To Abe - Moments 03

I remember that drive, though there were many others like it. It is my habit to listen to worship music or soaking music (instrumental music that seems to help me pray clearly) on my drives to and from work. This day was no different. I was heading home from a long day of commissioning an oil site. This job lasted around 3 weeks straight of 12–15-hour days. The first week, I would take an edible shortly before heading home so that I could be high on the way home. It was affecting my ability to keep the job’s scope in mind, so I stopped this cycle around 4 days into the job. This happened to be around day 12 or so, so I had gone through the heated first days of withdrawal. The first days always brought pain. Yes, for me, but not just for me. They also brought pain to those closest to me. To my wife and sons, in the form of me lashing out in anger. Since I was working so much, they hardly felt it this time. I would simply come home and be too tired to lash out, and crash before I could do much damage. The days following the lash-outs turn into depression days. Days where care for what happens flees, where an empty void of pain remains, and I right in the middle of it. Maybe the only difference is that by day 3 or 4 of coming off weed, I accept the reality of persistent pain as something that I must sit in. So, I sat. As a creature of habit, I still worshipped on that drive home. It was all I really had to combat the overwhelming feelings. My beliefs, the ones that shape my inner world, were skewed after coming off the drug, so I knew I could not trust them. Instead, I had learned to trust Him and Him alone. He had fathered me before and today was no different. Those closest to me had left in my struggles – indeed, they had to. But He had never left. Not in the highest of highs and not in the lowest of lows. So, I worshipped even more. He was good despite the pain. He was perfect and still chose to sit in the pain with me. What a man. What a God. I remember surrendering afresh. Crying tears of not wanting to go back. I remember those hot tears running down my face – wanting to go back to the times before the pain ever existed. Times before the depression took me. Times before I had learned of the wickedness of the world. Times before my own actions condemned me. Yet in the surrender I knew that no matter how much I gave, it was up to Him and His grace to make it a reality. The worship music lingered in those moments as the road continued to take me to my home.