Journey Home

It took me awhile to really be able to look back and see where my journey home began. After my divorce I tried to fill the void with all kinds of things. My lifestyle was like a drug that was relatively easy to acquire. It really was a very selfish life. After having been in numerous relationships I finally realized that all I was doing was adding to my pain. I decided to stop dating, just like that. I still felt the same pain and questioned why I was still miserable and empty. I still drank and partied supporting myself with my bartending job. My friend and I were in the top 10 bartenders in Houston so we were pretty well known wherever we decided to party. Many people would greet us as though we were best buds, we didn’t have a clue who they were. Upon making the decision to stop dating I noticed my friends hanging out with me less and less. I also started losing my popularity in my work. I was sitting by the pool at my apartment complex in Houston one evening when I witnessed a murder about 100 feet away from me. I decided I needed to get away from there. I went to stay with my parents at their cabin in Tennessee for the summer. When I came back I packed up my stuff and moved to the small town where my parents lived. This totally removed me from all the influences that kept me distracted from the real pain I was trying to medicate. You would think that I’d have gone stir crazy, but I found a peace that I’d not felt in a long time. You might say that I experienced a God-sized intervention.
I began going to church more and more frequently, yet I was still finding fault with some of those striving to live the Christian life. I was still struggling with my own flesh wanting to stay in control. I felt the pain from my broken marriage and all the relationships that I tried to heal it with subside each day. During this time God used another death to cause me to turn my eyes to Him. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, it was at my uncle’s death bed that I rediscovered Jesus and His will for my life. I saw such peace that I knew my troubled soul was longing for. In my uncle and his family’s faces I saw the comfort for my hurting heart and the balm for my broken life. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen because it was the closest I’d ever come to seeing Jesus. He was in their faces though they were suffering and in pain He shone through. Right then I knew I wanted that – I wanted Him.
I have come to believe that the best place to be in your singleness is to be single minded and focus on building the relationship with Christ. It isn’t an easy journey but one that is so rewarding.
I’ll never forget the first sermon I heard when I went to church for the first time in many years. The title was, “Coming Home.” I realized the journey home I thought I was on wasn’t to my parent’s home but to my Father’s heart.
Luke 15:11-22
Will you begin your journey home? He’s been waiting for you.