In the last 57 years of my life I’ve moved 30 times. I know some people who read this may wonder how could I stand it; how could I stand the chaos and change of new schools, new cities…new everything so many times? Honestly, moving so often was my “normal” when you consider my dad was a civilian attaché working with the US Air Force. I did not know life could be any different. On the flip-side, I have friends who have lived in the same house their entire lives, and then it’s my turn to ask, "How could you stand nothing changing your whole life?" Both of these perspectives represent “normal” life for two different people. Truth is, we know what we have experienced. I suppose "normal" is relative.

Regardless of the ever-changing surroundings, I had a constant in my life, and that was my family. Despite the constant of family and the constant variety of change, I was still me. Maybe moving so often and not having friends for more than a year or so at a time drove me into my head to live. Maybe we all live in our heads to a certain extent. That’s where so many wordless conversations took/take place for me…with me talking to me…arguing with me…ignoring me…encouraging me. In my head is where so many of the stories I wrote came from – influenced by who knows what. I never asked…I just wrote those thoughts down.  

I found distraction in my head. I could escape reality there, at least for a while, and live a complete life in a land of fantasy. To write a story and then learn that I had transported someone else into that same world proved to be validation that I really could survive in this world. But it was not enough. Wherever I lived, whatever I was doing, whoever I was with never seemed to be enough. Was it my predisposition to “move”? Was my short attention span related to every aspect of my life and tied to an annual clock? Was there some rule in my life that said, “Okay, twelve months have passed, it’s time to move on!” Or was it a defect in me that prompted me to become bored with the routine of what would become normal and seek a change?

I know I’m an imperfect man, but I also know there is goodness within me too. I know that I’ve sinned with the best, and I’ve done some things that only God knows how badly I feel about them. And many of those platinum-level sins that I choose to enjoy were done in an effort to escape something or someone. Sometimes the “someone” was myself. Alcohol and drugs seemed pretty effective in making those escape attempts successful – at least that’s what the voices in my head and I decided to agree upon. I got pretty good at justifying just about anything. That became easier and easier to do when I was in charge…and still had a bag of pot. When it ran out, it really hurt – physically. The pain in my stomach became unbearable, but not nearly as bad as the ache in my heart. I had to get away. I had to escape. This time the escape was not someone; it was wanting to escape being sober and having to face everything I thought I had left behind. Not so. I had only been distracted by my buzz. 

Joy was not part of my life. But who needed joy when you could roll a joint or gun down way too much tequila and be really really happy? Everything I searched for to sustain my happiness was external to me. And why wouldn’t it be? I was already conditioned to start another search for happiness in a new home. I had to find new friends, had to assimilate into a new school, had to, had to, had to… Looking outside of myself was normal because outside of myself is where I had to figure out how to survive. Certainly happiness would be out there too. So I looked. I smoked it. I drank it. I screwed it. I had become a selfish bastard that sought to feed my own need for happiness before anyone else. 

And then I began to write about it. I had found a brand new escape hatch. I found a new way to ignore what had become a difficult life being me. Don’t get me wrong, I was a good father and a good husband most of the time, but there was "me" to satisfy, and I never missed many chances to satisfy number one. And if what I wrote satisfied someone else, it gave me a rush as powerful as any drug. The rush was not because I wanted to make a relationship out of knowing these people; the rush I got was the knowledge that my words influenced their actions. It was a power rush. Did someone masturbate to something I wrote? Did they have outrageous sex with a spouse...a complete stranger? Did they steal away and have an illicit affair? Were my words their escape too? 

I never really cared because I was satisfying myself. I never really considered that my words may have wrecked a marriage…or contributed to an act that contributed to the wreck of a marriage. While I justified to myself that I was teaching sexual techniques to satisfy a lover before one's self – teaching the power and beauty of eroticism to husbands and wives, I was teaching something very wrong to others. Too much of what I wrote implied unfaithfulness and deception and quite possibly promoted those things.

While my words breathed erotic fuel into some marriages, I am confident I spoiled others, my own included. I had become something I never considered. And I could not see it while I lived it. Only looking back can see what I had become, and these few verses in Second Peter hit me like a ton of bricks: 

They love to indulge in evil pleasures in broad daylight. They are a disgrace and a stain among you. They delight in deception even as they eat with you in your fellowship meals. They commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied. They lure unstable people into sin, and they are well trained in greed.
2 Peter 2:12-14 

They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting. With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.
2 Peter 2:18-19 

I willingly allowed my life to be controlled by an environment external to myself – an environment of my own doing. While the stories came from my head, the motivation was to stimulate a response that was external to me. I needed the rush. I needed to feed the beast that kept demanding more and more to remain satisfied. Like with every addiction, I could not keep up with the increasing demand for satisfaction. I could not get high enough or drunk enough or aroused enough to cover the emptiness I tried to fill. There was no escape. This was my life, and as happy as I could be sometimes, it was not enough. What could I change to make me happy all the time?  

Even after giving my life to Christ I did not find life to happy all the time. There was always someone at work trying to screw me over. The lives of my children were difficult. Good friends were getting sick and dying. Where was happiness in all that? Where indeed. I had given my life to Christ…again…and yet I continued to look outside of myself for happiness. Nothing had changed. Where was Christ? I gave Him my life, and he bolted. Happiness was the wrong thing to look for, although I had convinced myself that being happy was a sign of a good life. Feeling good meant happiness had been reached. Happiness was a destination, some place to get to, someplace outside of myself. It had to be found someplace else because I was not in it…at least not all the time. Why wasn't my life given to Christ making me happy?

Turns out the search should have been for joy. I had that at my fingertips...actually at my  knees. I only had to fall onto them and ask. When I did, I discovered the Holy Spirit in me. He'd been there all along, patiently waiting for my request. 

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.
Galatians 5:22-24 

What I discovered is that giving my life to Christ earlier had been based on the theory of giving, not the practice of giving. Giving your life to Christ is not a transaction like getting a tattoo or taking a magical pill to make you better. It means living a relationship with Him through prayer and through living my life through Him. 

Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.
Galatians 5:25 

Life was never intended to be about being happy all the time. I learned that it was about knowing the joy that a life in Christ could bring if I was willing to live it. Joy was in my heart. The Holy Spirit was in my heart waiting to fill me with it. If only I had thought to look there. The solution seems now to be so painfully simple that I doubted it was for real. That’s when I discovered that it would only be real if I lived it – if I practiced it in living my life. 

Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.
Galatians 6:2-3 

I finally came to realize…and admit…that talk was cheap. So was the theory of giving my life to Christ. It required more of a commitment – more of a relationship to practice it.  And wrapped up the in the exercise of doing His work is where the reward of joy in the Spirit is found.

Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone – especially to those in the family of faith.
Galatians 6:10 

So here I am, doing what I believe God's will for me.

Are you looking for an escape? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and there are no past sins too great to make a clean break. I’m proof of that. Escape was only a matter of asking to join the family of faith.  

You are in my prayers that you also will find that what you’ve been looking for is right there in your heart. 

G.