🇺🇸 Incarceration and solitary confinement can sometimes produce a crystal clarity of self. Without the interactions of others to intrude on thoughts and feelings, great personal epiphanies can be found, mental demons banished and invisible hurts healed in the silent introspection of ones true nature. This is such a story of discovery and healing, from such a person of faith, from inside the D.C. Gulag…….
and it is shared with YOU, AMERICA! 🇺🇸❤️‍🔥

I want to start by saying how very Thankful I am for the many Angels I have had in my life. I am grateful for God’s amazing grace, His undying love, and unwavering Guidance all throughout. He has truly never left me to walk alone. To my mother who never gave up on me and always sang me her song I say, I love you so very much and thank you from the bottom of my heart of flesh, it’s because of your steadfast and unconditional love it’s no longer made from stone.

It would take me 30 plus years and a lifetime of pain and healing to get to a place where I felt ok with myself enough to share with others stories of my deepest secrets and shame. I had masked so much of my life behind vices. To me it didn’t matter what those vices were rather addictions, relationships, or friendships always giving pieces of myself away and never replacing them with anything of value. Each time feeling more and more empty inside.

Please, don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say and think that today I don’t have many many things of real value in my life. I have so much today, my faith, my family, my children, my sobriety to name only a few.

I just think it’s important for me to say that until I learned to value myself, well quite simply I could not value anything else. Seeing value and truly loving myself was never going to be possible without facing the secrets behind my pain. Then and only then would I break free from that heart of stone, that had on it so many inscriptions of battles lost and inherit a heart made of flesh one that needed nurturing, love, and care. I could have never done any of this on my own.

I am also not to far removed from where I have been to tell you how on this journey I fought with God much of the way, never my belief in God as I grew up knowing God, of His salvation, His Son Jesus, and the love that he must have for me to have allowed his Son to hang on Calvary’s Cross for my sins and forgiveness. Free from my shame I am able to tell you how I used to ask myself questions. What if I didn’t know of this God? Would my life be easier? What if I had never known right and wrong? Would I hurt less? Would then my heart not be so conflicted? I was always trying to answer these questions with some philosophical over analytical response. I should have known then I was in trouble, when I didn’t know how to spell either of those words.

Through my formative years as a child and into my young adulthood. The answer to those questions and many more would allude even to the deepest and darkest depths of my imagination.

Much of my early life I fought with the idea of love or at least a man’s love. Today my perception of this love has only been changed through a mended and renewed relationship with God. His ability to heal all wounds has allowed me to confront and accept a state of forgiveness, however imperfect it may be.
I will share with you some of my earliest memories of secrets. Into a very dark chapter of my life that led me to one of the most heartfelt conversations between myself and my father and myself and God.

My father was absent for much of my life. I did see him on occasion, holidays, birthdays, here and there. When I turned 18 I searched out my father to try and have a relationship with him. It was never a perfect relationship but it was something we both were trying. I had no idea that I would only have a few more years with my father.

Before my father would pass away, I believe it was actually 2 or 3 days before he passed. He would ask for me to forgive him for his lack of affection and presence in my life. I remember like it was yesterday, riding with my father in a small bench seat truck, going down the road. My father was driving and shifting gears. I can still see his huge hand on the gear shift, every once in a while he would reach over and pat me on the knee. This always sparked a flurry of emotions in my heart. I felt so safe in those moments. I can still smell that truck even today.
My father had owned a construction company so naturally it smelled like dirt and grease but the good kind like ballpark dirt. I’m pretty sure it didn’t have A/C or a muffler. It was pretty loud going down the road. Were driving down the beach and I remember looking over at him and he had tears in his eyes, up until this moment I don’t believe I ever saw my father cry. He was probably 6′ 4″ close to 300 pounds with eyes that could pierce right through your soul. I asked him, Why are you crying? He would tell me things I had waited my entire life to hear, in that moment my father was vulnerable, loving, and affectionate. I remember leaning into my father and weeping together with him. For me it was in that moment, time stood still. My Father had in one breath healed so many wounds. I was 22 years old. Till this day I thank God so much for that moment in my life. Three days later my father was murdered. Opening up inside me a rage of hurt, brokenness, and pain that would bring me to the depths of despair the likes of which I had never known. Until every last ounce of my soul was gone.

I want to share with you a poem I wrote that hopefully will take you on this journey I have described in the previous paragraphs. Its called.

SECRETS NO MORE
The only father I had ever known, had many secrets of his own, how his inability to love me would become my own
His father never showed him, so how could he have known
My forgiveness would become his and his mine
How our Lives became so intertwined, it would take me a lifetime to unravel his heart from mine

If you have ever felt like you had no feeling, and numbness amounted to healing
Then the secrets I will unfold, of stories untold
May not fall too far from another’s lost soul
Maybe just maybe, my heart spoken
Would be of value to another who’s broken

I never knew how to describe, all the feelings deep inside Nothing I ever tried, could make all the pain subside
If only I could hide, all the pieces that have died, in the teardrops that have fallen from my eyes
In the shadow of my soul, clawing and scratching for my life to take hold
Broken and battered, my bones have been shattered, heart beats reduced to merely a patter
Remnants of life, now left in tatters

Hurt, defeat, deceit amongst the poisons that made me weak, knocked from my feet amongst the dirt I know weep
Crying God please do not judge me
When I ask do you love me?
His voice not mine echoing back off my hollowed bones
My son, since before your memory

I watched your mother thru her love, even as she was struggling, give you her Song
How you Never Have to Walk Alone
It was on her lips my words, her heart my love
The reason my Angels descended from above

Those were not your tears amongst you hid, how could you cry, you were empty inside
Without my breath surely you would have died
My Angels wept and down your face those those tears slid

Every tear never in vain, always taking with it some of your pain
Son on my Angels wings you have fallen
Now rise to your calling
You can never go to far from believing, for my healing hands to lead you home
Now go do my work and share with the world the words of my Angel
You Never Have To Walk Alone