You should’ve seen Lisa’s face when I told her what happened!
Lisa had long blond hair and blue eyes, and she had her nose pierced. That’s before body piercing was popular. We were together for a decade. A mad decade too!
The last pad me and Lisa had, before we broke up, was on Darnhill council estate in Greater Manchester. I don’t live that far away now, so I still drive through the estate.
Once, I was driving up the bottom road and there was someone on the other side, walking up the path. ‘You know… from behind, that looks like Lisa’s walk. That is Lisa! Imagine that!’
So, I pulled up, dead slow, near the curb, behind her, and opened my window.
‘Lisa.’
‘Is that you Barry?’
‘Yeah Lis.’
‘Well, *******, fancy seeing you. How long’s it been now? Must be going on 15 years! I knew you’d come back though, Barry! Do you want to come round to mine for a brew?’
‘Yea, go on then, get in.’
‘Just drive up here, I’m living down that little cul-de-sac now. Do you know, near the bus stop at the end?’
You should’ve seen her when we got to her street. She was on a mission. ‘It’s great living down here Barry, you can get weed from that house there. You get speed from that house over there. And you can get heroin from them flats, just down there.’ She was like a Drug Tour Guide, on crack!
Think she’d thought I’d come back!!
Her flat was on the first floor, in a small block. If you’d been there, you’d have seen her show me round. ‘This is my kitchen, Barry; the council has just done it up for me. This is my little bathroom, look at that purple toilet seat. This is my BEDROOM; I said my BEDROOM, there’s my BED.’
She was just making sure I knew there was plenty of room for me!
‘This is my living room. Sit down Baz.’ We got chatting about old times. She starts making a spliff. ‘Do you remember when I used to come and visit you in prison?’
‘Do you remember when I started hearing them voices?’
‘Do you remember when we lived in that squat opposite the Russell Club that had a tree trunk in the living room? And do you remember when you did that snatch (allegedly!) that Christmas when we were skint, and you came back with the leather night-safe bag, and you kept breaking all the knives in the kitchen drawer, trying to open it?’
Then she lit the spliff. It was like a bunch of skunks had just started a spray fight! We carried on with our trip down memory lane.
‘Here you are Baz.’
‘No, you’re alright love, I don’t smoke anymore.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t smoke?’
‘I don’t. I don’t even smoke cigs. I stopped when I became a Christian.’
‘What, you a Christian? How the **** did that happen?’
‘It wasn’t that long after we’d split. I got invited to church, so I went. And this guy prayed for me. And it’s like a light came on. Then, the voices went. I came off the drugs, I went off to college, I set up a charity, I got MARRIED, I’ve even written a book that’s now a bestseller. It’s been one thing after another, Lis.’
The look on her face was priceless!
‘Who’d have thought, you doing that? You were in such a bad place. Good on you. Are you sure you don’t want some of this though, Baz?!’
Look. The middle of a struggle is a place where you can start to re-write your headlines!’
Do you need to start to re-write yours? Do you want to? Well, you can do!
A guy in the Bible, David, said this: ‘God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to him’. (Psalm 18:24)
See, when you give God consent to come in, he starts to rewrite your headlines!
No matter what struggle you’re in the middle of right now, the headlines can start to get rewritten. You just need to give God then pen!
Barry