Overly Honest

I spent the first 15 years of my life in a poor, desperate home with a severely dysfunctional family. It wasn’t all bad – but it was bad enough that when I did return home briefly after leaving at 15 years old, The State decided to place me its care instead of leaving me there, and performed routine visits to the home to protect my other siblings. So, I’m comfortable knowing that I’m not unjustly representing the past or artificially inflating the desperation.

One random day, as I was deep in the midst of my teenage rebellion, a solution was offered. It’s important to note that this was not the first time that a solution was offered, nor was there any particular moment of dysfunction preceding this offer. Somehow, something inside me shifted, and I jumped at a solution at long last. In less than an hour, the entire course of my life shifted for the better. It was truly a crossroads in my life.

Perhaps due to my rocky start, I have a deeply held belief that no one on this earth gets through life without ‘paying a price’ and having their soul stretched beyond what they believe they can bear. Whenever and however this moment occurs, the experience humbles us and reminds us of our incredible frailty. For me, much of the misery of my life (so far) has been concentrated in those early years. It was a dear price that I paid, and it has not left me unscathed, but through the grace of God guiding these two feet of mine, I’ve found joy along the way and been blessed with much love throughout.

There are very, very few things in this world that I feel are unshakeable truths. In fact, so far I’ve narrowed it down to four:

1. Prayer changes things. There is a power to a sincere supplication from the soul that simply cannot be denied, and in which I have supreme faith.
2. There is a God. Whatever form it takes for you, whether it’s a universal shared consciousness or a supreme being, I believe that all true prayers are heard regardless of faith.
3. We’re here to be good to each other. This kind of ties back to the ‘no one gets through without paying’ philosophy – we owe it to our fellow man to be as gentle and forgiving and kind as we can possibly be. In spite of that, we’ll still manage to annoy, criticize, offend, and hurt each other – but if we can find a way to lift up more than we push down, I believe we have succeeded in this world.
4. When someone close to you dies, it changes you. You are simply never the same again. The world is never the same, and you learn that you cannot really make it all OK after all. You also learn how important it is to try, to muddle through, to keep going every day, and to treasure people, not things.

And as I look back over the course of my life so far, I cannot help but see a recurring theme of courage granted to change when needed. To leap into a great unknown (without a net most of the time) and trust that things will work out. Usually this leap occurs at a relatively unimportant moment, with little or no fanfare or dramatic setting, yet always in hindsight at exactly the right time. Whether it’s a job change or a change with a loved one, I have lived a very protected life despite my desperate beginnings.

And for this, I am deeply grateful. Happy Thanksgiving, O Great Online. May we all be better tomorrow than we are today.