Why does it feel like the calm before a storm?
Like most of you, dear readers, I struggle at times with teaching my mind to follow the heart’s wisdom. When I wrote that piece yesterday on police training, I knew my flesh didn’t like the idea, but that it was a prophetic burden of necessity. I have no interest in alienating folks, including the police. I’m not asking anyone to hate government agents and I don’t feel any particular spite. Yet, as soon as I posted it the traffic on this blog swooned much more than normally happens on the weekend. I’d rather be obedient and wind up talking to myself than worry about currying human favor.
Something wasn’t right about my long rides, either. My heart was advising my mind that I couldn’t keep doing it the same way, that something was missing. So I went back out to the shed and dragged out the mountain bike. Stuff that was loose somehow got tight again, and it wasn’t just my imagination. So I did what I could to true the wheels and cleaned it up a bit. Something that had previously refused to adjust now worked out just fine. While the Edgewood is okay for transportation and shorter trips, the long rides will require the mountain bike. The Edgewood was stressing my back and hips too much; something about the frame geometry.
I’ve been tweaking stuff on my laptops, as well. I’ve just about ditched Flashplayer because every week there are new security holes discovered. Some are a threat to Linux, even. I’ll pass on one juicy tidbit about the recent Win10 stuff that affects people who don’t even opt for the “free upgrade” — a site that lists those recent snooping updates. I suppose it’s risky to undo them, because Microsoft is not above coming back with new updates and playing spiteful games if you try to make those kinds of changes. This is getting ugly. What makes it really bad is MS seems to have serious problems with broken updates. I’m hearing and seeing lots of Win7 and Win8 updates that just don’t take and keep trying repeatedly without any solution. Has Windows really gotten that badly broken? Meanwhile, there is even some ugly stuff in the politics behind Linux, as well, but it’s too complicated to explain here. For now, I still run Debian 8 on everything I use personally.
We are making decisions about functional compromises here and there on things like food, our car, and so forth — a whole raft of little decisions that become large together. My wife and I both feel moved to prepare for things to become challenging, though neither of us has a clue about any specifics. However, instead of something awful, it’s more like adventure heading our way. Since I’m one of those folks who consider natural disasters on my doorstep just another adventure, you can’t gauge by my sensibilities.
Still, I suppose it’s useful to remind you that we are already on the downslope into tribulation of some sort.
Ah, yes. It’s in the air if your heart can hear it. I just went through a horrendous week that just about blew me over, down and out. But He Who is ever present carried me until I could stand again. Oh, Glorious One Who made all of creation, that You would do that for little me. How could we ever doubt that He will carry us always through whatever may befall us?
Yes, it is in the air.