better – PERIOD!
And it’s all our choice. If you can’t see
the unseen, chances are you’re gonna get real bitter. Remember what God spoke
to me in my second blog:
If you can see the UNSEEN, you can handle
the SEEN.
During my first season of suffering I
couldn’t see five days in front of me, let alone the UNSEEN, so as you can
imagine, I didn’t handle the SEEN very well at all.
Here are my three seasons of sufferings:
April 1991 – April 1999
August 2001 – June 2003
February 2007 – Present
Season one started with a girl when I was 15
years old – spring semester of my 9th grade year. JP Taylor, she
crushed me! Funny thing is, that’s how God has always got my attention – thru
women. In fact, a separate girl marks the beginning of each season of
suffering.
Now I don’t want ya’ll to think this whole
first season was miserable. That just wouldn’t be the case. BUT, the good times
usually didn’t last for long. I was constantly in trouble with my parents, the
law, cheating on girlfriends, or getting in fights with friends!
During this time I started drinking on an
every weekend basis in the fall of 1991. I started smoking cigarettes the next
year and drugs followed a few years after that. This behavior continued through
the whole season. God repeatedly tried to get my attention with DWI’s,
minor-in-possessions, jail, heartbreaks, flunking out of college, and lots of
other stuff. But I was not having it. Looking back, I didn’t learn a dang
thing! All those things God used to get me back on the right path and make me
better – just made me bitter! I didn’t
have the spiritual wisdom or understanding to see that God was trying to save
me from a greater harm or greater suffering. I chose to get bitter instead of
get better.
So when a season of success started in the
spring of my junior year of college in 1999 I was a pretty angry guy. Yes, I
was stronger from all the hell I had been through, but I didn’t gain any wisdom
from it. I thought I had saved myself from that pain. I thought I had shaped up
enough to get my life back on track. So I was pretty puffed up with pride.
During this time of success I worked as the
sports editor for my college newspaper and I was also a regular host on a
college-run TV sports show. I truly thought I was the bomb. It’s funny looking
back it! HA! To be honest, life was a heck of a lot of fun during this time.
But my problems with alcohol and girls persisted – they never went away. I
think during that time God protected me from harm, because those two years I
didn’t get into a whole lot of trouble.
By the summer of 2001 I had a sports anchor
gig at a real TV station in Joplin, Missouri and a girlfriend. But on August 13
season two of suffering started. On that day, just 4 days before my birthday I
was fired. I moved back to Arkansas and the next month in a drunken state I
cheated on my girlfriend, she never found out, but we were broke up and done
the next month anyway so it really didn’t matter. October 20, 2001 I found
myself on my knees asking God to take this burden of drinking away from me. HE
DID! INSTANTLY! I have not drank or done any drugs since. Praise be to God.
This second season of suffering lasted
nearly two years – August 2001 thru June 2003
This time of my life is still, by far, the
most painful hell I have ever been through. Getting sober was just the start. I
realized drinking had just been a way to cover up all the pains, hurts and
insecurities I had been living with all those years. Drinking was an escape
from myself! Looking back though it’s no surprise this time was filled with so
much hurt. God had to burn His refining fire VERY hot to purify me from the
years of drinking and pot smoking.
But the trials were too much – the pain was
too much, the heat was too much. I didn’t allow God to finish the work He had
started. I ran. And I ran to women.
For the conclusion of “Gaining Perspective”
just scroll down.
