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Crossroads
What really matters in life? I will always remember when I was a little kid that I watched a cartoon that spelled it out for me:
"Think about the things that really matter: family, friends, the gifts of God. What's that verse? 'Where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be also.'"
I have spent this week on a perilous see-saw between two conflicting belief systems.
My family is too precious to me, my God is too precious to me, my friends are too precious to me--my friends...yes, my friends, my forgiving, long-suffering friends, and family, my enduring, unconditional family...
I can not stay on Gaia anymore...in my despair over what path of life I want to follow, I made a grave mistake...and I can not commit to it, lest I send myself down a path farther and farther away from the clarity of Christ's Love.
I have lost Gaia...I'm not going to be here anymore. I'm sorry to my friends who I've made here...all of them. the Gaia sister I just found, my oldest Gaian friends, my casual acquaintances. Please know that if we can stay in touch outside of Gaia, I will do so. I know that the friends I've made here are real people with real feelings. To all my friends: If our friendship has any true substance to it, it will last this transition away from Gaia.
My selfishness has jeopardized so many relationships already...it has to stop. Gaia is of itself a purely benign environment, in my opinion. I have seen users who employ Gaia Online for purposes that are wholesome, fun, constructive, and meaningful. At the same time, I've seen users who engage in the most disgusting, selfish, scheming, underhanded, and vile activities here.
As for me, the state of my heart and soul right now is such that I am unable to use Gaia solely in the healthy venues it offers. I have poured too much of my time and money into this site, where virtual actions act as a synthetic substitute for real life actions and plans that need to take place. I will be better off studying, participating in school, work, and church. I am not capable at this time of using Gaia solely in a healthy capacity, and until I can do so, I must cut myself off from this place completely. God willing, if there was anything good that came out of this site, He will bring it back to me someday.
In short, my items are gone (in more ways than one), my life here suspended until changes are effected in me. I am going to make dead sure that I don't come back here at all. No more mules, no more excuses, no logging in just to see how things are going. I will be gone from here, my account a shell of its former self until God works in me so that I can be here in a more wholesome capacity.
Until we meet again,
--Joel ("Saint Jesse" wink
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