The depth of my Depravity

My heart is wicked.

It sucks, honestly.

I've been trying to fight the good fight for a long time now - nearly 12 years. I'm almost 30, so you'd think that my heart would've learned - be good, like the light, and for goodness sake, stop wishing cigarettes didn't cause cancer.

I don't know when it started, but somewhere around puberty, I began acquire a thirst for bad things. I guess "bad" is a relative term, so let me clarify:
I had a pretty semi-charmed life growing up, so it didn't come from this place of being self-destructive, trying to cope with pain from home or divorce or worse. To me that's a different story all together.
It was that I really, really enjoyed the things I had to keep secret.

I remember being young and scoring a pack of cigarettes from an acquaintance. Everyone I knew that smoked was only trying to fit in and look grown up. I never told anyone about that first pack of smokes; I would just go home and smoke in the woods behind my house. Only because I liked it.

I have this great friend that I travel with pretty often. We talk a lot. I belly laugh at his stories from High School. They all have this element about them: they aren't exactly loaded with godliness but they aren't shameful. I feel a bit envious of him, because, with an exception of about 3 or 4 good stories, my stories aren't funny. I wish they were something charming, like: I had a fake ID and we got drunk and threw up in your neighbor's bushes, but most of the time they are weightier and not fun when I share.

I know if you took inventory of my sins and lined them up next to "that guy you know", mine might pale in comparison in the scope of our 30 year existence. Sometimes at work they make jokes or share emails and purposefully exclude me as if not to taint me, which is fine. But I know what my heart was like at 17 - when Kappa Sig President was too bashful, I was pushing the envelope.

I can't imagine where my sin would've taken me if God hadn't rescued me at 18. I can't imagine what would've happened if God hadn't turned me upside down and into a freak. I wish I could've been that guy who didn't ever seem to be mastered by pleasure and was able to maintain a level of innocence without begging for Christ's ferocious grace.

Although God has made me into a new man, my heart still thirsts for bad things. It's embarrassing. I still struggle to not give in to the same cravings that completely took me away 12 years ago. I still want to be that kid behind the fence. I still want to live in blind unbridled selfishness. But today these desires present themselves differently and with such subtlety.

As if it's a twist to a beautiful story, it's these embarrassing moments, when I see the depth of my depravity, that reminds me of the goodness of God. Surely, I am cursed and gone astray! But He saves. It's been his amazing grace that has kept me and doesn't let me go. It's His love and mercy that has helped me win small battles that have kept me from having huge disasters. It's his heavy pursuit that brings me back to the cross over and over again.

Honestly, my wicked heart helps me believe in a savior. There's no other way to explain the last 12 years.

I am so thankful.