Our Father

It has gotten to that point in the evening, where I find myself sending my last goodnight text, when I lock my room door and I visit the toilet for the last time. I'm now sitting in the period that holds way word thinking, the type that gets people looking at you funny and awkwardly moving away from you to someone more, easy to understand. That's okay with me, because if you didn't understand me, I wouldn't want you here either way. I'm not a poet, and I thought I was a novelist but I'm not that either. I'm very misdirected in my writing, but I find myself writing best in conversation, when I'm trying to convince someone of something.

The way I see it, there is only one type of person on this earth. We are, however, defined by a number of rather trivial and inconsequential factors, such as race, language or intelligence. Now don't get me wrong, no one likes having a conversation with an idiot. But by intelligence, I don't mean how quickly you can regurgitate your textbook to me, but rather how quickly you can some up your own views on the world and what you see as your morality. It isn't easy, but I'm not asking, I'm telling you that that's what I identify intelligence as. You simply are not smart for being able to remember things. Now let me get back to my point, one type of person in the world and that is a sinner. We cannot say that none of us have made mistakes, and are flawed, that we did not step into a puddle of disaster of our own doing, or tried to retrace the steps to what we've succumbed to. When I say we're sinners, I mean it in the most beautiful term of the word, and that is in the sense that even though we are sinners, we're allowed this opportunity at mercy and grace, that we have the choice to rise above what we have done, and create a path for ourselves not overshadowed by disgrace and moral failure. When I say sinner, I mean someone with the ability to rise above everything they have done and repent.

For nineteen years, I've been sinning, and I will for the rest of my life, but it's only very recently that I've fully allowed myself to come to terms with this sin, this flaw in the beautiful creation that is me, and to start rising above it. Someone asked me recently if I've been saved, and I answered that I'd been saved for the last nineteen years of my life. Born with the sin of Eve, I was cleansed when I was baptized at a few months old. And don't get me wrong, that wasn't the last time I set foot in a church, for nineteen years, every Sunday I'd get out of bed feeling as if it were the biggest burden of my life to sit in those pews and it was a burden because I was fighting with every inch of my being to not truly see what I was. Nineteen years, every single Sunday, sometimes high and sometimes hungover, I'd nap and I'd feign illness just so I didn't have to endure the truth.

And then one Sunday I listened for a change. The priest said to simply say "I love you, I'm a sinner and I'm sorry." And I went home and I did it. I'd been going through a rough time and had an emotional breakdown a few days later. I sat in my brothers car in the parking lot of my university not being able to face anyone or move for five hours. And I cried and cried, but then I covered my eyes and I spoke to Him.

"Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil."

Over and over again, I sat there sobbing and praying, it was a plea, a plea for Him to take control of my life. I could feel the words opening wounds in my heart, wounds that had been repressed and badly stitched. I had been trying to fix my life, I had been trying to forgive myself for my sin, to salvage the strength from within myself in order to forgive those around me. But instead now I was begging for strength, for His will to take over my life. And I won't lie, I've been pretty messed up, I'm a bit of an addict and an emotional wreck, I had no where to go anymore, and the only answer that I kept having for years was getting "Out." But there in that parking lot, I found myself believing in something greater than my own ability, putting myself into the hands of a divinity much more powerful than me. And that's how I found Him.

I am no saint, I am a sinner. And that's why I'm just like you. Because none of this earthly madness has anything on His majesty and ability to take control of our lives.