Prodigal

Some time ago, I alluded to STILL being the Prodigal Daughter, and it seems I may still be there. I have not heard anything from my interview of last week, so I fear that I am out of the running and eliminated from further consideration. So be it...God has a plan and if this isn't my place, then I submit to His will.

But I cannot help but be frustrated by the bars of the prison that surrounds me.

I see my current position to be a culmination of the rebellion I began in earnest so long ago. Most teenagers rebel by simple disobedience (just like in the Garden of Eden!), most teenagers just go through a lot of angst and do typical teenage things. I was never like other kids. I was a good student, I worked hard, I kept my focus, and even when I ran away from home to find refuge from our chaotic home, I ran to a family I knew, and continued going to school and going to work. I was the responsible daughter...by appearance.

My rebellion was much deeper. My rebellion was more insipient because it was subtle and took on the tones of responsibility, even as I cast away my "inheritance."

I was always an artist, I was always active in Church, I was the writer, the musician, the thinker, the scholar. Mom was so proud of me.

And then I threw it away, little by little, by degrees. I would have been a good teacher; I was told so by many. I had gifts I was encouraged to use and pursue. But I decided I was going to do something totally different; I was going to be a cop.

I found that such an endeavor meant (to me) the rejection of my natural gifts for they had no place in my new worldview. I had to overcome what seemed like weakness (and anything Mom liked was weakness), and adopt things that were "difficult." I was not a natural athlete as far as I knew, so I worked to overcome that...and succeeded much more easily than expected. I needed to develop a thick skin, to overcome my natural sensitivity. Slowly I took on the trait of cynacism, even wrote a story about it freshman year...I may post it one day. (It's fiction). It was actually the last bit of fiction I wrote for years.

Slowly, I shed the remnants of my true nature in order to take on a persona that did not fit me. I wandered through law enforcement jobs, through firefighting, and finally all that training and experience culminated in my current position in which I'm using much of it, but the position has morphed and all I'm dealing with is numbers and mathematical absolutes. My worst subject. I have been in a hell of my own making for the last 5 years.

Slowly, as I reverted, my original gifts have been brought to the forefront and I have begun taking them up again. I have asked for them to come back. I have been asking to be released from this prison.

I have found myself to be in a place in which I am now rejecting the education I am still trying to pay for, the experience I literally gave a piece of myself to obtain, the blood, sweat and tears...all of it, in favor of what I should never have left behind.

It is all so dusty, it is even foreign in some ways, but in a reminiscent way that is comforting. I have been coming before the Father, rehearsing and asking Him to take me back, release me from this prison, and restore me even as a servant because there I could at least have access to what I was first given, even if the full benefits are no longer there.

The Father has not answered yet, and perhaps it is because I am still rehearsing. While the true rebellion is over, I sense I have something else to do, something else to request, some better way to approach the Throne of Mercy. I am the Prodigal, and the Father is in sight, and He is welcoming me...but I haven't yet reached him. I am still missing a big piece of my own coversion, but I can't quite figure out what it is.

In my rebellion, I fell so far and squandered what little I had, and I still squander what has been given to me for the present. I have fallen, and I have lost my dignity, and I can't seem to really take it up again.

I am coming before God, begging forgiveness, asking that the dignity I so rejected be restored to me. I am asking that my punishment come to an end. I formally reject the rebellion I began and ask to start anew.



Please, God, give me another chance. Let me start over.

Please.

I can't do this anymore. I'm not fit to be called your daughter.

I am the Prodigal Daughter, and all I want is to find my way home.