God Show Me The Way

This has been, by far, the worst week of my life. The storm inside me raged stronger than any tempest, relentless and consuming. Everything that is happening to me right now is the direct result of everything I’ve had in my heart for far too long. It was a dark, heavy mass, throbbing like a second heart. I honestly had no idea how heavy the weight I’ve been carrying on my back has been until the day that I let it all go. That day, the world seemed to stop rotating for just a moment—a profound, chilling silence. I confessed my sins to the world, and I confessed my sins to my mother, the person who brought me into this world and raised me. Her eyes, those deep wells of wisdom and love, clouded over as the truth spilled from my lips. Her strength is a testament to her love, but I’m not naive in that the things that she heard me say broke her heart. A jagged tear right down the center of that endless love she has for me. It was the most painful thing I have ever seen; the flinching of her spirit as each word hit her harder than any physical blow. All these years, keeping the truth of what I’ve done hidden, I lived shrouded, suffocating in a constant state of fear. I let it all go, and put my life in God’s hands. It was like releasing a breath I didn’t know I was holding, allowing that heavy weight to dissolve into the ether, taken up and away. People have been praying for me, from all over the world. Those prayers, I feel them. In the cool breeze that seems to cleanse my soul as it passes, in the warmth of sunlight that suddenly feels softer on my face. I hear them in the quiet moments when the world seems a little less harsh, less cold. I can feel God’s hands washing my sins away, and telling me to walk toward the light. It is a light that feels like a new day, pure and promising. My wife, my soulmate, has accepted things from me for far too long. Things that nobody should ever have to accept from anyone. But she did it for me, until she could no more. Her touch, which once brought comfort, had grown weary and distant. These things I’m experiencing right now, I don’t blame her for. I blame nobody but myself, and the reality that my thoughts created. Today, I smoked my last cigarette, and I’m moving toward the light that God is showing me. That last drag tasted of finality, of ending one chapter and forcing myself into the next. The smoke seemed to take with it a part of that old, dark life as it curled away into the sky. I haven’t stopped praying, and I know now, that moving forward, prayer should be a part of my daily routine. It is my anchor and my guide, the steady rhythm that will pace my new path. It is in these moments, with my head bowed and my heart open, that I feel most connected to the world again, to my family, and to the man I am striving to become.