My Great Conversion

It was a night like any other night, except it was a day that I chose to sleep for the first time in days. I mostly survived on cookies, chips, very little sleep and lots of cocaine back then. When cocaine finally let me sleep, I usually slept pretty hard. This particular night I was awaken suddenly and as I opened my eyes there was this bright light beaming down on me. It hovered over me great and fierce. To say I was afraid is an understatement. By my assessment, I couldn't run from it since it was covering the whole of my ceiling. I did the only thing I could think to do and I closed my eyes real tight and pretended to be asleep. I played possum, but he wasn't having it, he knew I wasn't asleep. Then the kindest, softest voice that seemed to soothe the fear from me said, "Don't be afraid, sit up,clean up your life, come out from among them I have work for you." And I said, "Me?..I don't know what to do Lord." I was sure he had the wrong house, the wrong person! I had thousands of dollars worth of cocaine stuffed in my underwear, a pistol at my side and a hopelessness born of pain and disappointment. I had not stepped inside of a church in at least a decade except for funerals. I was in my early twenties and mostly known in my family as the one that wouldn't amount to much. It didn't bother me that they stopped believing in me. I had stopped believing in myself several years before, on a musty, pee stained mattress against my will.

In the light came a vision, in the vision I was standing in a dark place with a white scarf draped over my head and at my feet were many wounded men. Hundreds of them, all had blooded bandages on one area of their body or another. Then just as quickly as it came, it was gone the light, the voice, the vision. I gazed at the ceiling for what must have been hours transfixed. I knew no one would believe me. If it hadn't of happened to me I wouldn't have believe it either. I didn't go back to sleep. I looked at the ceiling until I heard the birds singing. I went to church that day. I cried as I watched many people give their life to Christ that day, I didn't. I sat in the audience and cried.

I would like to offer you a sugar-coated miraculous transformation, but it wasn't to be. I wasn't giving up my life of sin and shame without a fight. It was too much a part of me. I held on to my guilt, unworthiness and shame with a white knuckled grip. One night of a fierce light couldn't break my grip. He was going have to pry my hand open finger by finger.

He didn't, he just followed me. He relentlessly pursued me like a unwanted suitor that loved me unconditionally. He didn't seem to care that I didn't want him. No one gave him the memo that I was no good. Everywhere I went he was there; him and his giant spotlight watching me, waiting on me. I just wanted him to go away and find someone else to do his work. He stalked me. I made my bed in hell and he sat on the edge of it. I begged him to go away, he wouldn't. He wouldn't fit neatly in my shoebox of past experiences. I couldn't fold him up and tuck him away. He just silently followed me with his giant spotlight and big puppy dog eyes.

He wasn't detoured by my choices either. I started dancing in this seedy little sex toy shop. I danced for forty-five dollars a song in this small Plexiglas booth. It had a phone on both sides. I could talk to the guys and they could watch me dance and listen as I pretended to desire them. Phone sex with a live visual. I hated every minute of it, but most of all I hated me. He didn't..he still followed me.

One night it had gotten to be to much for me. I didn't numb the pain. There was no white powder numbing, no liquor induced stupor. I left the shop with eight hundred dollars in my pocket feeling cheapened by the nameless faces that slobbered on the other end of that phone. I still felt that spotlight and his watching eyes. This particular night when I got home I turned on the shower full force as hot as I could get it.I wanted to be clean. I got in the shower and I said, "Okay, since you won't leave me alone, then clean me, please help me, I hate it all. I don't want those men looking at me like an object to be used for their sexual fantasies. I want one man to love me," I just want to be loved." The flow of my tears were as turbulent as the flow of the water, I scrubbed my skin raw trying to wash away my sins. That's the story of my great conversion. I stepped out of that shower forever changed.I was born again..

Fearless