I found God at the corner of E Rochambeau Drive and Mooretown Rd...

This past weekend I was able to get away with my family, all of them. This didn't include people I thought were family, or people I felt that I had to change the way I spoke, or was to make them feel more comfortable. It wasn't with people I had to fake who I was, who I am, and who anything else was.

God opened my eyes.

I've been questioning a lot of things lately, the security of my job, the deepness God is in me, and my direction.

This weekend showed me that my family is my real security, that God placed my family into my life because without them I am nothing, and without them I am empty. My real family, not a fakeness that formed due to circumstances, or beliefs, or anything. People I genuinely love... like... family...

I don't say that a lot. I don't say I love people outside of those in my home, but it's the truth. I have finally been shown how life can be, in the gentleness that is God's love, God's light, and I now finally get it: without my wife, my child, my children, my family, I am nothing.

This changes a lot more than I originally thought. This morning, the idea that things have changed didn't frighten me. It soothed me, and I finally understood that.

I get it.

I no longer desire anything but the love and acceptance of those I love and I don't need to do anything to get that, but just be. I feel at peace with that decision. I do, however, have to make sacrifices for them. Those start now.

PAX is out, and in all honesty, it doesn't bother me like I thought it would. Maybe because it's my decision to do so, but family will always come first, and taking that kind of money for my own selfish reasons just blows my mind. I can't do it now. My family wants a house, with a big yard, and I can't provide that by taking seven hundred dollars and run off for the weekend alone.

I've been begging God for a sign, a purpose, anything that makes sense, and this weekend, in the quiet of a hotel room, I found it: in my family.

God, there are so many of us who don't know the way forward, who don't understand the ideals you gave to us through Christ.  Mary and Joseph was Jesus' family, and both were with him through it all.  That love and devotion he showed us, through them, you showed me through my family.  Please be with others who are searching for their family, their purpose, their center through You.  Amen.

Grace and Peace,
Jesse