Day 67

Have you ever read a book, and you got to a part where it just kept you sucked in the entire time? And then the way the perticular scene of the book ended, you were like "THAT SUCKS!" Well, that happened to me last night. I am nearing the end of the book 1 of Sword of Truth series. In it, Richard, who is the seeker, gets captured by this gal named Denna, who is a Mord Sith. She basically sets out to "break" him, by torturing him, hurting him beyond his wildest imaginings, etc. He is to refer to her as "Mistress Denna," and if he talks to her and does not address her properly, she hurts him some more. She has him under control through magic, so if whenever he tried to grab her throat, or use his knife, he suddenly was on the floor screaming in agony.

It gets to the point where Richard just can't take the pain, and because of that, all he dreams about is pleasing Denna. All he wants is for the pain to stop, and so he does his best to not mess up, and to do everything she commands him to do. She ends up showing him that she cares for him, but of course, that only makes the pain increase, as she decides to take him for her mate. It was just, wow, intoxicating to read. Towards the end of the scenario, Darken Rahl releases Richard and tells him how he would be able to kill Denna, and that he must kill her if he wants to be able to leave. Otherwise he will still be under her control. Of course, Denna is ready for him, knowing that he is to kill her, and willing for it. Richard pleaded with her to just let him go, that he didn't want to do this. He too had begun to care for her just as she had begun to care for him. She had protected him from unthinkable pain from other mord sith. Not all pain, but at least the most brutal. There was this other mord sith, a friend of Denna's who apparently really hates men. She wanted to use their Agiel (or whatever it's called, which is basically this club looking thing, with magic that brings unspeakable pain to whoever it touches, and can even kill depending on where and how it touches someone).

Denna told him if he tried to leave, she would use the magic to bring him down and then train him some more, giving him lots of pain again. Richard said "Forgive me my love," and had gained complete control over the magic of his sword and slowly ran her through. Afterwards, he layed her on her bed, and layed beside her crying, wishing he could undo what he did.

That is where I stopped reading before I went to bed this morning. By that point, I can't really explain what has been going on with me. For some reason, I don't feel the greatest. Physically, I feel fine. I just, I dont know, I feel down. It could be the weight of all the days of work, could be little stresses at home, could be Lex being away for the month of june, could be lack of sleep, could be anything. I'm not sure what it is. All I know is that for some reason, I feel weighed down, like I'm just trying to keep myself afloat. I'm trying to do the best that I can. I guess the reason why the part of the book kept me from sleeping too well is how close he got with Denna, both of them caring for eachother, him having to kill her in the end in order to get away. I know that she couldn't let him go because then Darken Rahl would kill her anyway. It was the only way. Had it not been, I'm sure she would have let him go.

Maybe it's all the things in life that were one way, and then now are completely different. If I were to look at my own life, would I think that it has improved? In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. For instance, I'm a family man, and here i have a wonderful family. I have Erin, I together we have 2 beautiful girls. But when things start out, like between friends or lovers, things always seem much better in the beginning, and then some where down the line, because of being over worked, or stressed, or whatever, things may not seem as good. I don't know if things really have changed that much between us, or if it's just the fact that we both are working, and both trying to work on our degrees. Perhaps when we both get our degrees, have better jobs, no debt, our businesses set up, maybe then I can look back and see all the struggles we went through, how much things have improved and go "wow, look at these rough spots we went through, and we made it. We survived, together."

Every day what gives me strength is from God himself. In order to feel His presence with me, helping me to be strong, to endure everything I have to endure right now, while we wait for the times to change, everytime I pray to him, I kneel before him. I don't know exactly why that is. All I know is that, when I kneel in prayer, I can feel that he is right there with me, helping me. I am always continually giving him all of our worries, cares, stresses, goals and wishes in life, things that we want to acheive, places we want to get, etc, with the faith that He is working on it, and when He thinks it is time, he will guide us down those paths. Well I never thought to give him things such as being tempted. Sometimes we are tempted by the smallest things, and yet don't want to be. So on one of my worst days, I kept feeling drawn, when I didn't want to be, and so the next time I kneeled before him, on top of giving him everything else, I said "Lord, please help me with my weaknesses, I give you my temptations as well, and know that you will help me over come them."

Ever since starting to do that, there is still the twinkling of being tempted, but at the same time, it's like, whatever tries to tempt me strikes, but then is disintegrated into dust. So, thankfully that alone is easier. Now just to be strong while the rest of it falls into place. I don't know how long it will be, but when God is ready, they will start happening. Would I like to be rich? Sure! Who wouldn't. Do I need it? No. What I want, and feel that we need is simply to make enough money where we don't have to stress about it, to be able to save some for the future, to not have to stress about things at home but just be completely open to all things between us, to have our degrees with the knowledge that we succeeded. Some day.

So in closing, today Erin worked. I was looking forward to it because I figured "Great! I can sleep till 2 and be rested." wrong. I had a few calls from Erin waking me up by 11:30 or so because her car acted up on the way to work. She wanted me to get up and meet her at 1 according to the text I got. She said she meant that I should get out of bed at 1 and then meet her at 1:30. oops, my bad I guess. So at 1 I was there, waiting, until 2 when she finally got off. I followed her in her car over to wal mart, for them to check to see if the oil change they did messed anything else up for whatever reason. When they looked, they found nothing, so they hooked the little device to it and it read that the transmission was bad.

Backing up a bit, before we got to wal mart, she pulled up to a stop sign and then the car wouldn't drive. It wouldn't go into any gears at all. So we had to have it towed, costing us $60.00. Then at wal mart after hearing the news, we called around to find a transmission specialist and then had to call road side assistance to have the Escape towed there. They were closed when we got there, but they let the driver put it in the garage and will take a look at it monday free of charge to let us know what it will take to fix it, and the estimated cost. What we don't know at this point is how we will pay for it. With my really big check next week, I figured on getting Erin's car in order, maybe with a tune up *before we found out it was the transmission*, and I want to get my new gas tank put on my truck, and the tail pipe whelded back onto the catalytic converter. I figured each car might run us $200-300 but that both would then be working a lot better. Plus, I have an appointment at the VA medical clinic an hour away from here on the 22nd *hopefully the replacement for the other guard is here by then, giving me a normal work week*. Their going to examine me, checking out my back, etc, so that the claim I filed for disability through the government can be processed. It it works out, I should start receiving a monthly check from the government for maybe like $250.00 or something. For those of you that don't know, I injured my back when I was a fire fighter in the air force.

I'm going to call that it for now, but I will write more for you all tomorrow.



Thanks for being here.

CB