I found myself being fitted for a 500 dollar suit.   My sister in-laws wedding would be including my son as the ring bearer. At the time he was only a year old.  The sleeves of the gray of the suit were about 8 inches (20 centimeters) too short.  The salesman laughed and said, “It’s ok, just never put your arms up.”

…

The tentacles of evil, are strong and painful.  They wrap around hearts and wring painful emotions out.  If their hold persists, then the heart turns dark, and becomes lost within its pain.  Evil will always say, “After assessing myself, I have discovered that I am not that bad.  I am a good.  If you feel discomfort, then you are just too sensitive.  This is just the way things are.”  I am sure this word track is as old as humanity.  The abuser will self asses, then blame the victim.  Their laughter shakes the tentacles, amplifies the hurt and breaks the heart.

Why is God, the last one to know?  I ask myself this many times.  I gripe alone in my car.  I tell the tale to any willing ear I can find.  Evil’s conquest of my heart, my moral, and my life.  Yet, I don’t tell my creator.  My friend.  I wonder how he feels when I try to steal his job.  When I say with my actions that I am better equipped to dislodge the tentacles than the expert.  Evil laughs at my efforts and tightens its grip.  It hopes that I will never call upon God.  Alone, I am defeated.  I begin to believe the lies.  I become evil myself.

Then I make a choice.  My wife, my sweet angel, tells me to call upon God.  “Let go of this junk!” she yells at me.  She yells, because she so passionately loves me.  The solution to all of my problems is so simple, and she knows it.  What a stubborn fool I am.  I wrestle with my pride, as my heart grows tentacles of its own.  The dosage of pain, hurt, and evil is saturated.  It leaks out of my mind, my words, and my life.

Alone in the car, my soul covered in putrid rot, I ask God if he will ride with me.  I fight the tears.  My eyes are hot.  I am so ashamed I can only whisper.  I clear my textbooks and coffee shop napkins off of the passenger seat.  “I need to talk to you,” I say.  I turn off the radio.  I power down my phone.  I am alone with my creator.  I roll up the tinted windows, “I don’t know what to do.  I have been poisoned for so long.  I offer up a punch list of my own failures and sorrow.  I ask for forgiveness.  I reluctantly ask him to forgive others.”  I cry in silence.  I tell him about a crossroads, about difficult decisions.  I feel like he listens.  The tentacles become brittle in a moment.  I feel like evil is purged out of my body, locked in my tears that fall on my shirt.  The pain becomes blurry.  I hear answers to my direct and specific questions, I uttered alone Answers light yellow light, shine within the smiling commentary of the people I meet for the rest of the day.  The feeling of relief and protection is like a warm blanket wrapped around me after I have drifted in a cold dark ocean for days.  I look up to the sky, the tug of my heart being pulled into the heavens is almost magnetic.

…

Copyright 2017 © Zachary W. Gilbert