Dear Praying Loved One

Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash

Dear Praying Loved One,

You don’t know that in a short time I will be at your doorstep asking to come back home. You are unaware that I have given up everything: the friends, the sin, the relationships, the lifestyle, even the anger, and hatred. You don’t know that when I come back I will be stronger than ever before. I will be more on fire for God than I have ever been. I have grown and changed. We will be closer than ever. We will laugh and love again. Like Lazarus, although I was dead, I will live again. You are oblivious to the fact that with each step I take toward God, toward you, toward life, I am also fighting shame and fear every inch of the way.

I wish I could tell you what it is like to live with a tormented mind. I am terrified. Life looks like death, and death looks like life. The enemy wears a mask that looks like home and then disguises home to look like hell. My mind is bound; it is held tightly in the clenched fists of deception. I have to fill my mind constantly with noise so I will never be left to my own tormenting thoughts. I am confused. I am always straining to make sense of and justify my life, but since there is no peace found in sin, no clarity ever comes. I keep trying to flee from the dark but end up running deeper into it. I pretend to love darkness, but actually, I hate it… and me.

I will come home… But first, I need a renewed mind.

I can never settle, never slow down, never own up, and never ever be alone. So for now, I must continue to surround myself with people who will justify my choices. If I can get enough people in my corner then maybe, just maybe I can convince myself that what I am doing is ok. After all, if that many people agree, how wrong can I be? Better yet, maybe, just maybe with enough people I can convince you, or even God, that I am right. I can persuade you that I am happy; this person is the relationship I really want or this is God’s plan for my life. I might even go so far as to find pastors and leaders who will take up my cause. I will go so far as to twist the word of God to make myself feel right. But that desperate need to justify myself is the proof that I know I am wrong.

I will come home… But first, I need the voices of others to be silenced.

It will devastate you to see me hit rock bottom. It will shatter your heart for me to be lonely, money-less, hungry, hurting, sad, and confused. But rock bottom is exactly the place I need to get to. And for me to get there, I need to lose everything. I need to lose everyone. I need to lose whatever is keeping me in any level of comfort and stability. I need to find myself in the deepest, darkest pit, for that is the only place where I will start to see the consequence of my choices and will begin looking for God with desperate longing once again.

I will come home… But first, I need to shatter.

You cannot imagine the depth of which I hate myself and what my life has turned into. My dreams are gone and this lifestyle is not what the deceiver told me it would be. I believe I am too far gone to come back. And even if I did come back, you would not want me.

I fear you would shame me. I am afraid you would turn me away.

I fear people’s opinions and the reputation I will forever have to live in the shadow of.

I fear I have hurt you too much to face you again.

I am afraid of the actions I will have to take in order to come home. It will mean a radical change of my life, and though I want that beautiful life, it still terrifies me.

In the deepest part of my soul, in the place no one will ever see, I miss you. I want you. And I want to find my way home.

I will come home… But first, I need you to forgive me.

Love,
Your Prodigal