I've Really Got To Make Less Time For God In My Life
After a whole lot of soul searching, I've made a life-changing decision, and that is to make a serious effort to spend less of my day with God. I quite simply have too much going on these days like vain attempts to hold down jobs, keeping a steady hand, wondering where my next meal is going to come from, and how I'm going to score my next hit of smack – how am I supposed to juggle all that on top of keeping a running dialogue with the Almighty?
My decision came when I was at one of the lowest points in my life: the first day on the job at Blockbuster Video. I never thought that I would be witness to the dregs of human waste until the millionth person rented "Miss Congeniality" and asked me if I knew when the sequel was coming out. It was horrible, but then it came all so clear to me like a hit of good H: if God loves these people, then I'd better keep a wide berth. I also quit right after that, because it was then that I knew I needed to make a life change. After all, next to God work was the biggest buzz-kill, not to mention complete waste of my day.
Each person will come to a point in their lives when they ask themselves, "What is really important in life?" I asked myself that very question this morning, and it wasn't God that sprang to mind. No, it was choking down a bowl of Captain Crunch that expired in 2003, looking under the cushions for change, trying to find my keys and figuring who took my wallet during last night's coke binge. There might be a time and a place for God, but it's definitely not now. I really can't imagine when that time would be anyway.
Seriously, I mean, God was just hogging all my precious hours. All those nights I spent on my knees going, "Please Lord do this, please Lord do that," or, "Please God stop these hallucinations of aborted fetuses crawling out of the power outlets," were simply not leaving me with the alone time that I needed. It was too much of a burden and commitment.
What does God expect? Does He think that time grows on trees? There are other things in life, you know. Sleeping comes to mind, which I plan on doing tonight provided I can get my paws on some Quaaludes. Then there's eating, breathing, and bathroom breaks… add all that up and you're left with maybe a few minutes of time for yourself each day. I was personally giving way too much of it to God, and weaning myself off of the Holy Trinity is my new Lenten promise.
You'd think that after being fired from my fifth straight job that I would have figured that I was doing something wrong outside the workplace. When I would show up for work without proper attire, with cigarette burns in my tie, or with shoes that didn't match, it wasn't because I'd been up the entire night trying to focus on a single object. I mean, I might have been, but that's not why I was never ready for work. It was because God was siphoning off the moments that I would otherwise have spent coming down and taking my first shower in days. But did they want about that? No way. No offers for help, no crisis intervention – over my God problem, that is – so it was always the same old story: on the streets again, all because of Our Heavenly Father. Can you believe it?
So starting now, I'm making a real commitment to having less God and more everything else. I hope that I have the resolve and constitution to make this work, because everyone knows how easily I forget things, but with God mostly out of the picture, I think it can work.
