A Road More Traveled

         A friend told me the other day, "once you travel down a road, you are always more vulnerable to travel down that road again." Humans are habitual creatures. I guess that's why the definition of insanity is "doing something over and over again and expecting different results." There's only one way someone figured that out, and that's by experiencing it. I've always felt more at home on the roads I traveled first. Unfortunately those roads were the dead ends.
          I visited my home town last week. I stayed in the neighborhood I grew up in. I drove the streets I did as a drunken teen. I watched the same yellow line on the side of the road as I did so many nights on my way home from smoking pot out of bongs I had made with beer cans. Watching that yellow line kept me on the road back then.  I could almost still see that big penguin I hallucinated sitting on the traffic light. I could see me, walking down the busy road, as slow as i could, too afraid to go home. Listening to the rattling of the mini vodka bottles in my backpack, trying to forget the bitter cold biting the fingers that clinched my cigarette, hoping a car would veer off the road and hit me.  I stared at the trees as they went by, and thought of the daily fantasies of driving my car into them, remembering how angry I was at the air bag between myself and the wind shield.

          Part of me missed that road. As hard as it was, I was able to escape. I could do those things without it effecting my eternal salvation, without guilt. I could think freely without feeling guilty for being "evil". After all, ignorance is bliss, right?
          I went from that place straight to the Temple. The same Temple I went for Katrina's sealing just two weeks before. What an awesome day that was! This time...I felt ... quite the opposite. There was no light. I won't say He was gone from me (I know better), but I was certainly gone from Him. The road from those sidewalks to the Temple the first time was quite a few years, and a lot of preparation. This time, "older" and "wiser" didn't exactly connect. I guess that's why we are urged to stay so close to the iron rod. If we waiver just a bit, we will fall into the darkness. The darkness is exactly that, dark.
          The next day I listened to a friend bear his testimony about how he was able to "touch heaven" by witnessing his daughter's sealing in the Temple. He spoke about feeling His love, and about how that love is what gets him through life. This person is on a vastly different spiritual plane than I, and my immediate thought was, "I'm not going to make it. I don't have those feelings. He said that's what gets him through, without it he wouldn't make it."  In that moment I was totally fine with giving up. If there's one thing He has made known to me, it's that I don't feel Him like most.  I'm trying to remember exactly that, that He's made it known unto me, and let that knowledge be enough to get me through. He's whispered it to me, and shown me. He knows, and He's let me know.  
          There's only one thing that can fill darkness, and that's light.  He shows us our own paths to the light in different ways.  If everyone's road was the same, we'd have nothing to learn on our own.  Sometimes we all need to take wrong turns, but we can be thankful He's hovering above us with a map.  The road at the end of those childhood streets was dark. Even though I was standing in the Temple, my mind was still on those streets, and I wouldn't let Him in.  I'll admit, sometimes that darkness feels more like "me" than the light.  It's easier to fall.  It's easier to let my guard down to all my natural tendencies, and let my brain do what it naturally wants to do.  I'm not sure my road will end with "touching heaven". I know it has a few extra curves and twists in it that I'm not always as appreciative of as I should be, but when I'm ready I can look up and hope He'll show me which way to go to reach the light.