They told me when I was little that you didn’t just wake up one morning and realize that you were a vile sinner. Yes, my parents brought me to church when I was a kid. You would be surprised to know that once upon a time we were the most perfect little family of God ever. Anyways, I was always taught that the “big” sinners were the result of a lot of different choices along the way. This makes sense in theory- I mean, how often do you sit there and ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up and have them look at you with those bright eyes, not tainted by the truth of human existence, and say “I’ll be a murderer!” “I’ll deal drugs!” “I’ll die in a tragic explosion courtesy of my own stupid decision to drive on a mixture of meth, alcohol and some random pill I got out of a basket at a party!”
One thing they don’t tell you, at least at this age, is that kinda, you do wake up one morning and realize that you’re a vile sinner. When you’re young, they’re trying to do everything possible to show you how to not even get on the road to where I am now, much less try to pick the exit that’s going to keep your sorry self alive the longest. They know that every story has a beginning, and they want to help you towards the best ending possible before you can even understand what they’re trying to tell you. I don’t even know when my beginning would have been for sure.
The “poor me,” sob story mentality of modern day America would give me lots of options to choose from, but sometimes the beginning is more complicated then how crappy your parents, your town, or your surroundings when you were in school were.
I’m getting away from myself, excuse me.
What they don’t tell you when you’re sitting in Sunday school learning about the evils of Saturday morning cartoons where characters say words like “dang,” is that on the day you turn up on the streets of Memphis wondering whether or not you’ll see the sunrise tomorrow because ho of much abuse you’ve put yourself and your body through in the past few months, you won’t even remember how you got here. The little things add up. Failure is a slippery slope, success is a long, hard, deliberate climb.
A few fant slivers of golden orange light penetrate the little piece of hell I’ve spent the night in, and as I wave hello to the new day, I wonder who I’m going to be today.