The Day I Met LUKE

I have never hidden the fact that I am no stranger to hopelessness, struggle and self-inflicted trial/tribulation. There have been periods in my life where I very closely resembled the fellow in the All-State commercial who portrays the human personification of MAYHEM.

Hey Dude, I did it first!

Seriously, I spent years feeling snake-bit because no matter how hard I tried to do the right thing, to be an honest, good-hearted human being...my true selfish nature always intervened and Chaos/Mayhem eventually took over and ruled the day.

A perfect example of that is how I feel today. I am by all acceptable standards doing well. Sure, I have a badly broken leg but that situation most definitely could have ended with my death. I was fortunate to have only broken my leg and not my neck or worse, suffered a closed head injury that would have turned me into a vegetable for the rest of my days.

I really should be grateful for the blessing I have...but instead I feel trapped in an ever approaching darkness...forbidding, inevitable....frightening.  I call this state of being: MBD which means My Black Dog. Most refer to this as Chronic Depression. 

I can hardly breath at moments like these without the risk of tears...physical or psychological. I feel paralyzed by indecision and fear...fear that I will be exposed as the FRAUD that I have always thought I was.

Often these come on me without warning and before I know it I am  engulfed in gloom and am clueless as to how I arrived at this place. At other times...I am aware that something has happened that has caused or initiated the Mood though I have never been able to prevent it coming on even when I recognize that it is on it's way. 

Today I know why I feel as I do. It is solely related to PAIN...extreme unrelenting pain, physical disability, lack of mobility and the immediate prognosis that it will continue to be this way probably until the day I die.

For the first time in years....thoughts of not wanting to live anymore have found there way back into my heart and my mind. It is discouraging though I know the truth is I am in reality doing very well.

The Depression is the VOICE of evil and it LIES. I have spoken ...er, written in the past about the notion that I have had a "Hell-Hound On My Trail". It is a poetic, creative and visual description of a very real feeling that i have. but the reality is that it is literally TRUE...Hell and it's Care-Taker have spent my entire life time chasing me down. 

For years I was a faithful soldier for Evil...I mocked GOD and fought HIM every minute of every day. I led life for one reason and one reason only....My personal GRATIFICATION. You only counted to me if you had something I wanted or needed. 

That life feels full and glamorous but the reality of it was it leaves one only wanting MORE, MORE and MORE. I was never satisfied...I craved more attention, more money, more drugs and drink and YET...I still was never satisfied.

I spent a life-time feeling LOST, Alone and never content nor satisfied...Until I ran into LUKE. Luke? Yea...as in the writer of the Gospel of LUKE. There is a passage in the Gospel of Luke that changed everything for me. You will find it in Luke 9:23 and some of the other passages that go along with it.

Luke 9:23 reads - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  

Followed by Luke 24/25 which read: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 

There was something incredibly profound about those words...they shot straight to my heart and I have never been the same since. I could personally and vividly relate to the last sentence about gaining the world yet losing one's self. That was the story of my life...that is who I was and deep down I knew for years that this was a phony existence ..a house of cards...smoke & mirrors.

There was something REAL and Profound about denying self, picking up my Cross DAILY and following JESUS. When I do that...no matter what happens I feel OK. When I revert and live for me...focus on me, myself and I...well I instantly seem to suffer. Coincidence you say? I think NOT!!