I was on healing hiatus after losing one of my best friends the beginning of the year. His death was a grief I couldn’t just “get over” no matter how many times I was told that was what I needed to do. I knew I needed help and went back into therapy because the way I was feeling became scary to me.
Usually I am a happy person no matter what happens but when I was editing my latest book, 13th Minister Of The Mystery, I felt more connected to the darkness in it, than I did to the positive messages of it. I lost my light source.
Every night I pray looking out the same window. Most of the time I’ll see stars or the moon within the black sky and I take comfort focusing on the light. When all I see is a dark sky with no light to focus on, I feel lonely. I usually end up crying. To me, my friend was that star in the darkness.
I have gotten weary of fighting righteous battles alone, so I created the characters I wish I still had in my life. Politics ended up turning people I thought I knew into the monsters I used to read about in Stephen King books. Truth no longer mattered and it was like they were possessed by some dark force. My friend and I were on different political sides but all that was set aside for what was part of the biggest story line in our lives.
I remember the conversations we had about faith and how he wanted nothing to do with God because he thought God did everything to him. What made it worse for him was the fact that so many had a twisted understanding of what faith is. He didn’t want to go to church because he thought they were all phony as hell itself. When I became a Chaplain, he was shocked because he thought that I wouldn’t be the way I always was. He had a wrong understanding of what a Chaplain is. Our job is to help others and reconnect to God by what we do for them and not what we preach at them. I created characters that were doing the work we were sent to do.
I am churchless but not faithless. I pray directly to God and do not need a person within the wall of a building to do it for me. I don’t need abide by their rules to seek God when over and over again, the bible is clear that is not necessary at all. I don’t need to be seen by others in a group to prove what I am. I created characters living their lives acting the way the disciples did, without getting paid to do it, or forcing anyone to repent before they helped them. They live according to the rules of God and no man.
I am tired of people claiming moral high ground, while not living their lives that way. I am tired of hearing them condemn others while reporters lump all Christians together even though the morality police are the criminals in all of this. They lie, cheat and blame everyone else when they get caught, and then lie again. Christians are not all the same. Above all that, this is supposed to be a nation built on religious freedom where all of us are free to choose what we believe and have the same right to not believe at all. Yet the zealots whine about their “faith” being silenced simply because they want to dictate to all others and enforce their beliefs on everyone else. We see that all the time, and then they turn around and prove they are nothing more than harlots of power serving demons and the father of lies.
“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44
I created characters that fight against the liars because it seems as if the liars dominate all conversations and those seeking the truth are so overwhelmed, they don’t know which lie to address first.
To me, my friend helped me fight the battles I needed to and reassured me I was never really alone. He said I did the same for him.
Now you may understand what I’ve been up again and having to fight these battles alone since January. My therapist is helping me get to the point where I am able to have some compassion for myself as I had for everyone else. On Wounded Times I wrote that I was finally able to hug myself.
I guess what I am trying to say the most is, if you can’t find the light in the darkness, remember the source of your life is still there and if you close your eyes, you can still see it in your memory until you can see it again with your eyes.
