Lay It Down

Wow, has it really been that long? (Well, 6 2/3, but close enough.)

I mean, not that there haven’t been regular updates to this blog during that time, but with exceptions few and far between they’ve been of the “reprint marketing copy for a book I’ve worked on and add a pithy intro to it” variety, which is fine and some people have found it helpful. But lately, I’ve been thinking about how to reengage with this thing on a more personal level.

Suffice to say the firehose of changes in my life over the past year have had something to do with that. But before going there, let’s briefly recap. I wrapped up my final reposting of entries from my last book Lay It Down in December 2019. (Yeah.) Since then. . . .

2020: Well, I think y’all know what happened then (although there really wasn’t much correlation between that and my “pulling back”). Also of note: After four rounds of “hired, then entire department laid off” over nine years, I got the job I’m still at today, which in turn allowed us to move across the Continental Divide to the place we planned on spending our retirement years, literally down the road from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

2021: Eight-and-a-half months after we moved here, Marion, my wife of nearly 36 years, passed from a heart attack. Four months later, my dad—i.e., the man who first introduced me to Jesus after I got to know him again as a young man (my dad, that is)—passed from COVID. Not an easy year, specifically the final six months. On a more positive note, during that same time I started playing open mics at the Creamery Arts Center in Hotchkiss. Although we’ve needed to relocate around the corner and are looking to regain the old mojo, I’m/we’re still doing it—and I still haven’t repeated a song. 😀 At the time especially, though, it was an absolute lifeline.

2022: God takes away and God gives: In the space of a little more than three months—and again, in the latter half of the year—I gain a son-in-law and a granddaughter (via each of my two daughters—and thus also gained a grandson earlier this year). I will also say, without going into detail, that a lot of relational and general emotional healing began taking place during this time.

Fast-forward to August 2025: Although I’d already done the online dating thing on-and-off for a few years (and yeah, got my heart broken a few times), I went once more into the breach. This time I connected with a woman with Colorado Springs (now 240 miles from home, for those keeping score), and while I reeeeeeeeeeally didn’t want to do the long-distance thing, this one was intriguing from the get-go, and quickly got more intriguing as we went along—and even more amazingly, she thought the same in return. So, first weekend of September, I began the first of a bunch of mutual road trips (and it is a beautiful drive for 90% of it).

She showed me a ton of places from throughout her life on that first visit (yep, she’s a native). And finally, she showed me her church, only from the outside for now as it was a Saturday. As a self-described “evangelical mutt,” Eastern Orthodoxy was the furthest thing from my own Christian experience. But once I saw her devotion up close and personal, I knew I wanted both her and what she had. She’d actually been in the evangelical world as a young adult before walking away from it (for some very unsavory and thus understandable reasons), but much to her own shock and joy discovered this church a couple years ago. Whereas I’d remained “in the game” for 40-plus years, even while “the game” had basically left me behind over the last two decades, turned into something Jesus had never signed me up for, and left me increasingly disconnected and hardened. (Are you starting to sense the real reasons for my “vacation”? Anyway . . .)

On the next trip, I got inside said church, and they pretty much had me at the first (of hundreds of) “Lord have mercy(s)”—I was already verklempt. (On that note, this came just today [Saturday] and explains it better than I can—and in a way I’d always intuited in my spirit but seldom had affirmed by other human beings.) And that woman next to me kept getting more beautiful. In short, I was getting busted open in every way possible (and we’re not done yet, kids).

In the months to come, we’d grow even closer. I read (and still do, and will) to her almost every night, and then we’d talk some more about anything and everything, from Queen to Dostoevsky* to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer** to Father Arseny to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and back. And in May—in the very same spot where I first knew—I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. And so, Cecelia soon-to-be-Simmons and I will be wed this coming Sunday—a year and a day after our first in-person date—this time inside that very same church. And then, we come back to Crawford, Colorado to start our new life together.

And for those who haven’t yet put the other dots together, here it is: two weeks ago, I was baptized anew, into the Orthodox church (of America, but they’re all the same in essence, if somewhat varied in national flavorings) that we’ll be attending on the Western Slope. If I see you there, call me Ephrem. 🙂 I didn’t know it when I first embarked, but as it turns out I’m the latest in a pretty significant spiritual migration that’s ramped up especially in the past couple years (and includes pretty much every priest and deacon I’ve encountered). It has been and remains quite the learning curve, but a rich and deep one that isn’t going to stop . . . well, ever, if I’m doing it right.

So, in the midst of all of this reignition and reorientation, I’m been feeling the writing bug a bit again, especially as my freelance outlets for same have dried up. (I’m still editing, of course.) Of course there’ll still be marketing-blurb “reviews” for stuff I’ve worked on, but let’s go ahead and start mixing it up here. No more rehashes of old books (for obvious reasons). Ideas for new books? Who knows? I have at least a couple one-off ideas for entries after the honeymoon—one music review (and longtime visitors will know who) and a review of a book I recently worked on and liked too much to want to give the generic marketing-copy treatment.

And then . . . I guess we’ll all see.

* Many of y’all wouldn’t know this (although some of you do), but I first “knew that I knew that I knew” while reading Crime and Punishment in a Jersey gas station where I worked, nearly 43 years ago. Dostoevsky, for some pretty obvious reasons (see especially The Brothers Karamazov), is often called “the great Orthodox novelist.” So full circle indeed. To quote Bono (from a song only a handful of months older than my “Dostoevsky moment”—and don’t think it wasn’t working on me then too), “I, I will begin again . . .”.

** P.S. Charlie-in-the-Box loves Dolly. ❤