Wondering What I Lost

First, I want to thank those readers who have been buying my books; this is shaping up to be my best quarter for sales ever. I appreciate your vote of confidence. And there’s still plenty of time to order from www.bluefishbooks.info for delivery before Christmas. The recent upsurge in sales makes me feel good.

What makes me feel bad is that I’ve lost something but I don’t know what.

Back on November 2^nd, I began a push to finish writing my history of the Jacksonville Fire Department before Ginny and I left on our Anniversary trip.

I got up to 1963.

On the up side, while we were gone, several permission letters came in allowing me to quote or use photos from a tv station, other fire histories and websites. That’s a relief. Since my research relies totally on what other people have already written about, I do try to avoid outright plagiarism by asking their permission and giving them footnote credit. Although I admit that trying for spiritual and intellectual honesty is a royal pain in the ass, I try to play fair… most of the time. (If you steal material from a lot of different people, it’s research not plagiarism).

So, I got up to 1963…

Then, what with Anniversary and Thanksgiving, doctors’ appointments and life in general, I backburnered work on my history book and just got back to work on it again this week.

Something’s missing.

I spent yesterday searching for gaps in materials that I’m sure I had but I can’t find them now.

The fire history generated over 1,200 pages of notes which I’m reducing down into a 300-page book.

But when we got back from our Anniversary trip, I found there had been a power outage. I figure this wiped out some of my files, but I can’t tell which ones.

I know some things are missing but I can’t tell exactly what.

Yes, my mind is going, going… gone.

And this is frustrating.

My offsite backup copies and my search programs are no help at all until I can remember the names or contents of the various files. It’s all here in the computer somewhere…. If I could remember what it is that’s missing.

But I’m not sure what is missing, there’s just this vague sense that I’ve misplaced something and that it was important. But I can’t pinpoint what it is.

This whole situation reflects my spiritual life as well as my writing life.

I often feel as though Something (could it be God?) is missing from my life and I can’t pinpoint where I missed Him.

Isn’t this a sad thing for a Christian to admit? Aren’t we supposed to be confident and sure of our relationship with the Lord?

And for some people, that really does seem to be the case.

Good for them…. But that’s beyond my own experience.

A friend of mine says that I am a Puddleglum Christian, that I live my whole life in the Dark Night Of The Soul. (Puddleglum was the delightfully gloomy Marshwiggle in C.S. Lewis’ book The Silver Chair.)

I say, where else is there to live?

By nature I am a morose, morbid, plodding, trudging kind of Christian (and I wonder why everyone else isn’t too).

I’d never make it as the happy, smiling Christian Poster Boy.

Heck, I have a hard enough time selling my books much less my religion.

But, on one level this does not bother me greatly. I mean, I know it’s there, but it does not cause me great anxiety.

We walk by faith not by sight.

I figure that if the Lord wants me to recover the missing research notes for my fire history book, then He will bring it to my mind. If the stuff I think is missing is frivolous bizarre incidents of no lasting interest to anyone but me, then there is no great lose. I mean, if I, the writer of the book, can’t identify what’s missing, then who else is likely to notice or care?

I’m confident that the Lord will bring what is essential to light. After all, Jesus said, “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost”.

The same thing is true of my morose faith. I feel confident that the Lord will supply what is missing if He thinks I really need it.

After all, salvation is about something more than my personal comfort level.