Book prologue
When I was in college, some friends and I would meet on Tuesday evenings at a local watering hole called High on Rose, named for the fact that the bar was situated on the corner of High Street and Rose Street in the university district of Lexington, Kentucky. Almost weekly we gathered around one of the rustic wooden tables and listened to a live acoustic performance while snacking on chips, salsa, and beer.
It was there that I first heard a rendition of the classic John Prine folk song “Paradise,” with the famous line “Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County.” My friends and I would sing the song over and over, week after week, and although it may seem cliché, the nostalgic lyrics stirred a longing in my soul.
Little did I know that one of the stops on my roller coaster journey would in fact be an old coal mining town situated in none other than Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, the very area that was the subject of this folksy tune. When I arrived alone in that isolated place a number of years later at the age of 27, I found that it was a far cry from the semi-metropolitan lifestyle I had once enjoyed. But this seemingly insignificant place in the middle of the rolling hills of Western Kentucky would prove to be a place of great transition in my life. Not only would I meet my husband there, but more importantly, I would encounter my Creator.
The first two lines of the song’s chorus are as follows:
Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay?
In the song, Paradise refers to the small town that was the center of excavation by the prosperous Peabody Coal Company in the middle of the twentieth century. But I have to ask myself if I was, in reality, making a prophetic cry to my real Father in heaven as I raised my voice to sing the lyrics of this classic song. Is it possible that I was crying to Him to take me to a place where I would find my own paradise, which was nothing less than the peace and rest I had been seeking all of my life—the peace and rest that I eventually found in a man named Jesus?
Before I opened my heart to Christ, I allowed myself to be temporarily satisfied by counterfeit forms of freedom. I believed that a life without boundaries would satisfy my desire for a fulfilling existence. Many periods of severe darkness proved my theory was incorrect.
I had a taste of true freedom in the cleansing I received from my Creator. When I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was forgiven of all my sin and shame and that my life was reconciled to God, my journey toward freedom began. And that is what this book is all about – a journey.
It is about what happens when we walk away from the good kind of religion (acknowledgement of the divine or sacred), and it is also about the liberation found in walking away from the bad kind of religion (the ritualistic act of trying to win God’s approval in our own strength).
It is about a journey toward everything the human heart longs for – peace, purpose, and freedom. Contained within my account are all the trappings of the typical rescue story…a girl carried away by addiction, depression, and aggression. And yet, my story is not typical at all. If it were, I would not have bothered to write it.
