Fireworks In Virginia

Fireworks In Virginia- By Trent Dabbs was the song I put on repeat on my ipod while sitting at Denny's on New Years Eve actually at the time I guess it would have been New Years Day. It was about to be 2007. I sat there all night long alone. I wrote things down. I looked up a lot to see who else was there. Mostly drunk people inhabited the place, smoke filled the room, people were talking about the stupidest things. I sit and listen to other people's conversations a lot. It started when I was practicing dialogue to write scripts, then it became habit to eavesdrop on the happenings of others without them knowing. It is harmless until they say something funny and I laugh like in Something About Mary. I was sitting there deciding on a life change. Things weren't going well for me. I battled more that year with depression than most years, I felt more alone and more lost than ever before. I felt far from God, I felt like I had been acting for my family, my friends, my church, and my students. I believed, yet I was stale and fake and I knew it. I still hadn't made the choice to embrace the truth of reality. I was to myself disgusting and I felt that I was that way to God too. I was oppressed, buried under the weight of guilt and bleeding from the wounds that I had denied to feel. I decided on New Years Eve that I needed change, but had no idea what it would look like or what that meant or even what I was going to do first, I new I just needed change because this is not what God had in mind for my life and I new it. I saw a therapist, he literally could not help me, I tried everything, nothing worked, so the issue was with me and God. How had I got here, where was the wrong turn taken. I felt tired and kicked around. I guess that is what has to happen to a stubborn person to show them that we need God. Maybe I lived a little too much for myself. Maybe I finally realized just how much I need God on a day to day basis. The song reminded me that when we are broken, our colors are shown like fireworks. Before they are blown apart, they are lifeless cans filled with explosives. They are set off and broken and they show their beauty. I think this is the change I needed. I needed to let people see how broken I am and maybe through that God inside me will be glorified. I pray daily for God to break me again and again. To tear my heart into shreds, to shatter me like glass. Because when I am broken I see the need for God every day in my life.