loving devotion. For He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.
• Lamentations 3:40-42 – Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD. Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: “We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven.”

In our intellect and talent, Tori and I have been exceedingly idolatrous.

• Isaiah 42:8 – I am the LORD; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols.

In particular, we have given glory to our minds and self-sufficiency. We never gave Him His rightful attribution:

• Psalm 24:1-2 – The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.

I have renounced much of my philosophical discoveries, and have discovered how utterly complicated I’ve made things, which leads to my second point.

B. Worldly Answers Are Insufficient

One of the most damaging ideas Tori and I engaged in was to trust in man’s wisdom.

Believe it or not, modern psychology has been partly to blame for the troubles we’ve experienced.

I’ve had time to look back, and I’ve realized that the most destructive force upon our individual souls was in how we valued Jordan Peterson and other secular psychology sources for wisdom. Everything in this world may be very effective at identifying what a problem is or how a problem came to be, but generating any reliable solutions takes an entirely different set of skills and understanding.

The answers within man’s wisdom vary, but they are all insufficient:

C. Idolatry Leads to Bitterness

I can testify from experience that any effort to defy these seemingly counter-intuitive directives will lead to a root of bitterness (Hebrews 12:5, Deuteronomy 29:18-19):

1. First, we do what is right in our own eyes (Proverbs 14:12).
2. We end up constructing a well-established “idol” through what we value (Isaiah 44:9-20).
   • That idol can represent easily as “family”, or “money”, or “freedom”.
   • It can also be more intricate, such as “my self-sufficiency”, “my friends’ trustworthiness”, or even “I matter”.
3. That idol is a dead thing, and thoroughly insufficient to fix our issues.
4. Normally, we’d feel anger about the failed issues, but since we’ve been sacrificing for that thing to have it in a position beyond its designed place, it’s very hard to get angry at that “superior being” we’ve crafted.
5. Suppressed anger slowly becomes bitterness, which bleeds into everything else.
6. Eventually, with enough bitterness, we perform sins deeper and worse than we could ever have thought possible.

D. The Practical Conclusion

In all of this, I can say with certainty the following:

1. The root of bitterness has been in my marriage, probably since the beginning. It was God’s grace to let these things happen before anything worse could have come through our family.
2. God has given me this heavy burden because it is the place He wants me: as an outcast and wretch among Americans. It is a blessed place because we live in a wealthy nation, but I have been cursed among my peers with a missing wife and children and a career pathway in ruins.
3. If Tori is enduring a severe burden as well, then this is God’s discipline upon her, and I sincerely hope she is growing to the sanctification He has in store for our family (Ephesians 2:10).
4. If Tori is doing well, this would be a severe spiritual risk for her, since that would mean God has not deemed her worth disciplining as well.
5. If she is pursuing Him, it is a certainty that we will reunite as His grace washes away everything.

I have no idea where they are and haven’t heard from them, but I don’t need to, as long as I know He is faithful.

What I’m Doing Now

I am living out Lamentations 3:25-30:

• The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
• to the soul who seeks Him.
• It is good to wait quietly
• for the salvation of the LORD.
• It is good for a man to bear the yoke
• while he is still young.
• Let him sit alone in silence,
• for God has disciplined him.
• Let him bury his face in the dust—
• perhaps there is still hope.
• Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him;
• let him be filled with reproach.

I’d get the sack suit and throw ashes on myself, but this new spiritual experience has me already behaving strangely enough as it stands.

I’m waiting for where God sends me next, and my writing and self-education is on hold until my soul is ready to more accurately parse the goodness God wants me to understand.

I still await Tori to reappear with Victor and Mia, but God may have more in store for her before we’re ready to meet again.

Also, when I have time and feel up to it, I’m slowly diminishing my public image by migrating many of my essays to a notes page.