Sneaking Around

Above, Jordan and Ashley are showing off a pair of "backwards taut-line hitches" I tied to make an adjustable binding for Jordan's toy hand guard.

Dear Fellow SEBTS Students:

Below is a photo of Mount Massive from Leadville, Colorado. I lived there for part of one winter and three summers. I worked with a youth group in the summer of 1987. We hiked up Mount Elbert, the neighbor to this mountain, just across a pass. Two boys, another counselor, and I went all the way up. It was well above the tree line, with just little animals, maybe marmots, darting around, and a few small flowers amid the rocks. And I suppose I remember there was lichen, too, on the rocks. I loved that sense of sparseness of life. I used to hike that and other mountains there alone.

I felt most close to God, back then, not being busy with quotidian concerns of caring for others as currently. And yet, I knew that I was not a complete man without a wife. I could feel intensely that God had plans for me to marry, and that my life would not be complete without me duteously following that plan of marriage.

I had no idea whom I would marry, and no idea where God would lead me to find the wife He had chosen for me before the beginning of Time. Sometimes it is a very fine sensation to dwell on this, how God considers so well each of us. If you cannot feel properly loved by contemplating the love God has for you, then you're never going to feel loved. You have too much against Love.

That part of the Colorado mountains was in the center of the state, forming a horseshoe shaped line of the continental divide looping around the valley in which was ensconced the sleepy town of Leadville. Only four thousand people inhabited that town back then, and I appreciated that the place had ample space amid Her citizenry.

Cleaning and Organizing:

Today has been a pleasant, but busy day. I welcome the chance to sit down here and just type. I have been cleaning and reorganizing. I need to sneak out and get my hair cut, as I will go before a committee of austere men this next week to sign a contract for work at Hannam University.

I have a full beard, and my hair is about 5-8 centimeters long, maybe 2 inches, which is too much for me, given that I am balding. I believe balding men look kind of strange if they try to grow hair and comb it over the top, from one side to the other. Invariably, you have to use some kind of grease, and that looks as fake as it is. Alternatively, without the grease, long hair on a man as bald as I looks scraggly, like he is some vagabond sleeping outside eschewing commitment to a place and group of people.

I'll sneak out now to a hair salon across the road, and be back in a jiffy. If my youngest son sees me leaving, he will surely demand to go with me. Well, I am back. I got out the door without much ado, and now I am sporting a better image, something that should not scare the neighbors when they pass me in the twilight.

Love, Nathaniel