Member Blogs at The Aspiring Professional

When our lives go well, it is easy to be thankful. If we know God, and we accept that it is by His will alone that things have gone well, we of course give Him our thanks, as is His due. Being thankful is easy.

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Below is an article I wrote in November of 2008, though my thoughts here are certainly -- I believe -- still relevant and accurate to my religious faith. 

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Well, I've been permanently disqualified from doing my job (nuclear missile launch officer) and so I (my wife and me -- same thing) face a decision: stay where we are in the... well... rather undesirable conditions of Montana for another 1.5 years, or retrain, hope I get the job I want (Office of Special Investigations, Computer Crime Investigation), move to another base, and remain in the Air Force for at least another 2 years, probably more like two and a half.

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I'm beginning to believe my wife when she complains that I overextend myself.

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Knowing only enough of what tomorrow may herald to be worried about its coming can lead a man to forget his hopes for today and, at the worst, many tomorrows to come.  Hope is among the strangest of human tendencies I've discovered.  It can blind us to reality in some instances.  More often, I think, hope serves as the only thing to get us through adversity in one piece. 

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John Steinbeck is without dispute one of the great American treasures.  A Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer prize winner, and prolific author, Steinbeck and his works are staples in English education and shining examples in American literature.  To date, I have read three of his books -- The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, and now East of Eden -- and I intend fully to read the rest.

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When a movie or a book, a conversation or an idea or an event causes us to re-evaluate our perspective on life and our place within it, how are we to approach this momentous occasion?  What should we do if the change is so great it's staggering, challenging certain fundamentals we thought unshakeable in ourselves?

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Living in the northern US -- about as far as you can go before hitting Canada -- has its drawbacks.  Aside from having a sense of "island fever on dry land," to quote one of my bosses, the extreme cold, snow, and short daylight hours can wreak havoc on an otherwise perfectly happy person.  Like me.

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It's 1:45 AM and I'm sitting at my desk, about to spill a dark secret about my mother, my wife, her mother, and me.  This is why it's never a good idea to write tired, but there you go and here I sit.  You see, I have become only slightly obsessed with a certain female star of a certain movie that might be about a human-vampire romance.  Okay, okay -- it's Kristen Stewart, the leading lady of Twilight and love of my-life-that-doesn't-exist.

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