Welcome back, my beloveds! Sorry there was no post last week… was working hard and the week got away from us before the thoughts came together. Not that the thoughts didn’t come together… they did… and I have been wanting to tackle this thought since I finished reading Matthew Perry’s memoir: Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.

Let me start off by saying I can not recommend this book. The language is terrible. It’s not really well written, and it seems as though Perry was suffering with his “big terrible thing” in various parts of the manuscript as I found it hard to follow at times. Still, who can judge a person’s life story written from the person’s perspective? It’s real and it’s raw… and certainly had me musing.

So, for the record, Matthew Perry (a Canadian whose mother worked for Prime minister Pierre E. Trudeau!) explains his journey from childhood acting dreams to finally making it big on the sitcom “Friends”. I’m sure you’ve heard about him. Including his recent death and the fallout from his drug supplying doctors. The book certainly outlines his struggles in all its medically descriptive, pain inducing, glory.

Several girls, houses and T.V. and film contracts later, Matty lays it all on the line. His brutal honesty (including fowl language!) follows his ups and downs in Hollywood. Now, I am not a big Friends fan, but if you are a People lover, it’s an interesting read. Especially creepy knowing it was released slightly before his untimely death in a time when he was meant to be sober… I’ll let you decide where that one lies.

Shockingly, it did have me musing a much more profound, spiritually lead thought process than simply another Hollywood memoir. It was his claim of “meeting God”. I can’t quote the whole thing, but smack dab in the middle of the book, at the most bottom point of his “rock bottom”, Matthew Perry states:

“God, please help me”, I whispered. Show me you are here, God, please help me.” …. “This was {my encounter with God}. I started to cry. I mean really started to cry — that shoulder-shaking kind of uncontrollable weeping. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because for the first time in my life I felt OK. I felt safe, taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life, and sadness, all was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion. I had been in the presence of God. I was certain of it.”

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible thing p.159-160

It was a powerful moment, obviously. And I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit had certainly reached out to Perry in a real and tangible way at the very minute when He was called upon. I have cried those very tears of emotion. I always say, one cannot encounter the God of the Universe and not be changed. And not feel something. Unfortunately, this encounter with God may have stayed with Perry, but only on the surface. His lifestyle of the rich and famous crowded out the feelings of euphoria he got a glimpse of at this moment. He didn’t allow God to truly help him as he prayed. You see, God is willing — but He doesn’t push. We must truly seek Him.

And it’s that thought that had me musing. I am deeply saddened at our dark, dark world. I am deeply saddened for the lives like Matthew Perry’s who are snuffed out by drugs, alcohol and “worldly” pleasures. So many crave peace, and when it is presented to them, they let it slip through their fingers. It makes me sad.

There are other “snip-its” of God thoughts in Perry’s book, and I think to myself… you were so close… There are others I think about when I think those thoughts too. Not strangers in Hollywood with fancy cars and mansions in the hills, but people in my own circle. People I know and care about. And that makes me even sadder. And a tad bit angry. Have you ever wanted to just shake someone and say “You just need Jesus!! (you big dim whit!)”??

So there ya have it. My own little memoir blip on this piece of the internet. My raw and open thinking about the dark world we live in and the people who need Jesus because of it. Oh beloved, if that’s you reading this and you are feeling the “touch of God” because you called out to Him… seek harder! Get real help. Find someone who can lead you to Him. An eternity away from Him is much much bigger than Matthew Perry’s big terrible thing, it is THE big terrible thing. Run from the darkness. He’ll be there, I promise.