Holes
10 April 2009
I recently met Martha (name has been changed). She was in my office giving a statement and having some pictures taken. No glamorous photo shoot or media frenzy. I’m a police detective. I was taking pictures of the wounds inflicted on Martha the night before. The statement she gave would put her current live-in boyfriend in jail for assault and unlawful restraint.
12 hours before I met her, Martha was in her boyfriend’s car … held captive for 4 hours, being beaten. Her attempts to escape were met with an enraged fist. Her screams for help went unheard in the vacant lot they were parked in. A nightmare out of her control. He finally let her go when he ran out of beer.
“I thought I knew him?” Martha kept telling me.
“How long have you known him?” I asked.
“Four months,” she says.
“How long have you been living with him?“
“Four months,” she said so matter-of-factly. “It all started when we went to the bar to get drunk.“
Do you see the pattern there – the hole? I did.
Martha had a hole in her heart. A critical piece needed to complete the person was missing. This piece was a nagging mystery to Martha. She didn’t know what was missing. All she knew was the emptiness she felt and the need to fill it with … something. So Martha’s life to this point was spent looking for anything to fill the hole. She was never told where to look, so she naively followed where Satan (the world) told her to look for some hole-filler. Drugs, bars, and live-in boyfriends gave some temporary hole-filling satisfaction. But eventually these fleeting-fillers led to more emptiness. Which led to more searching, which eventually led to a chair in my office and her name filling the blank entitled “victim.”
The incompleteness that Martha was feeling was the lack of God in her life. A hole in her heart created by sin’s separation. Martha was created to have a relationship with her Creator. But that relationship was missing, leaving an empty space – a hole. Martha’s natural instinct was to fill the void. She searched for anything to lighten the heavy feelings. But without a relationship with God, she was only forcing a square peg in the round hole.
Martha is not a unique case. All man-kind has the same heart-hole.
Only a relationship with God can fill this hole. Once that hole is filled, your created purpose becomes reality.
Are you are felling empty, lonely or unfulfilled? Maybe you should trade in your bondage-bondo for a little divine purpose. Travel the road, and at the intersection of divinity and ability …
… you will find your purpose.
Bill, well written story and an awesome point you made. Will continue to read the blogs. You should think about writing books, ministry, or counseling. You have a gift, my friend.
Earl