God loves to talk to us in the middle of the night...

Tonight, more than any other night of my life, I feel like I'm going to die.

I've been very sick the past two days. Susan, the tireless nurse who works with my oncologist, believes I simply have an odd strain of the flu. That's probably all it is. But I've been throwing up and dizzy since before church on Sunday. Didn't have chemo last week so I can't chalk it up to that. Though I have been sicker the last two days than I ever felt while on chemo.

There have also been conversations with God. More of them lately. Mostly quiet. Reverent. Tonight there was yelling. Tonight I placed demands on God I had no right to place. I demanded answers. I demanded hope. I received nothing but more grief.

As I watched the final episode of Babylon 5 tonight, with Kristin and Belle sleeping in the next room, the character of the captain says to an old friend, "There are so many things I still don't understand." The reply was, simply, "As it should be."

In the last week I have cried more tears than I have in all the time since my diagnosis with this horrible thing growing inside me. None of them have helped. None of them healed. If anything, the tears have burnt and scarred me in ways I had never imagined.

Those are the facts. The facts as I know, or better, understand them.

Right now in the silence of my living room, a clock ticks on the wall. It was a wedding present. In fact, we've been married such a short time that most of what we have together is what we started with together. When I go, I suppose she will hang on to all of it for some length of time. That comforts, and worries, me. I want, so much, for her life to move on. Not only for her to find joy again, without me. But for joy to find her.

Tomorrow I will ask my oncologist if it's better to go ahead and get the few treatments I can while I have insurance for the remainder of the month, or if it's just better to begin the process now. The chances are that I won't even be able to afford my pain medication next month, let alone all I will need to function. Let alone the chemotherapy to extend my life. I guess that we tend to think, in these kind of circumstances, that we'll have a choice. That at some point we choose when to start, and stop, this horrible process. But those answers, those choices, are beyond me now.

Barring a miracle, and there have been many, I will have no insurance next month and my "treatment" will end. God owes me no answers. God owes me nothing. He, she, whatever pronoun you need... He is God. Whatever the plan He has, it's better than anything I could have come up with. No matter what day I die, I will have wanted another day with Kristin. No matter the hour, I would've wanted another. No matter the second...

I hope to be remembered by some for something good I did. That they were better off for having known me. I know they're are others who will not be able to say that... To have those good memories. I can never apologize enough.

In the next few weeks, months maybe, I will have to work very hard to finish up things I want finished. Things I don't want to leave hanging about Kristin's head when I'm gone. For every task I finish, I'm sure another with take it's place.

Perhaps this blog, tonight, is my open apology to God. I said some things, and have said some things, which were not pretty and were definitely not within my rights to say or ask. I am no more than a sinner. No one could count, if they had the life-time I long for, the failures I have committed or of which I have been a part.

If I have wronged you, I am sorry. If that's not enough, please let me know and I will do my best to make amends. I just want to be done crying now. I just with the crying would stop. It will. Tomorrow morning I will approach all this as a business deal so that my loved ones can grieve as they need.

I've babbled... again.

I am thankful tonight for a church family that whole-heartedly seems to love us and, more over, loves my wife. I know they will be there for her when I am gone. I know her family will. I am thankful for far away family who will take in my parents and treat them as their own. But most of all, I am thankful for a God who, I believe, will take me into His arms, remind me I'm forgiven, and hold me until I can finally stop crying.

I'm thankful.