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 |  This contains entries to Take up Your Cross, Space Blog, Blog City PF and BC of Friends |
"August 16, 2018"      "Prompt: Hope. I had hope. It wasn't much hope but it was a little. Then it turned out to have a thousand pieces, Scattering it in all directions. Hope for the best, expect the worst. When is the last time you felt all hope was lost but things got better?"I felt I had lost all hope when I was addicted to drugs. I started out drinking heavily and quickly found myself shoveling my way to the bottom of a great hole. I drank steadily for years and the doctor's kept telling me that I was going to get cirrhosis if I kept going. So I gave up drinking and started using drugs. In doing so I threw away the shovel I was digging toward my bottom with and got myself a backhoe. I used drugs for an additional twenty-five years, never doing anything productive. I simply used and wrote books. I did manage to traditionally publish four books during that time. However I realized that the drugs were killing me. I had no hope. I went into a twelve step program and worked the twelve steps with earnest. The twelve steps introduced me to faith. I developed a concept of God. I managed to stay sober for four and one-half years. I felt like there was still something missing and began using drugs again. However the faith I had learned had me searching. I started attending church and developed a relationship with Jesus Christ. I went back to the twelve steps using Jesus as my higher power. A good sponsor helped me work the steps again and this time I stayed clean. That was ten years, six months, and 1 week ago but who is counting? I know today that I was hopeless and Jesus Christ restored my hope. I am now an ordained minister with the National Association Of Christian Ministers, a soldier with the Salvation Army, and elder for the State of West Virginia with National Association of Christian Ministers. I will soon be either attending Marshall University or simply receiving my regents degree from Marshall, which is most likely what will happen, and then going to work as a drug addictions helper/mental health tech with a local mental health agency. I look forward to doing so. It will be great to give back to a world that gave me so much. Prompt: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." ~ Ray Bradbury"I disagree with Ray Bradbury. I firmly believe that we do leave something behind but it is not things we have created or family that we have had. We leave many of those things yes. I will be leaving family behind along with a lot of books and other permanent records but these aren't important. What is important will be my soul. My soul is prepared for death because I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. God gives each of us a choice about what we will do with our soul. We can keep it to ourselves and he will permit that. If we die that way He will allow us to keep our soul and He'll give us the wish we made in life and He will separate us from Himself in hell, where we will be tormented forever and ever. On the other hand if we give our souls to him in life for safe-keeping and accept the gift of eternal life that He has given us He will allow us to live with Him forever in Heaven. Heaven will be an active place but all the hardships of life will be gone. I want to go there. I know I am going there and the only way to get there is through God's Son Jesus Christ.    [image:2164523-33%} |
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