IT WAS NO VACATION.
THERE’S A REASON you haven’t heard from me lately.
A few weeks ago, I told my wife, “This feels biblical, like a curse straight out of the Bible.”
It seems odd that so many obstacles, setbacks, and heartbreaks coincide with me approaching the final months of paraphrasing and mapping The Casual English Bible®.
I told my wife, “It feels like the devil is trying to stop me. Or maybe it’s God.”
I came into this past year having lost my dad, both of my younger brothers, Mom’s eyesight taken by strokes and her memory fading to dementia. Then we had to send our dear Black Lab, Buddy, to his Creator—which left me angry with God. If I had been God and God had been me, I would have let Buddy die in his sleep to save God the guilt of killing his most trusting friend.
That was my argument. I didn’t hear God react and remained too upset to feel it.
Welcome to 2024-25
I had to fire three outfits working on The Casual English Bible® website. One had done almost no work for months. Another royally screwed up the Bible map section of the website; we’re still working on undoing the damage. Another reminded me too much of the movie “Grumpy Old Men.”
Life’s too short for any of that.
The heartbreaker
The worst event of this year began on the Saturday after Christmas. It was about six-year-old Maizey, a Black Lab mix we rescued two years ago, on the morning she was to be put down. She was diagnosed with lymphoma.
Dogs don’t last but a couple months with that, aside from chemotherapy.
So, each week we took a daytrip deep into Kansas, to the Kansas State Veterinary Health Center in Manhattan, for chemo from the best cancer vets in the region.
Maizey died last month, lying on my feet in our living room, with hugely swollen lymph nodes beside her throat.
She was an anxious little lady. But she warmed up to me playing the harmonica to Spotify songs. It calmed her when nothing else would.
So, for the last hour of her life, I played her back to God.
When the vet arrived with a nurse and a technician observing, I was playing the last three songs.
- Chasing cars, by Noelle Johnson. I had been playing that song since December, treating it as a prayer for what I wished for us…that we didn’t need any help and could live in peace, lying on the ground and forgetting the world.
- Go Rest High on that Mountain, by Vince Gil. It’s a powerful tribute to those who have faced deep trouble in life.
- Even If, by MercyMe. The doc was hooking Maizey to the drugs while I played this song. By this time, everyone but our trusting little gal Maizey was crying. Few people seem to know this song, but if you can play it without a tear, knowing that it’s the song I played to the death of Maizey, you probably never had a dog.
A message from God?
What made the song feel like a message directly from God to me was the anger I was feeling toward him. I was feeling like it was God who left us in this position, forcing us to lure Maizey to her death from hiding in the corner of the breakfast nook to lying beside the living room couch—on my feet, and face-to-face with Linda lying on the floor.
It was a pitiful and beautiful and all-consumingly painful moment in my life that will never leave me this side of dementia or death.
The emotion so engulfed the vet that when it came time to see the next pet, back in the office, she couldn’t do it. Instead, she took off work the rest of the day to go home and love on her pets. She told my daughter that the next day, when my daughter took her cats in.
Crashing computers
In early June, I starting losing data-loaded drives on my computer. All my Casual English Bible® photos. All my family photos. Then my documents.
When I bought new $300-$500 drives and tried to restore the data from the cloud, I started to get error messages about the new drives. I burned through well over $1,500 before figuring out that the problem was my seven-year-old computer. Before I ended up with a replacement, I was into well over $10k. A “k” is easier to tolerate than a bunch of zeroes.
Now? It had to happen now? On my last book in the Bible?
Today, I wrapped up Ezekiel 4. On to Ezekiel 5 of 49.
I had told my wife a few days ago, “I wonder what’s next.” Because I knew there would be a next.
Nine inches of rain last night. Then we noticed a second vertical crack in the concrete basement wall, four feet from one we had repaired two years ago.
This really does feel like a coordinated attack to divert me. I have no idea how things work in the world beyond ours, but doggone it (I miss you Maizey), something’s messing with me.
God willing, I’ll finish this beta edition paraphrase of The Casual English Bible® before winter. I hope he’s willing. I certainly am.
Regarding the anger
It came at the right time, when I was paraphrasing Job. No one in the Bible rips God a new face better than Job. I had no idea, until I worked all the way through the Bible.
Frankly, when Job tore into God, I was cheering. He was saying the kind of things I wanted to say. Read about them here: Job’s angry words to God.
At the end of the Book of Job, God speaks. He doesn’t explain why he allowed Job to suffer so much. And I found no peace of mind over the tortured death of Maizey in working on Job.
But the end of the matter is God.
- Maizey is gone, though I can’t vacuum up the plug of hair in the downstairs room where I played songs for me and Maizey.
- My little brothers and dad are gone.
- I’ll be gone too soon as well.
And all who remain will have whoever they have for a time and God for all time.
It’s all in his hands.
I don’t know how he’ll make sense of death and dying when we show up, or if the topic will come up at all for most folks.
As for me, I have a few “why” questions for him. In the Bible, he doesn’t usually answer them. He didn’t for Job. Instead, he pointed Job to a Behemoth, a mysterious creature that eats grass like an ox, and said: “I made this animal and I made you” (Job 40:15).
Well, I’m still rattled, but I get it. I’m not the lord of my life.
I wish Jesus would talk back in simple, casual English.
I wrote that sentence and then remembered:
“If you’ve loved someone enough to mourn them when they’re gone, God has blessed you. Now he’ll comfort you” (Matthew 5:4).
“I am the resurrection. I am the giver of life. People who believe in me, even though they die, they’ll live again. Everyone alive who believes in me will live forever. Death can’t have them. Do you believe me?” (John 11:25-26).
Yes. I’m all in. The angry part of me. The sad. The lonely. The loving. The excited. And the scared. You wanted it. You got it, for the better and the worse. It’s all there in the bone bag that people call out by name.
Bible maps
We fund The Casual English Bible ® with Bible map sales and licensing and with a few kind donors.
That doesn’t come close to covering the cost. So, we are working on making it easier to buy and download the Bible maps. We’ll consider advertising if we have to, but if you see ads, you’ll know we’ve hit the “last resort.”
Asking people to support my passion is uncomfortable for me. And it is my dream and hope to create:
- a Bible version that feels welcoming to people who know nothing about the story of Jesus.
- Illustrated Bible maps that ChatGPT kindly reviewed as “stunning 3D-style landscapes that look like you could step right into them.”
There are almost a handful of kindred souls who have my back and are helping me along the way. I would call them out by name and thank them if I thought they felt comfortable about that. But instead, I’ll tell them here, in addition to privately, “Thank you and thank God for you.”
I’ve met one of them, a generous and kind spirit with an infectious smile you couldn’t knock off his face with a strong right cross. We got to chat a little bit. When he needed to leave, I stood and watched him pull away in the Big Rig he drives. I remember thinking how lucky I am to have souls like him in my corner. Whether he’s able to continue helping or not, he’s on my sideline, cheering.
I can hear him.
I remember running in a track meet in ninth grade. I was part of second string 440 relay, one time around the track for all four on my squad. We ran at the same time the school’s first string did, and beside a squad from the competing school. Coach said my squad should get in the way of the other school, to help the first string win.
Halfway around the track I heard someone yell, “Go Steve!”
I had never heard that before. I passed the runner on our first squad. We didn’t win, though. But I did.
Wherever we are, whenever we are, whoever we are, people who cheer us on help propel us forward. They change the dynamic. They empower.
You don’t have to cheer me on, though I would welcome it, but I think we should all cheer others every day—somewhere, sometime, someone.
Wisdom turns you into a gem