2 hours up, 2 hours back.  Trip to Heber that is.  Spent the entire time driving up there talking with my one and only offspring - Caleb, my 20 year old son.  The conversation ranged the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea and the trip up there was over too soon.

No emotion this time, though, the first time I took him up there I was pretty well undone.  Prayed with him and asked him to PLEASE tell us what's going on up there, even if he didn't think it was important.

The drive back was so heavy with traffic that I didn't have time to think about what was going on, even though I have already given that much thought.  But the reality sank in after pulling up to my driveway and seeing his car parked out there.

It's one thing to know something is going to happen and is coming your way, it's another thing entirely when that happens and then it hits you.

I'm not crying, but to know that form this point forth, I'm just plain not going to see him very much?  Not really the happiest of thoughts.  He's a good person, he's full of love and compassion, his friends posting on his Facebook wall attest to that fact.  One of them was really undone, obviously, as he wrote to Caleb and told him about their growing up together and what it means to him for Caleb to be gone.

The whole thing has unsettled me.  I'm sitting here working a job 5 days a week and really getting nothing out of it.  It isn't what God has called me to do yet it's so easy to get snagged into it forever.  I'm called to be a missionary, an evangelist, preaching the Word.  I don't know what to do.  Yet.  I do have some ideas for a beginning to that end.  Some serious life changes in order.  Not quitting work or anything, but what I do with my free time.

Not going into that, just not the right time for it.  Get it going  in my life and then discuss it.

Whatever the case, a 9 day vacation is over.  It's almost bedtime and then get up at 4:30 am for work.  It's been very helpful to have this time off and give me time to think about things.

My son asked with a longing sound to his voice whether I was going to get rid of Sebastian.  That's what he calls my old Buick that I gave to him to use until he didn't need to use it anymore.  Well, the car isn't worth much and I have much more dumped into it than I will ever get out of it.  Just for his exclamation of his apparently relationship with that old car, I decided not to get rid of it.  Instead - sounds selfish and maybe it is - but the situation with the people next door is intolerable.

They used to call the police if anyone from my house parked their car even 2 inches on the other side of my property line and across theirs.  There is nothing illegal about that, it's on-street parking. But we went ahead and made sure we were behind the property line and then one day,  a female tenant that used to live here had parked a foot or so in past my line and this guy started cussing her out and giving her a very hard time.  I wasn't there but my neighbor saw it and was shocked.

Now, for 8 months anyway, this guy has been parking in front of my house.  Like anywhere from 1 foot to 4 feet beyond his property line.  No, I don't call the police like he has on us.  Instead, I am going to wait until that van of theirs is gone and I am going to park Sebastian right up to the edge of my property line.  I am going to grease the front bumper in case he decides to back into it.  It's going to sit there for a long time.  Like almost 2 months until Caleb is back from the camp thing.  He will be here a short time and then off to California for a youth convention for a week and then back here for a couple of weeks and then.....of to Hawaii for a year.

It's after he leaves for Hawaii is when I will decide whether to keep that car or not.  I have no use for it, though I don't consider it a bad thing to have a backup car in case the main car breaks down.

Whatever the case, not a thing I need to concern myself with now.

And onto the final thing:

time to go to bed.

ben