Scars and Broken Bones

unkown artist: please help so we can give proper credit

Having been an Orthodox Christian (pitiful at it though I may be) now for about 9 years I am beginning to have a new perspective. I am attempting to mark this point in my life as different from the last 8 years because of this emergence of a paradigm shift. How else can I explain it so that someone else might understand it? It is as if these refreshingly new thoughts and ideas about life, my life, are somehow converging with my memories and I'm able to look back on life with new eyes. Some of it is hard to understand, some of it painful. However it is all very honest and truthful.
I find it interesting that I can not describe my past life (the old man) to someone who never knew me back then, and walk away feeling as though they either beleived me or fully see how terrible I was. What is more is how I carry around the majority of this past in my head, with a constant reminder bubbling up to the surface, new corrupt thoughts, old urges mingled with new images, sinful visions and day-dreams, all the while no one else sees them. I am sure that the duplicity of my nature eeks through in my daily life, but for the most part no one can see how utterly wretched I truly am.

One of the only lasting visible reminders is my tattoos, spanning the lengths of my arms, torso and legs. I've been told that I shouldn't cling to my past, that that is not who I am but that I only had a hard time. I'm not so sure that I can let it all go. What if the life I lived now propels me forward to never return and keep moving forward towards God. Something I have only admitted recently is that all those years I was addicted to drugs, running around towns causing chaos and chasing my own fleeting desires, in the back of my mind I knew that what I was doing was not only wrong, but that God was watching me and that I was doing all this intentionally so that He would reveal Himself to me. I made this conscious decision long before. It was my way of acting out like a small child who needs attention. I never strayed too far spiritually, no matter how wrecked my life got. The scars remain on my soul though and this is what I am now dealing with.

Years have passed. Many of my former vices have been stripped away and now I am left to see that the one I hurt so much was my own battered soul. I am reminded of the Psalms where King David speaks to His soul as if it is an entity other than himself and yet completely who he truly is. This way of speaking now sticks with me in my utterances before God. This language allows me to see that the life I chose to live caused serious tramatic injury to the most special part of me that I have.


A realization I recently had is that all the sinful thoughts and sinful acts that I do now are but echos of the past, reminding me of how far I really went from life and how close to death I really came. These echos reverberate through time and space, through my life. Sometimes I can stop myself from repeating these mistakes, other times I am compelled and I lose myself until the sin is done. If I do get carried away by the thought and choose to fall into a sin, I am no longer despaired by it, but find that I am just picking myself up off the ground, crossing myself and hoping in the Lord that I won't fall again the next time the thought comes up.

How amazing it is when I run into those incredible people who can describe sins as something they only think of. How incredibly hopeful it is that we can get to a point where sins are just thoughts without the fruit they can bear in an action. Oh! How I wish I could get to that point! But for now, I know that my hope is in God and that He is teaching me. One day I will not water the ugly weeds that choke out my little seed of faith. My soul cries out to our Lord and my heart burns with a fire! His faith is in me and He leads me through His Holy Church. My heart longs for peace and I know that His peace is attainable, tangible. I see it and know it in the Mysteries.

How I dream of being able to suffer not for my own desires but for His glory. I know that this is crazy to say. It sounds crazy to me too but I have followed my own flesh for so long that it would be a blessing to know that once, atleast once, I suffered instead for Christ. The suffering I brought upon myself and everyone around me, the pain I continue to inflict on others by not being able to love them perfectly, all this would be bearable if only I could learn how to suffer for Christ instead. My bones are broken, my heart rejoices, and yet there is something more in what will come. I have known my whole life that God had a special plan for me and as life continues I find that at every turn I lack the strength, but at least now I am beginning to call only on Him. There is no despair in Christ. His suffering was joy! May we boast in His glory and become what he has planned for us, letting go of all our own preconceived notions of what that is to be.