Sitting, being tempted for a moment. Sometimes these thoughts come. Thoughts of going back to things I once relished--thoughts that those things would once again be somehow enjoyable.
The nature of temptation is to lie.
The present vein regards karaoke. Alcohol.
And since I have to endure the temptation, at least momentarily, it seemed well to elaborate on the process, as it seems to go...having only gone a certain extent privately, thus far.
It usually goes as this...
...tempted to think upon what it would be to spend an evening in such dark revelry as once there was. "For fun." Just to go.
And there's a very mild fear which rises up just at that thought, alongside the temptation to do such a thing--fear that I might be able to actually enjoy such depravity as once was the norm.
So, a two fold temptation, from the outset. Temptation to fear, temptation unto depravity.
Because it's not merely an alcoholic beverage that's the temptation, but the entire course of what once comprised many regular nights.
The thing is, though...
...then comes to mind how utterly miserable I used to continually be. Everything had become a merry-go-round of meaninglessness--moments of giddiness, but vast expanses of drudgery and desolation. Just as part and parcel of the lifestyle--self-indulgence didn't ultimately provide fulfillment. And it was dangerous, routinely.
So, not only depressing, lonely, and unsettled...but reckless.
And I had spent years unsuccessfully attempting to drag my way out of that "mentality," but without ever being able to succeed. I longed to have something meaningful, something true, something fulfilling...whereas, even the shade of love shared by friends was only yet enabling to further self-destruction (myself doing nothing less than the same, moreover, as likewise enabling)...so: hollow.
Longed for more. Couldn't manufacture more.
So, I recall what life was. I recall the uncertainty, yet always striving to plan, to know, to set goals and to accomplish even minor desires. Yet without certainty, on the whole--always some unknown which couldn't be accounted for--what insurance policies yet call "acts of God," as it were..
...such as which had continually, continually, continually peppered...or, rather...salted...life.
To such extent that no matter how far I ever sought to plan, always things would fall apart or prove impossible by some wholly unforeseeable circumstance come to take precedence of the all.
Continually.
I lamented that fact, completely. I despaired of it, as an increasing, deep desire for security and stability was wholly unsettled in light of the reality that circumstances could and would continually shift, beyond my ability to plan for or account for or control. Even internally (emotional/mental) and physically (injury-wise), as it went.
Perhaps external recklessness was just a bit of statement on the internal turmoil which was only ever roiling beneath the surface, yet without usual remark or general consciousness.
Being even unable to control myself was the worst of so many things, though. As, no matter how frustrated or despondent I became over my inability to rigidly maintain emotional and mental stability in the midst of absolute chaos, surrounding...or, more often, in the wake of such chaos...
...no matter how diligently I attempted to control myself, I still couldn't. And it seemed, of all things, if I couldn't control anything else, I'd ought at least be able to control myself. But, in fact, the latter few years of my life prior to coming to know Christ are a testament to the fact that the more diligently and ardently I sought to control myself, the less controlled were emotions and even actions.
As far as such attempts at control went, my first suicide attempt was a frustrated desire to control death: I found myself at a point of inability to attain to all the things which were desirable in life (according to my own estimation), and being so utterly confounded by the absolute dejection and frustration of finding a thing impossible to thus control and master...while simultaneously coming to terms with the idea of death being an eventuality similarly beyond my control...I decided it would wholly be better to control the entire process, and end my own life. I was 15. No one knew.
I saved pills for a brief while...so it wouldn't be remarked. (..in a household of pharmacists, it wasn't noticed.)
But that first attempt was at night...after everyone had gone to sleep. I took pills. So many.
And fair-immediately passed out.
And I so vaguely remember... ...all night...being forced to walk up and down the stairs. Begging, pleading...to be allowed just to lay down, just to sleep.
And over and over, being forced to continue. Not maliciously. Not with any sense of fear in response to the command.
Just knowing an insistence which was unwavering and unquestionable. Totally authoritative. So, I was made to walk--given no choice in the matter. And so I did walk. Half propped up, it seems. Walking, nonetheless.
Up and down the stairs. And into the room and back out of it (was midway between first and second floor). And up and down the stairs.
I don't know how long that went on.
I only know that I woke up the next morning.
And no one knew what I had done.
That same sense of despondency didn't depart, though--the desire to be finished with life didn't go away. It only abated for a while. Until the next attempt, during daylight hours, on my birthday the same year.
People found me, that time. Hospitalization occurred.
And the despair didn't abate, still. The sense of absolute meaninglessness and lack of control didn't abate, but for brief periods. The lack of joy and peace didn't abate, but for random interludes. The despairing of hope didn't abate. The agony at love didn't abate.
But love seemed only a torment. And hope, its partner in degradation. Peace was a laughable concept--surely self-engendered, if at all possible to know. Joy was something only similarly manufactured--if thought to exist at all, then surely only possible according to terms of self-fulfillment found per self-definition and pursuit of personal goals...thus, wholly manufactured.
I wanted those things, desperately, though. On my terms, so as not to have them always fleeting, always pained. Thought too consciously, closely grasped, perhaps.
And so I even sought to hold such things more and more loosely, over the years--always expecting them to slip my grasp, but only relishing whatever brief moments of respite from despondency might come. Fleeting glimpses of joy and peace, in conversation with others. Bare moments of love in being able to share the pains of those struggling alongside.
And then the next wall would crash into place, and each seeming-fortress would disintegrate...rending all wholly asunder, anew.
Even unto a point of abject recklessness, even seeming contained. Yet not. Even being so very restrained, compared to so many...but, still...destructive. So destructive. Torment upon torment.
Cackling in the darkness--that seems an apt phrase for bits which once seemed joyful, yet which were somehow...so off-key, so unhinged, so rife with self-destructive impulse and fraught with undercurrents of fear.
So, for that alone: No, I don't want to go back. To revisit all of that would be heart-wrenching, at the very least, for only the knowledge of such despair let to play havoc against God for so long.
But, further...even as in regard to the fear which would tempt to make it seem I might want to "revel" in such a way, again...
...there is Christ's love.
His abiding Presence.
Grieved.
Which...is utterly heart-wrenching and mind-searing, all entirely on another level.
How could I thumb my nose at the gifts He lavishes, even to try to pretend at being involved in something which no longer appeals? By grace, alone, still.
And, yet, to know...to know...He abides...how could I even allow myself to ever truly contemplate going back to something which He so graciously delivered me from, when it had consumed so much of all my life? Not even out of gratitude, to feel so compelled...or, not merely out of gratitude...but because of the love which yet binds me to Him...?
So, it's not that I'm not capable of falling prey to temptation, no...but...Christ keeps me. Otherwise, there'd be no reflection upon Him, when temptation comes. Because temptation surely doesn't strive in any way to bring Him to loving remembrance.
So, no. I wouldn't go and wouldn't want to. Because I don't want to act against Him, as it's not His will for me to go there.
So, I wouldn't even go to share of Him with those whom I love who are yet mired. Because, end of the day, it's not me who does anything, regardless...but the one who lives in me, who has given me life. Christ. He will save. He will lead. He is mighty to save, and He will do as He wills, always.
Prayer will continue, regardless. And since the temptation has come to remind me of Christ in terms of how good He has been to deliver me from a lifetime of misery, into His abiding love and sacred security...
...then, also, it's reminded me to pray for those who are yet there--even and especially for those who are specifically there, even at this moment (I was invited, is what has largely wrought this). So, it's an invitation to pray, in other words. I cannot be there, because it's not the Lord's will, and as He wills and allows, I would rather choose to follow the one who is beloved above all. But I can pray. And He will surely do as He wills, even according to His will then, would I pray.
Just that they would come to know Him. There's no other peace. There's no other hope. No other life. No other way.
He alone has the words of life. I hope and pray that He would draw them to Himself, that they might also be to the praise of the glory of His grace, in being converted out of the darkness of death in sin and into the light of life in Christ. I would pray that He raise a testimony for Himself even in the owner, there, and his recently betrothed wife...that they would be drawn to the Lord, to know Him, in spirit and truth. To be delivered, a light shining in darkness through them.
That Christ's name would be glorified in that community.
Oh, but to know He is being praised and worshipped and honored as is His due!...even as mere mortals are incomprehensibly limited from even being capable of doing so right as justice unto the God of all the universe! Oh, but that we would all come to a point of longing so to try!
Oh, in that place! Lord, that Your name would be praised by lips which once blasphemed you--no man could claim such a feat his own! Even as my own were once of precisely that ilk, Lord. You, alone. You, alone, have saved. Have Your way. In Christ's name, I would that all these things would be. And amen.
So, yeah.
Temptation. As a means to reflecting upon my own personal Egypt, in terms of deliverance, which means looking unto Christ and His good works, and His power and might and majesty and willingness to save. And, in looking unto Him, then being drawn to pray and praise.
So, the Lord is good.
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