That fateful day..

You never really know how bad you actually were and how negatively you impacted people's lives until you have turned from that road and begun to travel the way of truth, love, and forgiveness. It isn't until then that you can actually posses the clarity needed to look back and see, and you think, "My God? What was wrong with me for all that time?"

I'll never forget the moment when the impact of everything I had done, particularly to the one or one's closest to me, actually hit me. I didn't think it was possible for someone to loathe themselves as much as I did then. Especially me, of all people. It was no secret that I thought highly of myself for the majority of my life..

I now know that, no matter what I do or how hard I try, I can never make up for the things I have done. I can however, repent. Besides, it feels good to try and make it up, because it feels good to do something for someone.
Repentance is not easy. Especially if you are an arrogant bastard like me. For me, it was a game I played with through out the years. On again, off again. Good, bad. A lot of flip flopping in my faith and whom I really was at the time, which was someone no damn good..

In what is now currently my latest and final incarceration, as I paid my debt to society once again, something happened to me inside. I literally woke up one morning, and I thought to myself, "you know what Ray? This is some bullshit right here. Take a good look at yourself. You are 42 years old, and you are sitting in jail, with no job outside, and a woman you don't deserve waiting for you and four kids waiting for you, and you haven't accomplished anything in your life aside from cause them all grief. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

And then at that moment, I looked up, and I said "you know what Lord? I have been one stupid son of a bitch, and I ask that you please forgive me. I know you have have been talking to me and tugging at me all my life, and I have rejected you, and hated you, and denied you, and tried to ignore you, and I allowed myself and my life to become unmanageable for so long, that's its a miracle I'm not dead or single and in prison. Please forgive me, and help me to change and use this time in here to begin to mold into something my wife deserves and will love and respect and trust, for real this time., and set me on the path that you have always intended for me so that I may repent and serve you."

You know what? My life has never been the same since then. I felt God lay his hand on me that day and He spoke to me, and you know what He said to me? He said, "Welcome home."