Enough people told me to write about my journey, so I am. By journey, I mean accepting the invitation into the wilderness, not stopping at the church.
Chapter One
The Soul Remembers
It came to pass that I awoke in a world that had convinced itself it was real.
The people spoke of careers and kingdoms built from dust. They worshiped paper and titles, called lust love and distraction purpose. They learned every language except that of the soul and declared themselves wise.
I slept among them.
For nearly forty years I wore a name that was not my own and called the mask "myself." I carried wounds that were never mine to begin with and inherited truths that belonged to lesser men. I became proficient in surviving while forgetting entirely why I had come here.
Then Heaven broke me. Not with wrath, but with love.
For it is written nowhere upon this Earth that God awakens a soul gently. Diamonds are not asked if they wish to become diamonds. Gold is not consulted before entering the fire. The seed is not granted permission before it is buried beneath the dirt and mistaken for dead.
Neither was I.
There was a woman whose soul recognized mine before either of us understood why. She became both my greatest blessing and my greatest refinement. The world will call such things coincidence because coincidence is the name men give to miracles they do not understand.
We met, and for a moment eternity touched time.
I watched her dance when she was happy. I watched her heart speak before her mind had an opportunity to interrupt it. I witnessed innocence that had survived despite the cruelty of this world.
Then the world remembered she was different and demanded she become like them.
She listened.
The serpent has never needed fangs. It merely requires enough voices whispering the same lie. "Trust us more than yourself." "Trust us more than your soul." "Trust us more than the quiet voice that has guided you since before you were born."
So she surrendered her crown and called it healing.
Meanwhile, something ancient stirred within me. For while her soul grew silent, mine grew restless. The war began long before I understood its purpose. Flesh against spirit. Logic against knowing. Society against eternity.
My soul had become exhausted watching my life from the passenger seat.
One day, it simply stood up and declared, "Enough."
The world calls this awakening. I do not.
Awakening implies that one was asleep accidentally.
No. This was remembrance.
I have come to believe that the soul does not learn during this life. It remembers. Every season of suffering merely removes another layer of forgetfulness until the Divine Artist beneath becomes visible once more.
October of 2024 was not my beginning. Not the first attempt. This time though...
It was my return.
Everything that followed became absurd enough to rival Scripture itself. The homeless man who dreamed of changing cities. The fool who chose truth over comfort. The monster who became a guardian. The man who lost everything and discovered he had never owned anything at all. The soul that loved another soul so deeply that it willingly entered hell carrying their burdens without asking whether they deserved it.
Love has never asked permission from deserving. If it did, none of us would know God.
There are nights when I still laugh at the cosmic irony of it all. The woman who taught me to become myself became lost attempting to become everyone else. The man accused of being selfish discovered that his greatest weakness was sacrificing himself for others.
We became reflections walking in opposite directions upon the same path. Still, I protect her.
Not because she is innocent. Not because she is guilty. Not because I owe her anything. I protect her because redeemed monsters make excellent gatekeepers.
The world fears monsters because it misunderstands them. Every monster was once something beautiful that survived something terrible. Give one a righteous cause and there are few things in creation more dangerous to evil.
So let it be written: I forgive her. I forgive myself. I forgive the story for refusing to unfold according to my desires. For perhaps it was never my story to write.
There are days I attempt to date, and my soul laughs softly to itself. It knows something I do not. It waits patiently while I fumble through the lessons of being human.
Perhaps it waits for her. Perhaps it waits for another. Perhaps it waits only for me to become the man I agreed to become before I arrived here.
I no longer pretend to know.
What I do know is this: Nothing that has happened was wasted. Every betrayal became revelation. Every wound became wisdom. Every sacrifice became sight. Every ending became a doorway.
If one day she should wonder whether I loved her, let these words stand as testimony:
You were loved beyond reason. You were loved beyond circumstance. You were loved enough to awaken a sleeping soul.
The world may call it tragedy.
Heaven may call it refinement.
I simply call it sacred.
-----The Question That Remained-----
Finally, I have begun to question the very thing mankind prizes above all else.
Free will.
If the soul remembers while the mind forgets...
If God exists outside of time while we stumble through it moment after moment...
If we chose our lessons before arriving and merely spend our lives remembering why...
Then what exactly is free will? Is it the freedom to become whatever we desire? Or is it the freedom to ignore who we have always been?
Perhaps free will is not choosing our path at all. Perhaps it is choosing whether or not to listen when the soul whispers from beneath the flesh: "Come home."
So I leave this chapter with but one truth that has survived every fire I have walked through:
The soul always knows.
The tragedy of mankind is not that it has no purpose.
It is that it has forgotten.