About the Author

I am a freelance writer with eighteen years of writing experience for network television news (CBS, FOX, ABC, Indy). I was also a producer and editor during that time. I have been writing professionally in print for thirty-three years. I am a public school teacher. I’ve also been a musician (bassist) for more than thirty years. I am a lifelong fisherman, hunter, and outdoorsman.

I became a New Creation in November 2007 by accepting our Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and joined a wonderful Church Family on Good Friday in the Spring of 2008.

How I got here is a very long story; it’s a twenty-six year odyssey to be more precise. I’ve been keeping a journal for a long time. Maybe it’ll be a book someday? But until then, I’ll keep it all right here Under a Glass Moon.

Life without Jesus Christ is like steering a ship with a broken rudder. Without God, this life simply does not make any sense. And I have been the poster child for a life of confusion and disarray.

I got off track twenty-six years before I got saved. Let me tell you, once I got started down the wrong road, I couldn’t stop. And you know what? God never left me hangin’ on any part of the journey. His grace is perfect; His forgiveness has no boundaries. He did not abandon me, although I did everything I could to shake Him. He wouldn’t have any of it.

Everything you can possibly think of in the way of bad behavior, selfish behavior, and plain old sinful behavior, I have done at least once. And like the song says, the things I liked, I tried twice. You got that right!

God was right there by my side all along though. I know that now, but it wasn’t easy convincing this Prodigal Son that God was never gonna let me get away.

My best friend’s father used to say to us, “Boys! You need some churchin’ up!” I believe he was correct. At least in my case he was right on the money.

I’d love every word I write Under a Glass Moon to serve as my witness to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ – what He’s done for me in my life. His gift is for all and for always. The amazing thing is that so many people miss it. I did for more than two-and-a-half decades. I sure hope it doesn’t take everyone as long as it took me to see the light.

Here’s a little sneak peek into my journal:

By September of the year 1981, my second full year at the University of Illinois, I had been vigorously questioning my Christian upbringing. Mine was a fragile relationship with God – to say the least. To say the most, my faith was dying; it was drawing weaker-and-weaker as the years began to pile-up. Add to it a constant diet of secular theory from those “free-thinking” atheist college professors who spewed their rigid opinions every chance they got, and I was ripe for the pickin’.

One day, one terrible day, what little faith I had left, was torn away and crushed by someone I had grown to love and thought of as a Brother.

It was my twenty-first birthday week. Remember what it was like to be so young and foolish that you actually celebrated the occasion of your own birth… for a week?!

The night of the big party fell strategically on the weekend a couple of days after my actual date of birth, but that was okay, because another friend’s birthday followed mine by exactly seven days. That situated Saturday night perfectly in between his big day and mine. We joined forces.

Friends and relations alike gathered, guzzled beer (and other assorted intoxicants) all day long, and then we broke-out the “drunken watermelon” after dark. (Recipe for a drunken watermelon: hollow-out a very large specimen, then fill the open cavity with the “guts” after you’ve removed all those pesky seeds, toss-in grapes, diced cantaloupe, honey dew melon, pineapple, and of course, replace all the “escaped” fluids with a generous portion of 151-proof rum and/or grain alcohol. Refrigerate for at least 24-hours. Enjoy!)

Dang! So this is what college kids mean when they say, “Eat healthy!”

Everyone was feeling pretty good by the end of the party, except for one. My best friend in the whole world growing up, the Stoner, was not himself that night. For one thing, he arrived at the party in a suit. I knew the Stoner for a long time and never saw him wear anything but old ZZ Top concert t-shirts with ripped and tattered jeans. His sandy-blonde hair, routinely grown way past his shoulders and unkempt, was collar length, combed, and business-like. His once wild reddish beard, trimmed to perfection.

“Hey, man… What’s the deal?”

The deal was that love for life on Earth had ended for the Stoner. That’s what his suicide note read in part, when his parents found him hanged dead in his bedroom closet the next morning.

There was no reason for it really, although I spent years blaming myself and wondering what I could have done to prevent it. There was nothing anyone could have done and no one could have seen it coming either – otherwise we’d have surely intervened.

In the weeks and months and years to follow my life would change forever. I cut ties with my church. I dropped out of college. I turned to alcohol and drugs. My very young wife got pregnant, then had an abortion. During a very brief separation from her (about a week), I had an affair with an eighteen-year-old co-worker three days before her wedding. My wife and I divorced.

I was letting it all hang out……….

Thank you for visiting my blog Under a Glass Moon. I hope you’ll visit often and leave me feedback whenever the mood strikes. I’d love your input and suggestions.

Bob