Love is Patient |
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| Seventeen years lost to
wildness—alcohol and drug addiction. Over forty arrests during that time,
but a charming and believable personality, a weak legal system, and family
members too willing to bail him out meant he kept escaping prison.
Yes, he escaped prison all that time, but he didn’t escape consequences. His wife, mother of their two children, changed. Clean and sober until the last year, she began "using," as the street term goes, and then plunged into an affair with her husband’s main drug accomplice. The bubble of invincibility that had surrounded the charming man with the lost life suddenly popped. His drug-built world crumbled, small things first—car repossessed, bills piling up. His wife divorced him, had full custody of their two children. He began living in his truck. He tried rehab, but stayed only two weeks and checked himself out with an immediate return to his old habits. Another arrest, only this time, since he was now wanted in three counties, the jail doors stayed shut. There, behind those locked doors, his head began to clear. No drugs, no alcohol. Just jail food, 4:30 a.m. wake up calls, and time. Time to think, write, listen. Time to hear a still, small voice. "Return to me," whispered the Spirit of God. "Return to me, for I have been waiting patiently for you." Return he did, and found, not the sanitized and overly sweet childhood stories of a God/Santa Claus combination, but life-shaking, penetrating, always loving but sometimes terrifying light shed on his soul. Two months later, out on bail, still floating on the euphoria of a clear mind and a soul filled with the presence of God, he seeks to reconcile with his wife. "What’s the matter with her?" he complains. "Why can’t she find God like I have so everything will be OK again?" "And how many years have you been patiently waiting for her?" sighs the Spirit of God. Yes, indeed love is patient. back to home page
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