I have been in such situations for such a long time that I could pursue talking about it as a profession (laugh). It’s actually what you get for carrying your heart on your sleeve, which the urban dictionary defines us as people who become devoted to something too quickly or give our hearts away too easily.
To the strong-minded people, we look like weaklings who always have issues. They can’t understand for the life of them why we keep doing the same thing all the time and keep expecting different results. So to cover that up and to make it look like we have our act together, what we do is hide. We will not talk about what hurts us because we have enough going on with us, so we can do without the criticism and being made fun of.
One prayer I make on a daily basis is transparency. I always ask God to help me be as real and transparent as I can be, because it’s only through embracing my weaknesses and flaws that His glory is revealed.
Who I am right now has nothing to do with me. It is all Jesus.
I tried working, and that did not work because it made me bitter and filled with so much strife because I could not attain my own righteousness through work. I have struggled with low self-esteem, rejection, fear, doubt, suicidal thoughts, and all of that.I remember one time I was in church and I was feeling so lost in my life because things were just not working. I was getting more closed doors than open doors and my mind was filled with so many thoughts of despair and uncertainty that I couldn’t pray. A heaven sent lady walked up to me and held me really close and told me that I was not lost and that I was found. See, normally I would breakdown, wail, and praise God for sending me someone to speak to my situation, but that day I did not have the simple energy to even smile, so I just said amen and walked away in my zombie state. During that season, I opened up to some of the wrong people.
I desperately needed someone to be close and to understand what was going on with me, but that did not go down so well. The reason being, some of these folks used my weaknesses against me and started making fun of my situation. Of course, I smiled as well and even contributed to the joke because I had an image to maintain, but their comments cut like a knife. I could not let them know it hurt because I did not want to give them anything else to talk about, so I just walked away from them. I fought doubt as if he were a real person. I would get home and cry to God and ask Him to help me believe and to rewire my mind afresh. It felt like baby class where kids are taught how to speak because my speech and things I said about myself had to change as well. I kept repeating to myself that "God loves me. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He came and died for me so that I could have a full life. I have the mind of Christ, therefore I am not insane. " I went through an intense healing process with the Holy Spirit and there were moments when I wanted out, but I thank God because He did not let me go, even when I let go.
I now thoroughly understand that God allowed these people to hurt me because He did not want me to place my hope on them. I wanted a crutch to help me walk because my bruises had me limping, but God wanted to give me something more permanent. He wanted me to rely solely on him so that he could teach me how to walk again, how to believe again, how to trust again, and how to hope again. He is teaching me how to do all that even now.
I still have my limp though; yeah, you can tell when you take a close look, because I have moments where I get tired and I want to grab a crutch, but anytime I stretch my hand to get a hold of one, Jesus is like, "See where we have come from, we can’t go back." So I straighten up and continue walking with my limp, smiling, knowing that I survived something that would have killed me. God, who has begun a good work in you, will see it to completion. He will make sure that it’s completed, with or without people cheering you on, because he did not consult anyone when he called you. His eyes are on you, and he loves you with an everlasting love. The kind of love that nothing can change. The beauty of this love is that he loves you because he wants to. He doesn’t have to, but he actually wants to. That’s why he will pursue you until he finds you, even when you run and hide. When he finds you, he will not stop until he becomes your everything. When he becomes your everything, he will still pursue you to keep you because he wants to spend eternity with you. That is a love worth fighting for.
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