This may sound more like a confession/testimony than an actual reflection, but I feel like this is the right time to talk about my experience...
What causes a healthy, relatively smart, 26 year old young woman to feel like the loneliest person in the world? One word: depression. Not unlike Elijah, depression crept up on me while I was looking the other way, not keeping my eyes focused on the Lord. Among other things, I was struggling with: a broken heart, finding a purpose for my life, feelings of loneliness, homesickness...I didn’t want to burden anyone with my silly problems… I felt isolated and very lonely. I was hiding it well too, I think. I am kind of quiet by nature, so it was hard for people to notice that I was even quieter and withdrawn...
Going back to church helped me a lot, but I knew I had to take another step… Simply going to church, worshiping, hearing a practical message, and quickly leaving after the service wasn't enough anymore. So, I took the next step one Sunday, and it felt so great to finally say YES to HIM! (Plus, I didn't know it at the time, but I had also received my first prophetic word…) I felt confident that things were going to be just fine from now on… WRONG!
A mere FOUR days later, I hit rock bottom when I learned something I wasn't supposed to learn in the first place. Just like Elijah, I said:
“I have had enough, LORD”,
I simply didn’t think I could not take this anymore. I won't go into the details of that night, but at some point I started feeling God's presence all around me, and I heard:
"Are you going to get up, or stay down?”
HE also sent my sister, who left her study group two days before her finals, to take care of me physically.
"So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Hored, the mountain of God" 1Kings 8.
God knew exactly how to use the pain I was feeling to teach me how to grow. Looking back, I know now that HE wanted me to take another step and actually reach out to someone. HE found an ingenious way to do this…
I missed service that weekend, and I listened to it on iTunes. The title of the message was: "Getting out of jail free” and SS was talking about dealing with different things (including past issues) that keep us imprisoned, which instead of making me feel better made me SO angry! After hearing the sermon, I proceeded to send SS a very polite email...full anger, frustration, hurt and pain. I looked at it the other day, and I thought: "Who wrote this???” Not out of shame or embarrassment, but because I am actually really glad I sent that email.
The funny thing is that I didn’t tell SS my entire story. I used Elijah's scenario (1Kings 10 and 1Kings 14), repeating the same problem over and over, when I knew that I really needed to dig deeper. I felt that my bag pack was so heavy that I had to be very careful when opening it. Instead, I talked to A LOT of different people, I felt I could trust, and told each of them a different part of my story. I did this until I was finally ready to deal with it once and for all and FACE MY PAST.
In the last part of Elijah’s story, God gives him directions on what to do next. I have been paying close attention to what the Lord has been saying to me on this subject...praying and preparing.
How God has helped me with this part of my emotional roller coaster? I am completely different person since that chain of events occurred. Some people may say that I was a "good person" even before this happened, but something deeper happened that night...
I REFUSE to imagine where I would be today if all these things had happened to me while I was still away from HIM... God is good!
EED
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