The Untold Chapters

 He stirred his coffee and said, "the grace of God is inexhaustible." 

And then I wept and told him about my childhood years and isolation; homeschooling and remnant theology and the rapture and the y'all come choir and just as i am without one plea

and playboy magazines and treeforts and wrath and repentance and recycling patterns of confessions to 'Thee and Thee Alone!', while clutching fig leaves behind bushes hiding serpents breathing questions about commandments and fruit and trees and 

east of eden I limped toward a promised land, full of milk and honey and power and money. You put out a sign on 28th street and invited me to join your circle until two people made their discomfort known. 

The next morning, the text message read: "After further thought... I've done my own research on you. There are pieces of your story that you conveniently omitted. Therefore, you. are. not. welcome. here."

Untold pieces? I dropped my phone and stared at the fence surrounding the back yard. Unsure, exactly, which pieces he referenced... 

Maybe it's the story behind the scars, and the boundaries crossed and the security lost. Maybe it is the truth of the blood stains on my hands, and the death of an innocent man on the execution stake of Crosspoint Baptist Church. Or the one room schoolhouse in Montague, and the desecration of Holy Art, and the legendary pastor had a hidden violence and a hidden bottle and the Holy Lands separating the church from the parsonage held a thousand secrets of which we do not speak. 

Or maybe it's the loss of love and discovery of unforgiveness. Maybe it's the epiphany of pleading guilty with sincerity and owning my sin and suffocating under the weight of anonymous comments. Maybe it's the revision of historical accounts, from another perspective - like conflicting witness reports of a fatal car accident, from the east and from the west like the sin that God promised to remove. 

Maybe I forgot to include the details of blood and lust and rage and murder and sex and drugs and recovery and redemption and blood and lust and rage and murder and sex and drugs and the ongoing chatter of movies we've seen before and plotlines that have been regurgitated by hushed whispers and a homeless rabbi is writing in the dirt, and from the oldest to the youngest they all dropped their stones. 

If I've omitted pieces of my story during our 1.5 hour coffee chat, I'm sorry. I should have led with picture of boy holding a King James Bible and cheeky smile, having chosen to actually believe that Jesus meant what He said. I should have told you about false accusations and spiritual abuse, about faith to start again and again and again and the gentle whisper in the middle of the night and the love of a Good Good Father who still invites me to walk in the calling of my true identity. 

Last night my counselor asked, "What is it that you are looking for? What are you hoping for?" 

After much consideration I've realized the answer: I want to experience the feeling of sincere forgiveness. Healing, restoration, and an ocean of tears waiting to be released. Like the prodigal melting into the arms of his father, at the end of the driveway. 

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