One of the difficulties I have with Christian thought is where does Free Will begin and end and where does God’s will begin and end. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself correctly, but this discussion comes at the right time for me.

In my lifetime, I’ve never seen or experience the turmoil we now see around the globe, and not just in wars and genocide and neglect of people’s right to a decent life, if indeed just by having life we have a right to a decent life, but all the turmoil in global economic markets.

The incredible age of greed which we have been in for the last 15 years is finally doing what could have been expected, crushing down on the greeders and taking the innocent along with them. Bank failures, huge corporations going belly up, the housing market having its foundation blasted from underneath it, are all a result of the astonishing greed we have experience since at least the early 1990s.

A couple years ago, the greed had so amped up that house prices in my area were rising almost overnight, day after day. It was moving fast and those who could sense they could make a killing, jumped in quickly to keep it going and to reap the profits.

That had to end. Anybody who has studied a bit of economics knew that the wall was right around the corner. Sure enough, the wall came and the wreckage is still being picked through by government agencies desperate to save our way of life.

I think it’s too late. What we are seeing is the decline of the West. All nations go through a process of evolution, birth to death. This is no timetable for this evolution, but history is littered with the death of great empires, and some day this great country will be part of that history.

The impact this has on me is two-fold. But its centerpiece is a commitment Mary and I made almost a decade ago. Our three children were already grown and moving on with their adult lives when we decided to adopt two young kids – Michael, now 13, and Caitlin, 11.

While people our age were beginning to look at a life of leisure in retirement, we decided, after some long discussion, to go ahead and see if we could maybe get this parenting thing right this time around. Not that our grown children aren’t good people; they are. But there is more than good reason for me to believe that I was not the best parent this world has seen. I was too busy trying to build a professional life as a sportswriter and was not around as often as I could have been. The fact the kids turned out well is more a reflection on Mary and them than me.

But being a good parent was only part of the deal for me. I want Michael and Caitlin to have all the right opportunities to become solid adults who can in some small way contribute to the at-large society. They need not be president of any group they may join, but the goal was, and is, to afford them enough gifts that they can be positive contributors, even if it just to play third trumpet in the school band, or some such thing.

For me and for Mary it has meant we have to listen with some envy to retired friends who move easily around the globe with big smiles on their faces. Some live six months or longer in parts of America were the sun never sets, play golf to their heart’s content, sit around at night sipping a beer and swapping jokes with like-minded retirees, and once in a while visit with their grandkids.

I’m happy for my friends and in moments of depression wish I could fly out to Scottsdale, sit around the pool and at night have a casual dinner at a great restaurant, and then repeat the process the next day.

To meet all the goals Mary and I have set for ourselves in raising Michael and Caitlin, we have needed help from our our kids. We also have to work harder than somebody bearing down on 70 should have to. The good thing is I love to write, so it’s not like that is work for me.

But now comes the monkey wrench to throw things off kilter. The economy is not going to get better and could get a lot worse, and that affects not just me and the continuation of The Sports Paper, but Mary and the kids, and maybe even those retirees sitting around at night in Arizona or California sipping a beer.

I have to be healthy to keep things going, otherwise the whole house of cards, so to speak, falls down. Unfortunately, the last six weeks have not been good to me. I’ve seen more doctors, taken more drugs, paid more office visits, and taken more X-rays this past six weeks than I have done in my entire life.

I’ve been poked, peeked at, pricked with more needles, had more blood drawn, than I could ever have imagined. One doctor started laughing and said, “Maybe I should stop right here, I've found enough things wrong.”

I laughed back, and told him that would be a good idea.

Some tests I’ve passed, some tests I’ve failed. The bad thing is I can’t afford to fail. I cannot not keep my commitment to live long enough to get Michael and Caitlin to adulthood.

This brings me back to what I said at the top about Christian thought and the arguments that can be made about Free Will and God’s Will. First you need to know – and this might make you feel uncomfortable – I just don’t believe in the existence of God, I know God exists.

I know God exists because of the things that have happened to me over time, some of which I have written about. But knowing God exists does not necessarily help me now that I might need His help more than ever. The reason that is so is because we humans have Free Will, and I have never figured out exactly what that means to me.

Do my prayers to Him to keep me healthy long enough to get our two young children into adulthood override the possibility of me stepping out my front door and getting hit by a train?

If the way that I have lived my life now has caused illnesses that could have been prevented if I would have lived my life better, do my prayers override the stupidity of what I have done and save me long enough to get the kids to adulthood ?

Are my possible health problems a product of Free Will and is there nothing that can be done to reverse them, even prayer?

In short, when does God enter the picture and say, “OK, enough is enough, Mosher. I’ll fix you so you can keep your commitment.”

Or does God sit back and say to himself, “Too bad Mosher, but you had this coming.”

And, finally, does it really matter?

There are so many sad and terrible things happening to good people all over the world right now, why should I expect His help? If God really wanted to fix the terrible things we see every night on the news, wouldn’t you think he would already have done it?

The bottom line is we are all here on a spiritual journey. And it’s not whether we finish the journey that matters as much as it is how we react to things that happen on our journey.

Right now, I’m not reacting well.

Have a great month.

You are loved.