📜 Sacred Testimony LVII

“When Loneliness Spoke Louder Than Wisdom”
and the moment I turned away from what wasn’t love

After I got out of the hospital in 2018,
I went back to the rooms that had once saved me—
the Jacksonville meeting.
I told them with a smile, maybe a shield,
“If I ever get married again,
it’ll have to be someone like Elvis.”

They laughed, maybe.
But inside, I wasn’t just joking.

It had been 17 or 18 years
since my last real relationship.
Loneliness is a quiet ache—
and sometimes it grows loud
when no one else is listening.

That’s when I turned
not toward love,
but toward comfort wrapped in guilt.

A married man.

It lasted a while,
longer than it should have.
And then the weight of it—
the knowing—
came crashing down.

The guilt.
The remorse.
The truth.

I broke it off.
But not before hearts were bruised,
and not just mine.

I not only hurt myself,
but her—
a woman I didn’t even know
but wounded all the same.

🌿 And now I see:

Even when we reach for something to fill the hollow,
there is a grace that whispers:
“Come back.”

I did.
And the pain became a turning.
The ache became a prayer.
And that prayer
became this scroll.