Maybe I enjoy my mud and rooting around for the cast-offs of others good meals. I am the prodigal. I live in the trough with the unclean because I am unclean. I struggle with elementary things when I should be beyond those things. I still get bogged down in the muck and mire because I live there.

I am the least and imagine myself as such never allowing myself to even peek at what I may actually be because I am the bottom of the hoof of the pig, I am trod upon and deservingly so.

How can God use the bottom of the hoof of the pig? I continually plod along wondering if it is all real or some shallow figment of my filthy imagination. I see beauty, but wonder if it is all makup and lighting. How does God love someone like me? He just does and it is hard for me to accept that some days, most days. Why do I wallow around the sty and stay nasty? Only He knows. God, please love on me today!

I will mention one thing. I know it’s definitely not the way you would frame your story. We’ve talked a lot about that. But the way it came across in the vastly abbreviated form on video was that you had a problem with God a quarter century ago, but once you surrendered to the call of the ministry all was copacetic.

I know it’s essentially impossible to reduce a lifetime into a few minutes. (Trust me. When the ultra-short version of your story takes a half an hour or more to tell, I know how impossible that is.) But since you stated a goal was to avoid the common evangelical ‘safe’ story, I thought I should mention it. One of the forms of the ‘safe’ story is that I had a problem a long time ago, but everything is ok now.