At an all-time spiritual low, I read the most WONDERFUL Bible verses tonight:

Ezekiel 18:23- "Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?" says the Lord God, "and not that he should turn from his ways and live?"

Ezekiel 18:32- "For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies," says the Lord God. "Therefore turn and live!"

What does this mean to me? It means when I pray to the Lord for forgiveness and mercy and for Him to take me back after I've doubted and sinned, He doesn't shake His head in disappointment and say, "Sorry. You had your chance. Nice knowing ya'." It means He wants me, just like the people of Israel,to come and be forgiven and changed. He doesn't want to me to live in guilt and despair, separated from Him even though I deserve it. Isn't the love of the Lord incredible? I've been a Christian my whole life and forget things like this. Reverend McGuiness was right; there are some places, some times, when you feel more sensitive to the Holy Spirit than others. And then there are the times when you feel so low that the most basic truths elude you.

Thank you, Lord, for not giving me up!

The summer I turned sixteen, between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I attended a program for three weeks at the University of Miami in Florida, getting credits in Marine Biology. The creatures of the sea fascinate me -- always have, always will. Not just beautiful, majestic creatures like Orcas ("The Wolf of the Sea") and polar bears. Tiny, little, mundane fish can be pretty interesting, too, when you think about it. What do all those forwarded e-mail factoids say about the intelligence of fish? Goldfish have a memory span of eight seconds... can't feel pain or fear or sadness... brain smaller than their eye... Well, most of what we hear about fish agrees on one thing: they're stupid. Okay, that's rude. What we mean is, while fish may know enough to be fish and live like fish, compared to humans, they're stupid. There are things we as humans know that you could never teach fish. It would be impossible- *IMPOSSIBLE* - to teach a fish anything about quantum physics, the study of the electrons of an atom as waves instead of particles. Now I'm sure there are some humans out there who are thinking, "Hey, it would be impossible to teach *me* anything about quantum physics." Compared to how much smarter we as humans are than fish, how much smarter is God than us? A lot more. I have my days when I feel desperate, confused, broken... wishing God would just explain how this could possibly all fit together and what's going on. But like fish could never understand quantum physics, there are some things about God I as a human just don't have the capacity to fathom. I can't know, but I can trust that God knows.

I had an epiphany tonight (I get those a lot).

I had problems like any teenager growing up. My dysfunctional family wasn’t rich; in fact, we were poor. Our house was a sea of tension. My siblings and I got into dangerous fist fights. My father is an Adult Child of Alcoholics who never hit my mother but brutally emotionally abused her and broke her down almost on a nightly basis. I used to wonder why I didn’t turn to the popular teenage channels: drugs, drinking, sex…

I get it now.

It’s because I am a loner. I never turned to any such outlets because fitting in and/or companionship would not have made me feel better. Being a loner is a survival mechanism given to me by God that made me turn to books and daydreaming to cope instead of sex.

God protected me by making me a loner, and I will not run from it.