Renewed and refreshed

And I won’t go into detail, but there were four suicide attempts in order of severity, different kinds of sacrifice.

The first attempt skips back to Los Angeles when all this got going. I tried to strangle myself in a mental hospital and die for the completion of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, and more importantly, the achievement of the sacred family of all of us.

Now we are in Barcelona more than a decade later. Again, I saw myself as a sacrifice to launch a movement called WalkforWorld that would lead to love, peace, and heaven on Earth. I ended up in a bathtub with bloody wrists, but I could not throw my life away as much as I tried. 

In the ‘story’ I didn’t account for the fact that I actually did not fail to sacrifice myself. God’s mission for me was not cut short by my own fear. I did not willingly defy God’s mandate for me to carry out this sacrifice. I got out of the tub only because GOd said that was enough. 

And if I had died the story would have never been written.

I don’t know why I rewrote my own history in such a bad light. I can only guess that God wanted to portray my life with deep humility.  Clear cut examples of big mistakes show how we are all equal under His eyes, we are equal in that we all make mistakes, and we have to keep trying. No one can look to me to figure it out and execute commands that will fix everything. All I can do is help us learn from our mistakes, and warn everybody if we don’t. In short, I have got my own relationship to God, my life is fucked up, you need to do the work for the world on your own–for you and for yours.

Six months later I accounted for my unusual fucked up life in a memoir. It was rough, crazy, but sacred. It was not a work of fiction, it was a heartbreaking work of staggering proportion and it was nonfiction, but with a creative twist.

Another bathtub, bloody wrists, but more blood this time, this was a chop chop from a butcher knife. The blood was opaque, and I was more than ready to get this out of the way, I wanted to die for Him, I wanted to die for GOd. I had already tried before, would I die this time? 

WHY ON EARTH WOULD IT DO ANY GOOD FOR GOD TO DIE FOR HIM?

There was no one more empowered by GOd than me. It may sound like mental illness to end up in a bathtub, but I was actually unstoppable–GOd was within me. God shared his grandiosity, profundity, and wisdom with .ME! I was more than willing to follow GOd wherever he would take me, even to my death. I think God was saying, are you ready for this? Are you willing to do anything to prove you are the ‘one’? I simultaneously felt imbued with greatness, and a spot so infinitesimal that a little blood of mine was nothing.

Prior to this occasion GOd gave me a history lesson and told me how Jesus’s sacrifice was in vain, and that humanity needed 2000 years of strife and conflict to get things right again. I felt bad for Jesus, and I felt good for GOd whose historical trajectory was culminating in the salvation of His people, His children were finally ready. 

Yes there was a mess that needed to be cleaned up, but GOd blessed me with the task of taking care of it. He asked me if it was worth it, all the pain for all the pleasure, I affirmed that it was and that I would do anything to conquer the pain in the world. Having made that promise, he told me to get out of the tub. 

I have never before felt such intensity, such unity, and a sense of purpose, God and .ME. We were so closely aligned that it felt like we would never be separated.  It was as if God and .ME had merged. A month later there would be a greater challenge and a profound separation that I would never have anticipated. 

But this challenge was preparation for what was to become…

And here we are, in Louisville, Kentucky, half a country away north of Louisiana. There was a sequence of sacrifice, and to this day I don’t know one from another, I do not know if my sacrifice was this or that, if I threw my life away, or if it was written, or if I caused the rewriting, or if it happened exactly the way it was supposed to, and everything that came after unfolded exactly the way GOd wanted. 

I am still confused on whether it was this or if it was that. This began with a road trip and ended with me at the bottom of a bridge connecting a parking garage and the departure terminal of an airport. I jumped. GOd said go, and I went, this time without hesitation, immediately responding to His first call.

I volunteered because I loved GOd, and because there was a weight on my back–that no one has carried except Jesus Christ. The choice was crystal clear that my purpose was to jump off that bridge, but like before, I could not throw my life away…I tried and tried and tried, and even a fall–high enough to break my neck and my hips and collapse a lung–was not enough, I could not give away my life to Him, I could not return the gift of life He had given me.

But it is more complicated than that. The night before I was challenged to drive high speeds into the dark hills of Kentucky. I hit 140 mph. When I say this is a work of creative nonfiction (like I said before), I do not embellish on the facts. When I saw 140 that is what the speedometer said at its peak on that night. What is messy is what came afterwards, and I am still trying to sort it out, desperately searching for answers that have eluded me ever since.

What was the point of driving at 140 mph, was I proving that I am not scared of anything, demonstrating to GOd that I am fearless, willing to sacrifice to the highest degree? One point for me, I guess. Proof in and of itself, or leading to something else, I didn’t know.

What follows is the bane of my existence. It’s something that is so disagreeable with my spirit that it feels like its existence might negate and swallow me up completely. 

I have this picture in my head, there are two Kentucky state troopers talking in front of their cars. It occurs to me that I could race through the red light in front of me, and challenge these officers to a police chase. It seems like a really bad idea. I feel trapped, the red light is on the cusp of green, and if I did not get in gear and race through that red light, I would have missed a tremendous opportunity to prove something. What that something was I did not know. 

Leading up to this, my impulses and timely reactions got me through many situations. And this felt the same, but this time I didn’t act on it, this time I resisted. This was a consequential moment, but in this case, I did not act quickly, I froze. I froze. So years later, I am plagued with the knowledge that I did not do what needed to be done. That it was written, and that I had caused the rewriting. The guilt and the burden this left me with, caused me great sadness, and still does seven years later.

There is a word called ‘compunction’, which means remorse, self-reproach, guilt. In the Bible, compunction is a feeling of deep sorrow for sins, a desire to repent, and a sense of awareness that one has fallen short of GOd’s truth. Compunction comes from a spirit of GOd that moves the heart to repentance and prepares it for grace. Compunction is when you feel so guilty that it makes you want to cry and commit to do anything to make it up to GOd. Why this compunction? For what you might ask? 

This life of mine is profoundly flawed, and I made a lot of mistakes, not just this one. The purpose of this compunction is to get my soul in gear and execute the righteous choice to do and act rather than freeze and hesitate. 

What followed this botched ‘traffic light’ incident was a couple of hours of hell on earth all contained in the fire of my mind. The fact that I didn’t crumble to the ground was a miracle. It was awe-some the way I endured the black sublime, wonders of the universe so grand that I dwindled away into a dot so infinitely small, a life so little that jumping off a bridge seemed like a poetic end to a dark world. I would never see the world I had worked so hard to create, but for me, it was enough to know that it would eventually unfold for everyone else. 

Maybe I was just tired from making the choice between good and evil. Maybe I was tired of feeling miserable from carrying the burden of every single instance of pain that has ever been felt. 6 Million lives of exquisite proportion of suffering, for what? Somewhere lost in the life I have lived was the answer to the ‘so what?’ of the Jewish people, it felt like it was all in vain because of me. That was just an example that I could get a handle on…the suffering felt infinite.

For altruistic reasons and deeply sorrowful reasons, I didn’t hesitate when the time came. GOd said go and I ran and jumped over the ledge. Tried again to carry out a sacrifice, but it didn’t work. At the bottom, I woke up.

This is all to say only Jesus made the true sacrifice. In other words, you cannot jump off the carousel in the way you choose, that happens spontaneously, and only when GOd says it is time to get off.

The compunction rears its ugly head sometimes. I am reminded again and again about what I did not do at the traffic light by the two state troopers. This may sound ridiculous, and that’s partly why it’s so painful. I feel like I failed. I froze. I feel disappointed in myself, when I was given so much, and didn’t act on that powerful confidence. 

I try to justify it sometimes, rationally. I tell myself that one of the state troopers’ was a black man…it wasn’t the case that I was taking on a fascist white police force. In fact, I think the police are mostly courageous for what they do in service to the public. Starting a police chase would entail a lot of repercussions. Pedestrians would be terrified by my flying through the downtown streets of Louisville. Cars and trucks could collide dangerously maneuvering around my reckless driving. Police would risk their lives trying to stop this renegade car. Car accidents could cause injuries and even death. And most likely, I would earn time in prison, or more likely, I would die, and would deserve to for doing something so stupid. 

And for what? So what? To prove something? To prove that I can outgun and outrun a police force? I’ll never know what the consequence of that decision, or lack of a decision, would be for me and for the world. I’ll never know. But I know one thing that came out of all of this, in that particular sequence, is that the compunction has never gone away. I am reminded of the ‘traffic light’ almost EVERY day. 

This shouldn’t be included under ‘sacrifice’, as far as my own sacrifice goes. This was a sacrifice of other people, if I raced through that traffic light, I would have sacrificed them, all the bystanders, not myself. At least, when I jumped I only hurt myself, and that decision was the better of the two options. Does that make things better? Seems like it should, but I will never know, I will never know if I made the right decision, I imagine I will never be able to let it go. I will never let go of GOd despite the fact He was kinda mean to me. And I’m more sorry for all the ways I have failed you, GOd.

It is a little sad, the way it works for me…keep in mind I don’t write any of this for self-pity. The way it works is that I am presented with the right thing to do. We all make choices, the difficult choices we make sometimes require deliberation. In other cases, we are presented with the right thing to do, and we must act on it quickly. When I am forced to make a timely decision I give myself about the time it takes to cycle from red to green at a traffic light, a period of time I have etched into my internal clock. More discreetly, if I am presented with a sensitive and important choice, I can choose to act on it immediately and courageously, or I can freeze again–and bear the burden of having made another big mistake.

It is a little sad, the way it works for me. But it works, pain is a great motivator. But sometimes I deliver it on time and do something beautiful and important, and I feel proud of myself. Sometimes I glow with confidence, other times I recognize that I also and continue to make big mistakes.

Again, there is a word called ‘compunction’, which means remorse, self-reproach, guilt. In the Bible, compunction is a feeling of deep sorrow for sins, a desire to repent, and a sense of awareness that one has fallen short of GOd’s truth. Compunction comes from a spirit of God that moves the heart to repentance and prepares it for grace. Compunction is when you feel so guilty that it makes you want to cry and commit to do anything to make it up to GOd. 

If there is nothing redeemable from this, I am sorry, but I want to recommend searching for the ways you have fallen short of GOd’s truth, or explore feelings of sorrow for your sins, or cry for your guilt. Most importantly, let this compunction be your spark that fans the flames of righteousness and inspires action–not later–but NOW. Let your failures be your motivations. Stew over it, stir it, and then strike with the power of Jesus behind you.

I’ll never try to throw my life away again. After this many times, I know it doesn’t work…thank you, Jesus.”

…”I knew this man from Louisiana. He demonstrated his sympathy by personal example on the nature of sacrifice, his, and that of Jesus, and the futility of giving back the life GOd gave you.”

“This is an example of the futility of sacrifice. Even the noblest of missions to carry it out do not measure up to the example set by Jesus. It is one thing to sacrifice others, that’s worse, but not so far behind is the violence of self-sacrifice. There is something sacreligious about it, even though it may seem admirable. Sacrifice of any kind is not to be admired, it is to be recognized for what it is…foolish and dangerous. 

If self-sacrifice is so wrong, then the sacrifice of others is so much worse, and that’s the point…all sacrifice is wrong. That’s powerful…only Jesus can carry out a sacrifice, his sacrifice is the ultimate and the only sacrifice. As much as this man from Louisiana wanted to sacrifice himself it was never enough and never will be–irrespective of his grand intentions.

If it is a question of life and death, avoid making a decision as long as you can…and at all costs. For GOd’s sake, do not alter the fate of mankind because these are His children, and they are His design.

”More about .me at Hea7en2 (I don’t like talking about me. But I need to in order to make sense of the mental pain, thank you for listening.)

PS.

I may have caused a rewriting, a great one that disappointed and perhaps angered HIm. If He had to design it all over again, nothing would make me sadder. One thing gives me comfort in times of doubt.This world is still beautiful and I am assured that life and happiness will unfold for all of us.

There were miracles that took place at a very special hospital a few months later where wonderful people reached the pinnacle of divinity. All those people would have never gotten there unless Louisville happened exactly the way it did.

God uses me as an instrument to warn you of the consequences of not acting. You don’t have to start a police chase to know how to treat people better. I set a higher standard and in some round about way my life is to be an inspiration. I have filled a library with prose, poetry, and essay. That library would not be inspirational if it was empty.

There is too much momentum to look back. We are on time for the unfolding of all of our lives…