That was it. That was all I was going to post. But for whatever reason, I’m typing. It’s a mistake. I can feel it already. I just know that I’ll regret this post. It will come across as whiny and pathetic, and I feel like too many of my posts are whiny and pathetic as it is. But I just can’t stop typing. Besides, this one is different somehow…

I feel all wadded up inside. The stress and gunk and bile is rising in my throat and I feel like I’m going to just pop.

It’s well after midnight and my family is asleep. I should be too, but I can’t sleep, or won’t sleep until I just talk to someone, and that someone, gentle reader is you.

The day started off on a pretty good note. I saw Jen and Jenny off at 7:00am as they left to open the cafe. I came back to my room and cracked open my Bible. I was just about to get some quality time in, and I fell asleep. That should have been a sign.

I crawled out of bed and decided to exercise. I got dressed and made my way to the garage. (Yes, we have a garage. We moved this weekend. That’s a missing blog post.) The weight machine was there, but too much junk was in the way from the move. An hour later, I had disassembled three ceiling fans that were blocking the path to the machine. I greeted Trevor and Declan who had woken up, summarily sent Trevor to work on his school work, and offered to let Declan help with the ceiling fans. He seemed excited about the concept, but wandered off anyhow. (Connect-with-child FAIL.) I finished the fans on my own and started exercising. It felt great.

Somewhere around the last set, I mentally committed to Body For Life (BFL), that weight loss and muscle building program that I went on like ten years ago. I was sick and tired of feeling like crap, and REALLY tired of people referring to me as “40” a full eight months in advance.

I heard laughing in the house and realized Trevor was goofing off with Declan. I leaned into him about how bad a listener he was and sent him back into the house to do his school work. I finished my last set and headed into the house when I hear Makenna and Trevor talking and goofing off upstairs. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I snapped and told them we were looking into boarding school. I was tired of them “abusing the freedom they have been given with homeschool”. That’s what I said.

Deep down inside, I think I was overwhelmed with the fact that I’ve failed to commit myself to helping them in their studies. My failure at accomplishing anything in this place combined with my failure as a father combined with my failure to properly run an organization or even properly answer emails combined with my failure to pay proper attention to my wife combined with my failure to follow a recently-decided 9-5 work schedule that would allow me to spend more time with my family combined with that fact that even my most sincere attempts to honestly build and love someone ultimately result in failure, hurt, tearing, breaking, pain and confusion made me just lose it. I summarily threatened to send them to boarding school which made any damage I might have caused in the past even worse. I projected my failure onto them, plain and simple.

Stinging from frustration and completely overwhelmed with emotions I can’t even get a grip on, I left their room and showered. After the shower, I dressed and called Declan and without a word to the other two kids, we left for The Keep.

My desire for some drastic change nudged me more in the direction of BFL and I ordered four egg whites and a slice of toast for breakfast. “Things will improve,” I reasoned, and I convinced myself that egg whites would have something to do with that.

Later in the afternoon, the power went off at The Keep again; the second time in as many days. Normally Mondays are our busiest days, but because of the power problem, we had practically zero customers yesterday, an event that sets us back financially for an entire month. But today was different. We were disconnected for non-payment despite the fact that we’ve paid all of our bills on time. We’ve never even received an electric bill because frankly the power company is completely incompetent. So we were disconnected for paying our bills. A unique concept. Over an hour of discussion and argument ensued, and three hours later our power was turned back on, halfway through the Monday Night Football game my kids were so excited about watching on TV(which is broadcasted on ESPN a day later in East Africa).

I was hoping to watch the game with the kids to try to reconnect with them, but decided to take a few moments to work on my wife’s “Honey-Do” list instead. The top of the list was to call the law firm representing the mortgage company that’s foreclosed on our house in Maryland. The foreclosure itself shines the light on another failure: keeping up with the mortgage company back in the US and making the proper phone calls and bank transfers needed to recover from our renter’s fist bounced check that sent us into a perpetual cycle of late fees. There were warning signs and looking back, I am an idiot for not addressing them. I was too busy “saving the world” to bother with something as droll as imminent foreclosure on our only financial asset in the world. Stupid. I even managed to alienate my parents in that deal.

So this lawyer thing required me to open the HFC ledger to double-check the support money we received for the month of October and then verify that it had been withdrawn from the PayPal account into the bank account in the US where we could somehow transfer it to the law firm / mortgage company. When I went to open the ledger, it hung my spreadsheet program (Numbers). No matter what I did, I couldn’t open the ledger. All the frantic Google searches revealed one thing: if one of your Numbers files gets corrupted, you’re finished. The only option is to recover from a backup. In the heat of trying to fix Jen’s computer, I managed to nuke my backup drive. “If I can’t even manage to keep track of our finances in a spreadsheet,” I thought, “I have no business trying to run an organization.” I decided I would be obligated to fire myself even before the 501(c)3 is granted and put myself and the org out of it’s misery. With all HFC’s financials hanging in the balance, I once again pulled away from my family and threw myself into another fire.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, the lawyer that’s handling our work permit texted me. He told me:

“Immigration says ur is only certificates yet there are ugandans with masters degrees in IT! … You may have to … ask Migereko 2 help…”

So a bunch of nice folks sent me honorary certificates to provide to immigration to show that I have some formal training and education. But the response is basically that it’s not enough. With Ugandans holding Master’s Degrees from Ugandan Universities already bopping around the country, Immigration can’t see the need for me to hang around in Uganda any more. I don’t have anything to offer. My reaction, quite honestly, was something like “screw this country”. If the (extremely corrupt) government is willing to screw over people that give up their lives to help it’s citizens, what’s the point of even trying? Let the “Ugandan Masters” fix the pathetic state of the country on their own. (And asking Migereko for help is out of the question. Remember, not too long ago we gutted half of the computer center he wanted us to build for him because the school wasn’t taking care of it properly. That certainly didn’t get our relationship off to a stellar start.)

It’s beginning to happen all too often, but once again I found myself asking why, exactly I felt the need to leave everything and drag my family to this God-forsaken place.

This time, no answer came.

I threw myself headlong into solving the ledger problem (which, I might remind you was NOT on my wife’s list) and that didn’t set well with her at all. It was a last straw for her, and she summarily packed up her stuff and walked home with Declan. I packed up my stuff into the truck and leaving Makenna and Trevor behind at The Keep to watch the game with their friends I set out to try to patch things up with my wife. Our half-family dinner was stilted, but civil enough. The rest of the evening was decent enough, I think partly because I showed that I recognized a problem and was at least willing to drop out of the race long enough to acknowledge her presence.

She went to bed, we parted on decent enough terms and I headed downstairs (yes, two story house now, after the move) to get to work. I was feeling OK. Not because anything had happened, just because of the promise that behind the cloudy skies, the blue sky awaited.

Then the bottom fell out on me after she went to bed.

I was convinced it was possible to pass through this stuff without hurting myself or the ones I love. Personal, spiritual, familial and organizational success always seemed like it was right around the corner, and if I just pushed harder, things would work out and I could score a win that would make everyone happy. It turns out, I was wrong. I’ve managed to make yet another mess of my life, and this time it’s not just me that’s paying the price. Even with the best intentions, I’ve hurt the ones closest to me and the result is devastating emptiness and loneliness. That’s as honest as I can say it.

And I’m left asking myself the painfully obvious question: “What’s the point of saving the world if it costs you the ones you love?”

This was not part of the deal. If it had been, I never would have signed up for this.

So what’s next? I wish I could tell you that I had some epiphany tonight, but I didn’t. I do know that the thousands in need will have to take a back seat for a while until our little team of six is restored, healthy and back in action. Fractured and separated, we’re useless. Together, though, God can make miracles happen in the midst of my mess.