Wrong turn...

Yesterday I left the house to wash my car and meet Tom Cole for coffee. Everything was fine till I decided to take a "short cut". Or rather, a different route to the prayer house that I have ever taken. Easy, huh? Just another exit off the highway and right to it?

NOPE.

Totally got lost and turned around. While driving around trying to find my place and space I had to drive past this back hoe that was dredging a broken water main and putting all the muck into a dump truck, all the while spewing vile nastiness onto the road. Clean car...mud and water.

Needless to say...I was HOT!

Like cussing and screaming in my car at the idiots.

Drive, drive, drive..where am I?

I finally decided to go all the way back to the highway and take the route that I know. But while doing so, I got my bearings and figured out my hour of wandering was started by one simple wrong turn.

Has this been a picture of my life? Talked and shared my testimony with Tom and then spent 4 hours at the prayer room reading his book, Pure Heart, and crying my eyes out. I am sure they thought I was a nut job. Big dude...crying. Nice...just had to keep getting tissues for my nose and face.

But I needed that. It is what I am going through. My nice clean life is driving by that place where all the dirt and crap is being dug up, and no matter how I rage, it is getting on me. I can't avoid it. My past is rushing up to meet me and I can't deal with it all.

So then I went and got hammered at the bar.

That was my response to so much emotion and God. To drink myself into a happy stupor. Is that really the healthy way to cope?

I don't think so.

I am the rich young ruler and I can't just let go of all that I am, all that I have, all that is mine and follow Him. But my heart so desires to. So much.

Now what to do? His love demands my all and I am desperately clinging to all that is me. I just can't force my hands open. I mean, I have everything I ever wanted right now. At this moment in many ways I am happy and content.

But another part of me just weeps. This is not what I was created to be.