I’d go to the casino to fill that void and convince myself I’d find Mr. Right that very night. The reality? I’d find Mr. Right Now.
I am enclosing a story from a book I’ve been working on called No One Wants a Bitter B!tch in Heaven. Despite the expletive in the title, it’s about me, a lost person coming to terms with God, as I understand Him, in a place where many can’t even get right with themselves: prison. Thank you for this opportunity, and God bless.
Band-Aids are for Flesh Wounds, Not the Soul
Have you ever patched a problem with another problem disguised as a solution? Like when your significant other cheats on you, so you sleep with their brother or their dad to make them feel your pain, but it only causes more pain. Now you’ve got two broken, dead-end relationships and a broken family, and you’re the cause of it. These are the kinds of bad decisions I made when God would bless me with a way out of a toxic situation. Instead of embracing the solitude of singleness and using that space to heal, I failed to give myself room to breathe and reflect on my own role in the toxicity. Instead, I poured gasoline on it, and lit it with a torch.
I trusted my raw, betrayed emotions, which told me that promiscuity and bars would make me feel better. I’d go to the casino to fill that void and convince myself I’d find Mr. Right that very night. The reality? I’d find Mr. Right Now. And the whole cycle would start again, like my mom’s old scratched records, repeating over and over: the annoyance, the chaos. Why wouldn’t God just put a man in my life who didn’t come with abuse, addiction, and brokenness, the things I kept cycling through? Today, I sit in a prison cell feeling a sense of peace, understanding, and self-worth I’ve never known before. With this awe-filled conviction, God helped me realize I needed to show humility, take accountability, and surrender my burdens at His feet. God didn’t appear in the cell while I sobbed my sorrows away, kneeling before Him—but it is a process. Mentally, it’s a chore. It’s spiritual weightlifting, if you will. It’s not easy, and it’s ongoing. But God met me where I am. The last place on earth I expected to feel stable, self-worthy, and eager to help and love others in supportive, appropriate ways, was inside a prison, incarcerated with 100 women, in the same room, sharing toilets and showers, eating “food” that’ll probably take ten years off my life. And yet, by the grace of God, my heart is spiritually fit. I came here to learn many things about myself and my faith that I didn’t even know I needed to learn. Specifically, I’ve learned that if I keep testing God’s will and His plan for my life, I’ll keep ending up as the punchline to His uncanny sense of humor.
