I once heard my dad say, "I have been married to 4 different women" confused by this, I wondered, but he continued, "every decade she totally changed into someone new"
Now I can relate to that. I wish to tell you the high level story of... Me. Sometimes people seem surprised or confused by the choices we make, but we must all remember that life is a journey, and what we think are destinations are really usually just milestones along the way
My journey has been a huge circle through many strange lands.
I started life... Different. All up to my teenage years I was different. I was also ridiculed, criticized, austricized, laughed at, attacked because I was different, but I was me. I was intelligent, wore glasses, wore braces, had strong conservative beliefs, was living in a home / church where miracles happened weekly. My dad was the biggest figure in town, riding around on his tractor in our organic 1 acre garden in his brilliant white shirt with a iron on Jesus people patch on the back.
We were different, and I loved it. I was at peace. I was me. I loved God, I knew what I knew and stood for something true.
Then high-school. Somewhere along the way I made a turn. I got tired of being different. I remember a time thinking "I am done.... I just want to disappear into the crowd." the particular circumstance escapes me, but I remember the moment. I prayed " God I still love you and will never reject you, but I can't do this anymore". And at that mile marker my journey changed.
Drinking, sex, rebellion, women chasing, part of me went crazy down that road. I stayed away from drugs because I knew that my mind was all I had to earn a living and that could not be risked.
Other than that. I started down a road I regret.
Other than that. I started down a road I regret.
There were moments of wavering. For a while I went back and tried to ge me, but my heart was broken by the early years of ridicule. I just wanted to be liked, accepted. So I wavered game and forth. Preacher for a while, rebel for a while. Two people fighting inside me to be in control.
I married 3 women and divorced 2, and through that I lived 4 different lives. Always searching to be who I thought I should, but every mile marker I passed left me deeper into the world of the lost.
Yet I never rejected God, not inside, not verbally.
This journey travels through the strange lands of my life and drops me into the life I have today. Through a string of deeply moving, tormenting, and life altering situations, the Lord led me back... To me.
So today I sit here as a ultra conservative, semi Mormon, ultra traditional usually poor farmer with too many kids to believe and a life that shocks anyone from my past. They think "wow how you have changed" or " now dave really went off the deep end" but no. What they don't realize is that THIS IS ME.
It was only through years of pain that I realized it is going different that is the path. As the bible says, "narrow is the way and few are those who find it". Peace and the resulting happiness comes only from being different. Let the world be who it is, let Satan rule, but to be happy in this life, we are called to be not of this world, to be different. Ironically, what I spent my life seeking, the acceptance of this world, sameness, conformity, is what brings pain, suffering, death.
Today I am who I was, who I am, and I am at total peace with it. Fortunately the Lord brought me a wife that followed on this journey and accepts me. The God of the universe, and the woman God gave me accept me. It is enough.
Be who you are, and know that only if the world hates you, will you find true peace. Don't spend a lifetime proving this simple Bible truth as I did. Live your life, be you. Be the you that God created you to be.
