The loss of a friend

Wednesday night I received a message over social media telling me I needed to visit a friend of mine because he wasn't doing very good. About an hour later, his oldest child called me and let me know he had passed away.. I was left numb.. It had been about a week since I had seen him and I really wanted to get out to visit him and just hadn't had time in since I had started this job a few months ago... I feel now that it was just an excuse.. I should have and could have made an effort to drive the 20 miles to his home and visit.. He was after all, "one of my best friends".

We went 5 years without even speaking to each other but in 2009, I made an attempt to reconnect. The time we had spoken before that, we had spoken very harshly with each other and our friend ship ended.. But that day in December 6 years ago we reconnected and it was like seeing a long lost friend that moved away.. He had just had surgery and had lost his toe to diabeties the month before.

Instead of jumping forward to the end of my friend's story, I will instead tell some good memories from our past. ..

1989 : we met in the little quiet town of Bonnie, but not exactly sure, if memory serves me correctly it may have been through my friend Tony who I had met not too long before that too... Keith was very charismatic and outspoken. But I seem to think remember that he some how we needed up going to cruise the mall and hit up the arcade.. Even though I didn't have money he still invited me along and offered to pay. This became a regular thing on weekends and we often times would spend the night at each others homes for game nights or wrestling pay per views.
Over the next few years we were pretty much inseporatable except for when I was at school.. You see he was a couple years older than me, and had actually dropped out of school a couple years earlier.

There was times that we would go "cruising" and flirt with girls in several of the local bigger towns.. We always had clean fun as opposed to the things I did when I was around my other friends.. Keith kept me out of trouble and he almost always had my back, as I also had his.

We both had crazy dreams of our future.. Of one of us making it big and the other one taking the other one with him if he didn't make it too...

We both had been told of our short life spans.. Me I was told by several doctors that I would be dead before I was 30, Keith always said that he wouldn't live to see 40 cause "that's just how it is and I don't wanna get old".. So over the years before we both got married to our first wives, we both pretty much did all kind of crazy things to see that we died in our youth.

We both lived a fairly free lifestyle of knowing what freedom of living on what we saw as being on the edge was like. We did what we wanted and how we wanted and didn't really answer to anyone... Well then we had to grow up.

By the end of the summer of 1992, our crazy childhood was over and we had to grow up.. We were both married and Kieth already had a child and I had one on the way.. We had to become " respectable" cause we were now dads.. Oh how it ended up as being just another adventure... And perhaps I will share some more stories of the adventures of Brad and Keith another time...

God speed my friend you are missed
~B

just the way I am feeling today

I awoke today feeling the burden on my heart that I have separated myself from God over the last few weeks, and I have been being drawn to psalms today. Regularly I am reminded by people of my previous life  that was so full of hate and rage and how was I drawn to the powers of the darkness. My fight is daily on the spiritual front to not go back to those ways and is only through Jesus that keeps me from those way. I still try to do it on my own but I know that I am not strong enough at times and I know it is only though Jesus to hold me up and guide me through... 

Psalms 139 NIV

1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.