For years, I had endured the kind of suffering only reserved for the grandest of fools, those who believe they were fighting for something true. And I fought hard to hold on, even as the water kept rising, and I kept suffocating—because it was true, or I believed it was. Now I know I had been an idiot, a blind one, an earnestly blind idiot.
And so I died. God, how I died. How it hurt. How I drowned every day for weeks on end in my shame, my guilt, in the unbearable agony of knowing I had caused someone unimaginable, undeserved pain. This is my greatest regret, and the scar it has left in my heart I will carry forever to remind me how I was weak and stubborn—but also as a reminder of how I was forgiven. I can no longer hope for the forgiveness of man, but Christ has looked at me with mercy and offered me another chance.
It is unfathomable that I could live again after all that ugliness, yet here I am. I can only return his mercy, the grace that scum like me don’t deserve, by living every day with gratitude. And so I am. My heart is bursting with thanks that he has calmed the storm and invited me to walk with him gain. I had carried my cross to my "death," and I have learned the lesson that this tragedy wishes to teach me.