Paige Thomas DeHart

We differ from others only in what we do or don’t do, not in what we are. – Anthony DeMello

The following pages are excerpts from my journal that began as a class requirement in my tenth grade English class. Weeks into the assignment, I became certain that it was an important project that would someday be published. Consequently, I have been obedient to the push from within that has consistently urged me to “write that down.”  The journal is now 28 years old and 22 books long. Beginning with an entry from 1980 when I was 18 years old and finishing high school, the book has been edited in order to respect your time and patience, but remains raw enough to capture the truth of the person I was at the time of the writing. The names of all but the current people in my life have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

In the first entry, I insinuate that I wish I could go back in time and share with myself the wisdom of experience. With this as one of the objectives of this book, I have used the timeless words of saints, sages, the salvaged, and the Savior to speak wisdom into my circumstances.

However, many of these circumstances have not been pleasant. Although God dramatically entered my life in 1986, I have been an alcoholic, an addict, a compulsively overeating bulimic, a harlot, an adulteress, a child murderer, a manic depressive with psychotic tendencies, a liar, a cheater, and a thief. I am a fallen soul – saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and given an entirely new life, from the inside out.

Nonetheless, my journey to redemption has been unconventional. Spiritually, I have been immersed in Alcoholics Anonymous, Unity Church, the Self-Realization Fellowship, the Pentecostal Church, the Evangelical Bible Church, and the Anglican Church. As a self-educated college drop-out, my intellectual pursuits have been Psychology, Quantum Physics, Sociology, and World Religion. I have found pieces of truth, as well as error, in all of these places, but have been able to reconcile my learning into a comprehensive worldview. Consequently, another objective of this book is to share this reconciliation with you; to educate you on the nature of addiction and the vital ingredients necessary for permanent and effective Twelve Step sobriety, to clarify the ideas of New Age Thought, and to illuminate the universal truths of life as well as the unique Truth of Christianity.

However, the most important objective of this book is to bring hope to those of you who feel as though you are lost beyond retrieval.  I pray that my experience will encourage you to believe that there is nothing that you can do or have done that is capable of separating you from the love of God – if only you will turn to Him and follow Him.  I have exposed my deepest and most shameful secrets that you may know that you are not alone.

It is my prayer that all of us may learn that the one true God desires and is able to meet us where we are with the ultimate purpose of unifying us for the perfection and peace of His world. I encourage you to move through these pages with honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to stretch beyond your previous boundaries of knowledge and understanding in order to have a fresh perspective of yourself, your companions in life, and the world in which you live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”  May God Himself lead you personally and profoundly into the deep reality of this statement; into an experience with Him as the endless well of Life, Love, and Truth.  This is the hope of glory.

Paige DeHart

Bedford, Texas

August, 2006

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