As We Confront Our Darker Demons...

I placed a call last week to a guy I have known for several years but have never really connected with. The purpose of this call? To ask him if we could meet up so I could talk through some things with him. Now, some might ask why I would want to talk to somebody I do not know that well about the things that are going on in my life, the things I have chosen to share with no one but God and occasionally (but rarely) the closest of closest of friends (of which there may be three). To be truthful, I don't know. I just felt like it was the right thing to do and so I did. I have no idea what's going to happen and am open to whatever God may be trying to say to me through this whole experience. It might just be that He is teaching me that honesty- naked and open faced honesty before men is what is necessary to deal with hurt and pain that has remained buried under years and years of hidden scars hastily covered over with the cosmetics of jokes, sarcasm, and success in the eyes of some. Maybe He is trying to show me that sometimes it is okay to let your guard down and that doing so is not a sign of weakness, but in actuality a sign of strength more overt than I could imagine. Maybe it's an attempt to show that God's ability to forgive is bigger than my ability to screw up but I have to be willing to admit that I need both Him and other people. Or maybe, I just wanted to get some things off my chest and picked the guy who knew me least and could judge me least severely to do it.

Whatever the reason may be, I am going through with it. Though it may be difficult and I may stumble haphazardly through it, I am going to do it. Though I may have to fight through my initial and then continuing desire to lie and cover up my faults, I am going to press through. Though I may attempt to divert attention from the things I am going through with clever witicisms and subversive attempts to redirect the attention to something else, something other, I am going to do it. I am going to do it because it is my hope that I will come out of this a better man, having confronted my darker self and seen the light that is inherent even there. I am pushing towards that mark that all too often seems to be elusive. That higher calling that constantly reminds me that I am not merely what I see, what I do or even what I am. Instead, I am much more- a product of striving and perseverance, a result of prayers prayed before my birth and until this day. My life and the destiny that it contains are not the result of happenstance and accidental discoveries of purpose along the way, my life is an amalgamation of all my experiences up until now multiplied exponentially by all that God has for me to do. So that's it, my first foray into unashamed honesty. I'll see you on the other side.



D-$