Raising Hell to Amazing Grace

As most of the people close to me will tell you I have been searching for something for a while now. I did not know what it was, but I knew I had to find it before I could truly be happy again. I went home to Kentucky for mother's day this past weekend, and as the wise one will tell you I was not looking forward to the trip. Except something happened on the 4 and a half hour drive home. I told myself that I was going to enjoy this trip because it would be the last time I would be going home for a while. So I did.

I arrived in my driveway Friday night and the second I got out of the car I knew this would be a trip that was going to change things. I did not stick around the house long because my friend SBJ was having her 20th birthday party and friends I had in high school that I hadn't seen in over a year were going to be there so i decided to surprise the birthday girl, and I had the time of my life with people I had been away from for so long. It was like we just picked up where we had left of a year and a half ago. I have never laughed so hard in my life. But unfortunately time passed by all to quickly and I had to leave them like I have had to do many times in the past.

I used the rest of the weekend to reflect on my life. Where I have been, where I am now, and where I want to be in the future. And when I saw where I am now, I was terrified. This is not how I wanted to be living my life. And I was going back and forth through memories of the past trying to figure out what went wrong and how I got off track. Then like a brick falling from the sky it hit me Sunday morning walking to the parking lot after church. I had walked away from God. I felt so ashamed.

The service had been on the topic of coveting, and how if we don't fight the temptation of coveting and fight for our Christianity, when we get to heaven and we tell God all that we have done on this Earth he will say, "But I never knew you," and then cast us into the flames of Hell. That was the wake up call I had been waiting for. The thing I had been looking for. God was what I had been longing for and missing for so long, and I realized I had no one to blame, but myself.

Brother Paul had stated that we as Christians must fight for our faith and our God everyday. He said that we should have our swords drawn and ready for battle whenever it presented its self. I sat there and looked back over the last two years and saw that I had not drawn my sword once. But! I had drawn it in the past and my mother reminded me of it on the car ride home.

In high school I battled so hard for my faith I do not see how I could just up and walk away from it. I was always prepared for anything and I was happy with who I was and how I was living my life. I was responsible and even managed to graduate with a 3.5 G.P.A. But something changed when I left for college. I got tired of being the responsible one and with that I walked away from my relationship with God. Looking back it was obvious what I was doing, but my eyes had been blinded by the fact that I was on my own for the first time. I did things that went against everything I ever believed, and now I see that as an experience where if I had drawn my sword and fought against that I would have saved myself all the heartbreak and anger I developed over the 10 and a half months I went against God.

But now I am starting over. I have spoken to God and I am on my way back to him. He never left me, I left him, and all the steps I took walking away from him will turn into the only step I'll have to take to get back to him. I felt alone before, I no longer feel alone now. I've turned back into the friend that all my friends, that have stuck by me in this time of hell raising within myself, have been missing. I can tell it has already begun making a difference in my life. I am happy for those close to me, and for everything that is going right in their lives.

The empress has found love, which she deserves happiness in all that she has been through. The gay man has found happiness with someone he has never even laid eyes on, and just seeing the smiles on their faces when they speak about those that make them happy makes is all seem worth it. They are my family here. They are the ones I have turned to in the past and now it is my time to return the favor, if this had been three or four months ago I would have done this with a heavy heart and have been jealous of all they have, but that was then and this is now. I love them both dearly and I know that they are happy and I am so blessed to be able to share with them these times of their lives.

I am not worried about finding happiness anymore. I have all I need right now in the empress and the gay man, but if someone were to come along and he made me happy i would partake in the adventure of learning who he is and letting him see me for who I am, and if I am not destined to find him while here in Mississippi that just means more adventures for me to experience in this life. But one thing is for sure I will be keeping close to God from now on. I don't want to return to the life I was leading before, and when you are firm in your relationship with God that is when you will truly be happy in your life and that is all that makes this life worth living.

A New Start

We are all born into this world with a clean slate. No sin, no heartache, no trouble. We spend our entire lives trying to keep a clean slate, but we always fall short of being clean. Continuously the slate it wiped off and we start all over, well for me that time is now. The gay man moved in last week and we have both become happier with the change. I am in the process of finding myself. The wise one told me that I must find myself before I can truly be happy with someone else. I have read the words he wrote sometime ago over and over and over until they have been seared into my brain to where I see them by just closing my eyes. " If you're not enough without someone, you'll never be enough with someone." I repeat those words to myself daily and remember that I have to love myself before I can truly love someone else. I am always afraid that I will miss my chance at love, but the wise one also said that I would know love when I find it because I will never question it. The wise one blows my mind with his insight. It intrigues me that he is so cautious in how he reveals his life. That's not really how I want to express it, but that's the only way I can think to say it. It's the mystery of him not exposing himself to the world and saving his most intimate thoughts and feelings for the one he is meant to be with. It is a romantic thought that a man would do that so he and the one he is to love have those thoughts and feelings between them. I want that type of romance, and intimacy. This makes sense to me if it does to others I do not know. But I am learning what I want and I will wait for it, and settle for nothing less.