Intro, Volume 1, Issue 1...In The Beginning

Welcome to the first issue of Crossroads of the Age.   This blog is the idea of a nagging wife.  The Bible says it's better to live in an attic than put up with a nagging wife.  I tried that but the roof is only a 3/12 pitch so when I stood on the rafters the highest point of the roof hit me mid-thigh.  MUCH too short to live comfortably in, so I folded like a cheap suit and decided to do the blog so she'd shut up.  :o)

Actually, in all honesty, she's not that bad a girl.  She is my best friend and has been with me in lockstep for the last 12 years through everything.  I'd like to say thick and thin, but the truth is, we haven't had a whole lot of thick.  I can guarantee you we have had a lot of anorexia thin, though, and the Good Lord has always been there by our side to walk with us and hold us up in our worst trials.  I can truthfully say that Jesus has stood by me closer than any friend, has never, EVER left me, even when I thought I couldn't find Him from time to time.  He truly is My Redeemer and Savior

Despite my hesitation and Lori's prompting, I believe it's His will for my life that I have this blog.  I have always been an impatient, make-it-happen individual.  For the most part I've lived the mantra, "Do something, even if it's wrong, we'll fix it later," or "Easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission," and "Better to be tried by 12 than carried by six."  But something has happened.  The more I matured in my relationship as a follower of Christ, He has taken my "get it done myself" nature, which has, at times, pushed Him to the side because I didn't feel He acted quickly enough for me to solve the problem, like loss of a job or how do I take care of my family when a complete industry has collapsed from under me (residential home building).

In the past I have been good at talking the talk about waiting patiently in faith for Jesus to lead me to the next door.  In reality and practicality, to my shame, I have found that ability to wait lasts as long as it takes for the panic to rise up in my throat, like the bile from a bad mexican meal, and I'm off again trying to solve MY problems in MY way and in MY time rather than waiting on Jesus.  

First example would be after I moved to Central Oregon to take over all of Central Oregon for my employer.  Things were bad there.  Five years of mismanagement had cost BMC their reputation and clientele and it really wasn't that big a deal, in retrospect.  All it took was someone with the motivation and maturity to do the job the way it was supposed to have been done.  Higher-ups told me they didn't think I had it in me to solve the problem and I was only going to be another Band-Aid.  It took me less than 45 days to straighten out and repair all the damage from the past, along with getting rid of framing contractors and other employees unwilling to do the job.  Mostly because Sherwood was our headquarters and that was 3 1/2 hours from Bend, the guys in Bend knew that no one from Sherwood was going to come over that often.  So, I walked in and did what I do:  Called a big meeting, told everyone I was here to kick ass and chew bubble gum and I was out of bubble gum, watermelon being my favorite.  

After I cleaned house and got things back on track, I sort of rubbed my boss's nose in it a little bit.  We did good for about nine or ten months and then when the mortgage crisis began happening in California, it was like I could see the writing on the wall coming at me.  The only problem was, that writing on the wall was like the Bullet Train in Japan and I was stuck on the middle of the tracks like a big wad of that watermelon bubble gum that wouldn't let me go.  Overnight, Central Oregon became a ghost town.  Houses were stopped in the middle of production, orders cancelled, subcontractor's contracts terminated.  Rather than yard sales, I began seeing "whole house sales".  Subcontractors that were once prosperous were now emptying their entire houses on the front yard and selling everything at whatever they could get.  Unbeknownst to us at the time, it would only get worse once the idiot that's now squatting in the White House got elected.  It was bad enough for me to hear W insist that to save capitalism he had to SUSPEND capitalism.  That's like another certain president we had before W wanting to know what the definition of "is" is before he'd admit to that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman." 

So, I took my paltry severance from BMC, watched the stock market decimate my 401k, went on unemployment and began looking for any and everything I could do for work.  Nothing was happening, of course, this is probably the first incident in which God sought to take me out of the game and put me on the bench for a while in an effort to get me to listen to Him.  It was also when the true measure of growing my faith began because I had NO choice but to sit and listen for His voice, which I didn't hear too much due to the panic that was threatening to engulf me.  

Unbeknownst to me, having been a Type 1 diabetic since 1988, retinapothy had begun in my eyes.  Watching television was becoming more and more of a chore since my vision was blurring.  A routine eye exam for glasses turned into, "I can't do anything to help you right now.  Your eyes are hemorrhaging internally due to retinopathy.  You need so see an opthomologist for further treatment."  Thus began my journey down the road of where I am today, facing blindness because of the retinopathy, but more on that later.  So, I was unemployed, my eyes were giving me the once-over, and I'm looking at losing my house because the mortgage company wouldn't talk to me at all, except to tell me they wouldn't help me until I was four months late with my payments.  Ultimately we lost the house in August 2008 and for the next 11 months we lived in a pastoral office on our former pastor's farm, which roughly was approximately 600 square feet.  We ate dinner at desks, cooked on top of bookshelves, and washed dishes in the bathroom sink, all the while watching that church turn into a cult. 

In October 2008, I did what I swore I would never do after I quit Washington State Reformatory in 1998:  Put on a badge and work for Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.  I was NOT into this.  I did it because I had to do something so I got hired and started as a corporal.  I had a nice thick resume with plenty of letters of commendation and specialized training, blah blah blah.  You get the idea.  This place STUNK on ice.  It had to be the most antiquated, run down, dilapidated maximum security prison I'd ever seen.  Unbelievable how this place did not have more escapes.  And yet the staff was, I guess, for lack of a better word, proud of the place.  Most had never worked in a 20th century maximum security prison with electronics and bells and whistles.  In December 2008, I received some laser treatment to the backs of both my eyes, the left one being more heavily worked on with a whopping 2,640 laser shots in the left eye alone in ONE appointment.  This was meant to cauterize and kill the blood vessels growing on the retina which is the back of your eyeball.  The mirror that makes sight possible. 

In January 2009, three weeks later, after being told to be careful, my eye was going to be sensitive to strong start-stop forces, I wound up in what was to become the sixth of seven fights in the chow hall that day between Mexicans and white supremacists as to who got to sit where.  There were eight of us officers and 400 inmates and we were getting kind of tired of breaking up fights every 15 minutes or so.  I had made up my mind that, 'please God, if a fight happens in front of me, let it happen close enough that I'm the first one there so I can show these guys what an old fashioned can of whupass looks like (I started my career in corrections in 1985 at Kansas State Penitentiary, back when max prisons were like gladiator schools and we fought A LOT).  So, the Lord granted me my wish.  

These two fools are swinging like girls and they were standing facing each other, putting me, the locomotive coming down the track at full-steam, in a position to t-bone them.  The Mexican must have seen me first because he turned his back to me.  I drilled him right in the waist, just like Lawrence Taylor driving Joe Theismann.  I got them both at the same time.  Unfortunately, I didn't see that three-rail handrail in the way that they were up against fighting.  The Mexican, from all accounts, was hit hard enough that his head touched his heels before his face slammed into all three bars and then the concrete.  The white supremacist turned the other way so he was facing me, and I just doubled him over my shoulder.  I went from full-speed to dead stop in a millisecond.  Needless to say, both inmates end up with permanent debilitation injuries, one to the head and the other--let's just say will never reproduce.  But in that millisecond from full-steam to dead stop my right knee cap impacted the concrete first.  Full steam, full body weight, right knee cap.  Secondary damage was left--all that work and laser treatment was tossed out the windows.  

Over the course of the next 3-4 weeks, the eye just kept going farther and farther south.  Fluid was getting behind the retina and that was becoming more and more detached.  The knee wasn't doing much better.  Twice I had to go to our then family doctor and have over 300 cc's of fluid removed off my knee both times.  Of course, the doctor misdiagnosed it, said I'd only damaged my bursa sac.  Thinking I was only going to be sore for a while, I let the DOC ship me off to Correction Officer Academy.  For me it was my fourth one.  Five weeks of ridiculous rehash and on the last day of week three, the final day of defensive tactics, was when my life really changed forever.  I caught a toe on the mat, my body went one way, my knee rotated around underneath, there was an audible snap, and I decided face-down on the mat was a real, real good place to be.  Unfortunately my fellow students and instructors didn't want to have to dance around my big butt.  

That was it.  I was off work dealing with a SAIF claim, waiting on the surgery that an orthopedic surgeon said I needed.  I also had my eye rechecked and discovered just how bad the damage was.  In May 2009 the opthamologist performed retina reattachment surgery which was ultimately unsuccessful and I was blind from that point forward in my left eye.   June 2009 was the first of two knee surgeries.  Should have only been one, but I was in a hurry to get back at things.  I needed that certification before my first year was up.  I talked the surgeon into patching me up and getting me back in the game.  Again, failing to listen to what was I'm sure was God telling me, "This is not My will for your life--STOP!"...one thing you have to understand about me, there is no shortage of pride.  I grew up in a pretty bad setting.  Abusive alcoholic thieving murdering sleep-with-anyone mother.  So I was proud of the fact that I was a self-made man and had risen above all of that.  My father was involved in corrections, from the WRONG SIDE of corrections.  He spent most of his adult life incarcerated in what I like to call the Western US Fun Time Prison Tour.  You name it, he did time there 

So, back to the stupidity of pride.  The knee surgery was microfracture surgery, plus he had to do a tendon release to get the kneecap to come back, remove the mesh tendon above the kneecap, repair the damaged minuscus, and trim up the damage to the cartiledge on the femur, as well as drill holes in the underside of the kneecap to make fibrocartilege to replace the giant gaping whole where the natural cartilege had been wiped out by my femur when I collided with the concrete.  I was able to get back into action November 2009 and the DOC changed how they sent officers to the academy.  They changed to an on-site academy instead of DPSST (Department of Public Safety Standards and Training).  Lucky me, I thought.  I got friends on the inside.  Wrong answer.  DPSST would oversee it, DOC would just administer it and I had to start all over again from the beginning.  It wasn't going to be over five weeks, it would be over the course of six months.  I was back inside the walls working as well as completing academy-related stuff for on the job training which REALLY did not help my attitude and outlook.  I mean, I already had ten years in corrections.  I didn't need to be treated like an idiot off the street that didn't know anything, not to mention they saw fit to make me a corporal when I went through the doors.  Luckily, my FTO (Field Training Officer), who also happened to be the union president, and the training sergeant for the whole prison, agreed and pretty much left me to my own devices.  So, I didn't have to put up with all the rookie stupidity. 

June 2010, I have to do the self-defense tactics training over again.  I get through it, it was painful, the knee was a mess, but I was surviving.  Then during contact drills, which to the way I see things is stupid.  You're just asking to hurt people through accidents, this was when my right knee was totally obliterated.  I couldn't even walk.  The kneecap was shoved off to the right of my leg.  The instructor that caused this tried to act all apologetic and even though he was wearing the full body padded suit and helmet with metal face mask, I hit him so hard with a left hook it bent the face mask into his jaw and knocked him out cold.  And yes, he just happened to be one of my captains from the prison.  So, that was it.  That day, June 26, 2010, I left the grounds of Oregon State Prison and would never again return.

September 2010 I underwent a three hour knee surgery for basically the same as before plus a patella tendon relocation, meaning they dug a chunk of bone and the patella tendon and moved it over three degrees and reattached it with three 3-inch screws.  It was about that point that  Dr. Sedgewick told me he would never allow me to go back to corrections, I was done.  The knee was gone and would never be the same again.  It was also about that time that DPSST found out I was blind in my left eye.  Everything came crashing down around me.  The point I'm trying to make is that all along, God had been there.  He was trying to use the adversity and injuries and the pain because if there's one thing I respond well to, it's physical pain.  I just kept getting up and driving on and ignoring Him, like I didn't believe He was actually going to do something in my life.  He did.  He came through on the mediation hearing with SAIF.  I settled for five figures, which was real rare form what I understand.  The SAIF rep I had to deal with, personally I think she was just nasty because a house landed on her sister, got fired because of how she'd treated me.  Looking back I now see God's hand was all over this.  In spite of everything I still made out good and I decided I would give Him a little bit of a break.  Ok, God.  You have my attention.  Now you need to speak up quick.  Apparently He decided that my attitude wasn't where it needed to be and I wasn't REALLY ready to hear him, so it was back to the deep end of the pool for me.  He doesn't work on MY rules and MY time.

On January 18, 2011 I signed my voluntary medical resignation papers ending my career with DOC and agreeing to a ban from any kind of re-employment due to my injuries.  Like I said, God provided well with the settlement for me and that took care of us.  He also brought along other financial provisions that meant my family would not have to worry about where our next meal would come from or we'd be homeless, my two biggest fears.  After a while, I began to see and realize that He does work all things to the good for those that love Him and are obedient to Him. 

June 2012 I was getting a little antsy again and wanted to actually do something, you know, exercise and show off my patience muscle I'd been developing and to let the world know just how blessed I was, even though things looked pretty dark to everyone on the outside.  It was also during this time period that all the phonies in my life were being whittled away and left me with basically my wife, my daughter, and the people at Salem Evangelical Church.  It was during July 2012 that I began asking God to use me to reach other people.  I didn't feel I was getting enough accomplished for the Kingdom.  I was worrying about the number of crowns I was going to cast at the feet of Christ when I reached heaven, either during the Rapture or my death.  I know I had two for being a watchman and providing protection to my community and my fellow man, being a shepherd, so I decided I wanted a couple more.  You know, out of five I figured four wouldn't look too greedy.  Ostentatious.  It's not like I was shooting for the full five.  So, on August 1, 2012, God answered me. 

It was about 2:00 a.m. on August 1, 2012 I woke up with a 104 degree, sick, felt like the worst case of the flu I'd ever had except for my left leg being red, hot, and swollen.  Lori said I was hallucinating.  She said I was telling her that demons were coming after me.  It was terrifying to her but she kept quiet so as not to frighten me more.  All day long the leg got progressively worse along with the symptoms.  We tried icing, Tylenol, even taking a shower I thought would make me feel better only exacerbated the problem.  Lori went down town to the store and was praying about the leg, asking Him what was happening when the word "infection" was laid on her heart.  God was telling her there was an infection and it was time to get the doctors on the phone.  This is where it gets wild.

She came home and called the doctor's office.  They were gone but the after-hours answering service took the message and said the doc would call back in 30 minutes or less.  No one called so she tried again.  Five minutes later the doctor on call called her back.  As she was talking to the doctor she was looking at my leg and pressing it when she noticed a blister forming on the leg.  She told the doctor whose response was a loud and firm, "Get his ass into the ER NOW.  Do not wait, get him going."  So we did.  Off to Salem Hospital ER where by the time I got into the door, I collapsed into a wheelchair and no matter where they wheeled me, into triage, into the ER room, there was a trail of fluid following me on the floor where blisters were collapsing as quickly as they were forming on my leg.  A lovely Nigerian doctor, Dr. Lazeni Koulibali, came in with two nurses and quietly assessed the situation.  Blood was drawn, urine collected, and we were left to wait.  And wait.  Lori said I was heading into shock and not quite coherent when a trauma, Dr. Tracy Taggert, burst into the room with an army of nurses and CNA's, disinfecting wipes were tossed at Lori and she was instructed to strip me down, wipe me from head to toes with the disinfecting wipes, and put the pretty gown on.  As she collected my clothes and our daughter and headed to the truck to put my clothes away, the surgical loaded me on to a gurney and by the time she returned to the ER room, I was gone and being wheeled down the hall to the OR.  During that hallway ride a tube was being shoved up into my nose and down my throat by the anesthesiologist who apologized for not having the time to knock me out BEFORE he shoved the tube up my nose.  Before I was violated in the ER room with being stripped the ER surgeon, my angel of mercy, Dr. Tracy Taggert informed me I had necrotizing fasciitis and if she did nothing I'd be dead in an hour.  I completely turned myself over to her and her staff, but Lori and Ali never got to say goodbye to me before I was wheeled out of the ER room.  They were left to take up space in the surgical waiting room on the 2nd floor of Salem Hospital until surgery was over.

I just remember a drill sergeant that I had by the name of Don Rogers, a white guy that reminded me of Billy Jack from the movies in the '70's of the same name.   I could hear his voice plain as day.

"Boy, what are you prepared to do to live?  What are you willing to do to survive?"

I just remember that VOICE like he was right next to my ear again after nearly 30 years after the first time.  Only that time it was an infantry exercise and life and death were not hanging in the balance of my decision.  I remember, before passing out, saying, "Take it.  Take the foot," and then I was out.  I don't remember anything for several days after that.  Apparently I was kept in a drug-induced coma in ICU for four days as I had suffered respiratory and renal failure, as well as septic shock.  It was necessary for me to remain intubated and anesthetized in case it was necessary to wheel me back in for more removal of tissue.

Necrotizing fasciitis is a bacteria that thrives on the facia which lies between muscle and fat.  Once it gets going it's like a hobo on a freight train, eating up tissue everywhere it can.  The doctors checked me several times a day, unwrapping the carnage that was left of my leg to inspect and this is where, unknowingly, God began the first of His many miracles by not letting this spread past my calf muscle.  Unbelievably, this often deadly disease that had descended on a 49 year old man with Type 1 diabetes for 24 years never once spread beyond my leg.  The spring before my bout, a young woman of about 23 had contracted this in her left leg and she was taken back into surgery many times for more and more removal of leg until there was no leg left and she died.  The Sunday after my surgery, Lori attended her first wound care visit in which Dr. Taggert would unwrap the leg and replace the bandages.  She made Lori sit next to my right side and insisted she sit down for it, which was a good call since the sight of the carnage under the wraps would have dumped her right on the floor if she'd been standing up and I was beginning to come out of the coma they'd kept me in.  The nurse took her aside and said, "I can smell if there is any nec/fac left in the body, it has a distinctive odor and I can't smell it here.  Your husband is a miracle.  This does not happen often."

Chalk up another victory for God.

And be careful what you ask Him to do with your life.  Could you imagine if I'd prayed for patience?  Even though Lori had had a total hysterectomy, he'd have probably given us twins.  Sometimes it seems to me that as a whole, the human race, no matter how old they get, are like four year olds that fall down and skin their knees and hands for the first time.  We set about to caterwauling and screaming and crying and just like a loving parent, God scoops us up, to my way of thinking, with a loving and kindly smile on his face, all the while saying, "There there, be quiet and trust in Me, little one, for I will never leave you nor forsake you."  And I know for me, it kind of quieted down my spiritual tantrum that I was in.  It also was, and has continued to this day, with regard to women.

He has used this to heal some very ugly wounds inflicted on me in my life by women, beginning with my own mother.  I always held such contempt for women but for Lori, I think I just kept it quiet and in check by telling her, 'You're not a woman, you're my wife."  An illogical lie that allowed me to skirt the subject yet not be honest with her about how I truly felt about women or about her.  But, just like Jesus, she has stayed by my side, unwaivering and immovable, and the nurses, and trust me, I have been handled by NOTHING but females since day one, and they have shown the most amazing ability to deal with me and they have taught me the truth to the old saying, "Never judge a book by its cover."  God has shown me through them that they are beautiful and heroic and a woman's hands can heal and not just hurt.  I am MOST thankful about that simple truth.  It's made Lori's and my relationship much better. 

I was married once before Lori, and in August 1988, I'd just turned 25 years old, just gotten out of the Army a couple of years before, I was pretty much a stud when out of nowhere, at a softball tournament, I collapsed.  Turned out I had contracted Juvenile Type 1 diabetes after a bout with a viral infection about 10 months earlier.  My body was attacking what my pancreas and the liver were producing as a foreign invader because it closely matched the DNA of the viral infection I'd contracted. I don't know all the doctor language I heard, but I did know until the day I died I would be facing multiple needles for the rest of my life.  My wife chose, during that ten day stay in the hospital, to show up twice.  It's also when she decided she would start sleeping around with every man she met.  In June 1989 when I finally got the goods on her and what she'd been doing after I discovered some letters she'd written another guy, she blamed me, saying she couldn't live with me and my disease, it was just "too hard" and that I wasn't the man she married.  She was sure I'd lied to her that I knew all along I was sick and forced her to marry me anyways. I wish she'd have been thinking that way about trapping me when she quit taking her birth control pills and got pregnant a few years earlier.  That marriage ended which plunged me into a spiritual tail spin, questioning everything I believed in.  I mean, for crap sakes, her parents were preachers and their daughter was the biggest slut in Leavenworth, Kansas, much to my dismay.  You know it's bad when her own father took me aside and said, "Don't marry my daughter, you don't deserve what's going to happen to you." 

So here we are back in present day.  The leg is healing fine, the skin grafts are well-attached, I've survived a bout of osteomyelitis, which is a staph infections in two bones in my foot, then I survived cellulitis, both of which resulted in two PICC lines and eight weeks of daily antibiotic drips.  On the plus side, I had been losing my hair pretty quickly but now the IV's have made my hair grow back.  On the negative side, the IV's have put some weight back on me I'd initially lost, a side effect I was warned about, and also is partly to blame for the amount of Lasix I have to take.  It's a diuretic that helps remove the fluid from my body.  I lost lymph nodes and sweat and oil glands in my left leg from the knee down.  But I still have my foot and am able to do more and more walking to get back my fighting weight.  I tried running a few weeks ago.  I got about 20 feet, realized I looked like a brand newborn bull moose that had downed a fifth of whiskey and was trying to learn to walk.  It was not pretty at all.  I wasn't going to stop running until Lori uttered those words heard throughout the Wound Care Clinic:  "Stop or I'll rat you out to nurse Katie!"  Katie is a sweetheart.  She's about 60, has a runner's build, and has a backbone made of cobalt steel.  NOT the woman you want to piss off in this or any other lifetime.  I bet you she could have taken out Goliath WITHOUT a rock and a slingshot, but I love her just the same.  She's in charge of my care and is the go-to-girl for my case. 

I began feeling better, leg was feeling better, I have surprised the surgeons with the range of motion in my leg and foot, and I thought God was pretty much done with His schooling of me.  And I decided to pick up a paper and begin looking for work.  I figured construction was on again in the Portland and Seattle areas and I landed two really good leads in each city.  These guys were hot to get my resume and knew of me from past reputation and I figured I was back in business again.  Only I forgot to check in with my Teacher.  See if He was done with me yet so I could get back to the job of living.  After a few weeks of being conflicted spiritually, I started copping a bit of a spiritual attitude.  It got to the point where i darn near stuck my tongue out at God and I know he saw it coming and when I was changing out the shocks on my four wheel drive, he decided to make my right eye begin bleeding internally.  Big globs of black were now filling my eye and the vision wasn't doing so good.  My opthamologist confirmed my fears, but just like God always does in His loving gentleness, even when He has to put a spiritual spanking on you, He left the opportunity for an out to where all was not lost.  I was only bleeding out through one blood vessel in the upper left side of my right eye, near the nose, and area that was seeing retina detachment, but in this area you do not have natural peripheral vision in that location.  Your eye moves up before you see out of that corner.  So far I've had one injection of Avastin into my eye, which, how ironic:  A drug used for colo-rectal cancer is also a drug for occular bleeding.  I see God's sense of humor all over that because I have a habit of saying about politicians, that I find it amazing every time they speak they manage to put their foot in their mouth with their head up their behinds.  But that one drug handles both ends.  On July 8 we will see if I need another injection.

I believe this blog is what God intends for me to do to with my life.  Right now, it is ALL I can do.  I can't be vertical for more than a couple hours at a time before I have to lie down to drain the fluid in my leg, I can't sit for long periods of time without the fluid rushing down into my lower leg.  Not to mention the eye.  I'm blind in the left eye permanently and right now I'm down about 70% of vision in my right; I only have about 30% of my vision.  Just moving the eye stirs the vitrious fluid in the eye with the blood, creating a white/gray cloud that hinders my vision.  I can't read.  I see shapes, outlines.  But God has given me a voice, a love of history of history of this country, and he's given me the greatest gift of all:  Discernment, which aides me to see past the lies and deceit that this present world system is spewing on us.  

So that will be my focus.  To take what I see in the media and world events from a center-right position, and compare and contrast it with what the Bible says is happening in these ends times.  I hope to wake some people up that aren't committed to the Kingdom, prayerfully saving their souls.  Once the restrainer, the Holy Spirit, and the church are removed in the coming Rapture, all hell is going to break loose.  He has given me the courage to not care what scoffers think or say, so for those of you  that may be reading this thinking, "Oh, boy, here we go, another Bible thumper," that's your problem.  I would never, EVER beat on that sacred and holy book like Burt Lancanster did in Elmer Gantry.  This is the Word of our Living God.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, straight from His mouth to our hearts.  Everything I say is going to be directly out of that book, which I guess that kind of makes me a holy plageirist, because I'm just repeating what he wrote.  And one last piece of advice for those of you that don't want to hear what I have to say, when I do go Home this blog falls silent, no matter what you're told, no matter what the threat is, do not do not do not let them put the number of the beast on your forehead or your right hand.  That includes all tattoos, bar codes, microchips, RFID's or anything else that you waive under a machine. Don't do it because you can't fix that kind of stupid.  Hell will be your eternal home. 

In my next blog, I will begin with today's decision on gay marriage and Senate Bill 744, immigration.  I hope to engage your minds and your hearts, and will always bring you back to God's word to show you how very much He is in control of this, but also the spirit of darkness which permeates this world, and how that spirit of darkness is working to deceive you every minute of every hour of every day.  Until then, I pray this has shown you more about me, who I am, what I hope to accomplish by this blog.  Thank you so much for reading and I pray we can together prepare to stand strong and wait for our redemption which is drawing closer.  God bless you.