I am the type of person who tends to self-evaluate quite frequently...looking to see how I am acting, how I treat others, etc. I always was that way to a degree but since I have been in recovery I do it even more...much more.
Lately I have been going through some difficulty with my health that any casual reader here at the Shock would be aware of. Because of that I've really wanted to see how I am really feeling about my self, my life and just things in general.
In addition to all my "self-created" or "man-made" issues..being in recovery as an addict, being a rape survivor and a suicide survivor...I'm turning freaking 50 this year, haha! Half a dang century...who woulda thunk it, eh?! Jeez I pretty much am at the age where I'm gonna need a walker to get around!!
Now...I am joking around here a bit but in all seriousness, aging is part of life and some folks really struggle with it. Getting older, losing their hair, their sex drive and physical abilities in general....Now I have not felt or thought that I was having any kind of problem with living as long as I have. I certainly didn't expect to-----that's a cliche but for me I really didn't expect to see 50. I knew the life style I was living was NOT healthy. I knew I was MOCKING life with every breath yet live I continued to do...ME, the human toxic waste-land and all.
But I am not the least bit psyched out by being 50, being a grandfather (one of my life's GREATEST JOYS)...I just am not one to put a lot of emphasis on the physical: appearance, age...I think in many ways YOUTH...as it were can be deceiving...it's a state of mind really. You are as young , vibrant and active as you set your mind to be. I truly believe that and the realities of my own life have proven that to me.
I enjoy life more today then ever before. Is it different? Oh yea, sure it is! It is a very different, totally unexpected kind of life...today the spiritual aspect of life, my connection to the Creator is the
BEGINNING and the END of everything for me. Without it, I am NOTHING...this I know with all my heart. The certainty of that brings great comfort and confidence...surely enhancing everything that I do and that I am.
I am both amazed and startled at the clarity in which I can still feel things and remember things that happened over 3 decades ago. I cannot help to compare that to the way I sometimes struggle to recall the major details of a conversation I had just an hour ago. I think the difference is that there is an emotional connection to the first incidents that doesn't exist in the second.
I can't kid myself about this stuff, those memories are literally seared into my conscienceness by violent, traumatic action never to diminish or be forgotten. Then they are incorporated almost physically into my being because they have been relived and dreamed of over and over again.
There is hardly a moment in over more then three decades where I haven't been confronted in one way or another with some memory or fleeting glimpse of that horrific event. It was never far from my reach, almost as if it was hovering, just out of physical sight, yet I always knew it was there and was never going to leave me.
That is the most frightening aspect of this whole living nightmare...I know in my heart that it is always going to be part of me until the very end of time. I can't out-live it, out-run it...I couldn't kill it, drown it in a sea of alcohol or drug-it away...nothing came even remotely close to diminishing it's impact on me, even temporarily...it was to a degree...always there, haunting me.
I think that was the most powerful and awe-inspiring aspect of my finding GOD...from that moment on that experience, though still a powerful, painful memory never again completely controlled me. There has been a peace...far beyond my ability to explain or understand..that settled down over me and has never since diminished or gone away.
People use the term "saved" to describe becoming a Christian...well that is exactly how I felt and still feel: SAVED...I am saved! Saved from destruction, saved from damnation, from fear, heart-break, chaos and the knowledge that I am always going to be alone. I discovered that was a myth...a terrible lie that I had been telling myself all those years.
I didn't need to DIE ALONE and I wasn't going to have to either...all because I had been SAVED...eternally SAVED. And I haven't FELT alone, not for one single second since the moment I asked JESUS to be my Lord and Savior. I can't explain it and funny thing...I don't feel compelled to even try to explain it today...I just know.
(Painting by Claude Monet)
