The company of friends is a great thing, and when you’re at your lowest, nice strangers are good stand-ins until they become friends which is what happened for me. I was connected with a small group Bible study from another church. Being near about the oldest person in the group – by a margin of a few years – was a bit strange for me at first, but they were just cool, nice people who accepted me as I was.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t know of the recent emotional devastation I was coming out of, and that was okay.

They were younger so their faith was younger, more fresh – zesty, I daresay; and by faith, I guess I just mean their outlook on life. In addition to just being younger in age, some of them were younger in the faith, and I needed newness, freshness, different perspectives to help me heal and move on.
Things were starting to look up. I wasn’t going to the bathroom at work to cry as much, I was generally feeling better, and since I wasn’t dwelling so much on the past I was able to start thinking about my future.
That was when I realized, I had no freakin’ clue what to do about it.
At that point I was qualified to be a schoolteacher, work in middle management, or just management in retail. But I had no drive, no real motivation.
Over the years I had considered becoming a pastor, but that would require more school.
I briefly considered returning to video/filmmaking, but I felt grossly underqualified and clueless about the whole thing.
So while I was feeling better about things in general, I was rudderless, directionless, feeling no push or pull in any given direction, and that got me feeling antsy.
During another phone conversation with my surrogate mom, I expressed all this to her. She said to pray about it, so I did. A few days later during another conversation she said she had been talking to her husband, who among other things is a Marine who served in Vietnam during the war. He suggested I look into the military, the Air Force or something.
TO BE CONTINUED…