what kind of life?

It gawked at me. I sat upright in my seat and read it again.

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.

I gulped. That was the kind of life I led when I chose the world and turned my back on Him. It was the kind of life I continued to lead after coming back to Him, every once in a while when I failed to guard my heart and allowed the world to pull me back in.

The honesty in that passage caught me by surprise. I've personally experienced many of those things described.

Amongst other things, I've made many bad relationship decisions, causing myself and others a lot of heartache and disillusionment. My entire life, it seems, I'd be jumping right into the next relationship before I can finish unloading the emotional junk from the previous one. I've even began thinking it must be one of the enemy's best tried-and-tested strategies with me! I've been in and out of relationships so much that I've lost count, and the longest time I've managed to stay (truly) single would be about a few months. This is rather startling considering I started dating at 12, and I'm turning 25 in a month's time.

Daryl suggested it was due to my deep desire for intimacy and how I've always chosen to fulfill it the wrong ways, with the wrong people. Add to that the seemingly constant stream of guys around me and you get a status: always attached Eileen. At the end of the day, I'm left with a string of broken relationships and painful memories. I always wonder, what if I had just said no to that relationship? What if I had laid aside that desire and pursued wholeness instead?

This Christian walk has been an uphill struggle. Or should I say battle. The last 10 years of my life, I have been progressing in fits and starts. Always seeming to get somewhere, and making a few more steps toward my destiny, but always, I would get pulled down to the bottom abruptly. There, I have had to scramble back up, wipe the tears and shake off the dust, and start climbing again.

Only recently, one such bad decision brought me to a halt. At that time, I was experiencing a great time with God, enjoying every bit of the journey He was taking me on. I was devouring His Word, building my spiritman by praying in tongues at least once a day, and constantly singing love songs to Him. I had begun going to music practices, waiting to be rostered in to sing for revo officially. The girls and I wanted to be a part of the mission trip that revo was planning and we considered how we could do more for our community. I enjoyed my friendships immensely and I was zealous about life. Blessings were pouring in from every corner. Doesn't this sound typical already...

The story then comes to that fateful twist, that inevitable turning point..

Before I knew it, I was caught in a downward spiral and I was going down faster than I could say 'help'. And when the whirlwind romance ended, I was left with this:

What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds!

That's exactly how it felt. Weeds.
And as I trace back, I can see how my decisions were conscious ones. Consciously silencing His voice in my head, consciously proceeding with callous disregard for the consequences. I chose not to regard God and what He was telling me. I chose to satisfy my own selfish desires! And in the end, I had nothing to show for it but weeds.

Sometimes, I feel like saying to myself...
Eileen, oh Eileen, when will you ever learn...
I'm so stubborn!

And what is His response?
Anger? No.
Relentless love, compassion, love.

The nights that I just stuffed my head under my pillow and cried, He soothed me and said, it's ok, I'm here to carry you.
He stood me up on my feet again, zero condemnation, 100% love, and said, ok, let's start again.

It's as if all these years of my life, He would be fitting together the pieces of my life and I would come in and throw it on the floor, scattering all the pieces.
Instead of reacting in anger, He would patiently fit them all back again.

I keep wanting to go back to what I've done, reminding myself and Him, as if He didn't know how bad it was. It amazes me every time, how He's always focused only on moving ahead and leaving the past behind. We can't change the past, but we can choose the future.

The 2 passages quoted above continue to say the following respectively:

But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

Verses from Galatians 5:19-22, 6:7-8, The Message