All Chapters of The Marine Next Door II: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Fate is what takes you down that road you ever so often avoid taking. Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.Sometimes the smallest turn in the wrong direction ends up being the biggest turn of your life. Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times, you think there was no other way forward, that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.I am a man who plans every step that he takes. I would like to see where I am going and how I am going to get there. Some say live life on a daily basis; I say there is no room for surprises and unexpected things. But lately, all my best-laid p

There are days when you think you don't believe anymore. When you think you have grown too old for miracles. When you have lost hope, and you have lost everything. You think all is lost, and all is dire and bleak. The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.No. You do not need to know precisely what is happening or exactly where it is all going. You need to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment and embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.Miracles are just second chances if you really think about it, second chances when all hope is lost.It has been a day, and there is absolutely no improvement with my dad. Funny enough, I have been talking to him, hoping

In life, there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.It's being here now that's important. There's no past, and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it, and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.The biggest mistake we make is the one that most of us make; we do not live in the moment enough. 

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magicIt's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it's the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us, and as long as the sun's shining, shit can't be that bad.One resolution I have made, and always try to keep, is this: 'To rise above little things.' Keep a little fire burning; however small, however, hidden. Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. Trust. Hope. Lo

…Denice POV…I keep repeating to myself over and over to absolute tormented torture that it should be me.Richard has been nothing but a good man and a good father, and he does not deserve anything that has been thrown in his life that is so bad that it is keeping him away from his family.I know that being strong should be something that I should practice, but how can I be strong when the person that helps me to be, is not here? I can, and it is simply not a statement, but my breath is useless if I do not have him breathing it here with me.My boys need a father, and I need a husband.This will only be a chapter in the book of his life, but he needs to move on now, for he has stayed too long. He needs to see the value that he has brought to the life of people that are even beyond his family. He has brought together bonds that we all thought were broken a long time.Let us take, for instance…You have a Marine tha