As I look at my life now, I am content. My parents are well, although my Dad is slowly becoming less mobile, after years of serious issues, I am just glad that we still have him around. I may have the closest relationship with my brother but talk fairly regularly. My oldest child is now attending college in Texas and she is successful, though I expected nothing less. My son and youngest daughter are excelling in school. My wife is as beautiful and amazing as the day I first met her. I have others in my life with whom I feel connected.
This differs greatly from my past. Now I am not saying that I did not have friends
or those whom I loved but much of this community was lost, for varying reasons,
when I chose to radically change my life.
Why a life change, well it was needed.
I spent many years leading a destructive lifestyle. At the time I was walking this path I would
not have considered it destructive. It
was until I began to get sober, that I realized that the past was for the best
left in the past and the decision made to leave it all, though painful was
right. For you see, from the end of the ’80s
and during most of the '90s, I left a path of destruction in my relationships
and friendship. I hurt so many,
destroying lives, and leaving regret. I
was killing myself, by choice, but doing it slowly. By the end of the decade, I was smoking two
packs a day and drinking to excess. I was
an alcoholic. I was battling so many addictions
and issues.
BUT THEN JESUS... thankful pulled me out the raging sea of
my own making and loved me. This allowed
me, for the first time in a long time, to see the world as it was meant to
be. The world was not made up of raging
emotions, of hate, of selfishness, of pain.
I found a safe-haven in the arms of a Savior. In Him, I was able to rest… and from this
moved into a health phase of life. This
does not mean that the past does not haunt me, that it does not chase me in my
dreams, that it is not something with which I daily have to capture and
cage. That does not mean that life is perfect, believe me, I could tell stories from my recent history. But it does mean that I am not in
self-destruct mode… that I am not committing suicide slowly. For that, I thank my Savior. And that is why I am content.