Epilogue (pt. II)

I finished editing the series of posts that I wrote the first week in July 2018. Here they finally are.

Will my family and friends recognize me when I return? So many things have changed. In the next three posts, I will expound on three things that have changed in me. Before I broach the first topic, let’s go back childhood in the sandbox.

Remember childhood and straining sand through those plastic sifters with mesh bottoms? In my comic ignorance, I refused to accept that, try as I might, I could not keep my sifter full of sand.

There is something inside of me like the sand strainer. Similar to a bucket without a bottom, I can never seem to satisfy it. With the relocation and separation from my family, my then-girlfriend, and my closest friends, I’ve sought comfort here in Belgium. What would you do if you felt distant from everyone close to you and felt completely incompetent at everything you did, unable even to communicate? Just as little me used to frantically throw more and more sand into my sifter, I began to seek fulfillment in wrong, empty things, things much more serious than too many Belgian waffles. I only inflicted more pain on myself. Sometimes my stomach hurt. Sometimes my head hurt. Sometimes my heart hurt. Yet the emptiness still existed.

Now, I know how to fill that hole. You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when somebody loves you? That feeling hints at the answer. The hole inside me needed love. However, it needed a love able to continually fill my holey heart. In this world, there is only one love that is perfect and present. Only one can fill the hole that haunts humans. Accepting the love offered by God fills my emptiness to overflowing. How I wish that I would turn more often to accept the love that He continually offers! Maybe I wasn’t so naïve as a kid to believe that something could fill my holey heart.

Are you empty because of holes in your heart?