The Billion-Year Adventure

      A few years back, when my mind was much more fractured than it is today and I was absolutely out of control and out of my element, in the midst of the insanity my mind's eye and my thoughts were exceedingly vivid. Chaotic and broken, but vivid nonetheless. As I was immersed into a dark rage and hatred and my mind and spirit became more poisoned, I saw something in my head that was quite shocking, yet reassuring. I saw what I can only describe as an "image," for lack of a better word, of an immense period of time. 

  In this mental time-image, the time I was witnessing was billions of years of adventure, pleasure, victories, purpose, wonders, and beauty that I partook in and engaged in. I saw world upon world, culture upon culture, knowledge compounded on knowledge, wonder upon wonder, and beauty like I have never seen in life. 

I fought wars, had victories, had defeats, fell in love, made friends, made enemies, and lived an exciting, full, purposeful, and fulfilling existence. Towards the end of this billion year adventure, in this mental image, the universe I was in started to get stripped down, broken apart, and corrupted by a darkness; a consuming void.

The time-image I was seeing looked like an arching line on a graph that started at zero, arched and rose up to a high pinnacle, and started descending back to zero. That descent to zero was the end of the billion year adventure. That is when my universe started to get stripped, corrupted, made more chaotic, and broken down. 

    Even I, myself, began to be stripped of almost everything. Like the victims of the holocaust, I saw myself being systematically stripped of every valued thing in my existence. Stripped of my freedom. Stripped of my happiness. Stripped of my purpose. Stripped of my dreams. Even my mind started to get stripped, and it was as if I was naked, alone, and in the dark, but that arching line never completely made it to zero. There was a spark in me, and that spark initiated the whole process to start over, and the billion-year adventure began all over again. 

In one of the worst times of my life and in one of the deepest throngs of mental illness I have ever been in I was exposed to such a wonderful and amazing concept. This arching billion year timeline cycled up and down between an unfathomably large number in its intensity and fullness to just barely a micron above zero in its deprivation, only to have at the last moment the whole cycle sparked up again and reinitiated, and the cycle of these cycles had no beginning and no end. It was a hope-inducing concept and a strong consolation in the depths of what was at the time a living hell.

As the world enters into a state of uncertainty and fear again, and mass death has a very real possibility of striking at the heart of our society, I take solace in my relationship with God, knowing that all of His cycles and all of His adventures he has in store for us have a higher purpose, and are for His glory and our glory. I put my trust that God knows what He is doing, and that the cycles, gears and mechanisms of eternity are safely in His hands.

Good night