About a year and half ago I went through one of the hardest seasons of my life. My mother and I lost our home due to foreclosure. She had lost her job a few months earlier and we were struggling to make ends meet with my part-time job. Loosing the house and having to move into one of her friends spare rooms was pretty devastating for us, but little did we know that that was only the beginning of our troubles. Within a 3 month period after that I lost my job, my scholarship, my car broke down, and even my dog died, all one right after the other! I felt like I was in a country song! I felt like God had taken everything from me and He had. He even separated me from my friends and youth group, which I was very involved in. Worst of all He took the feeling of His presence away from me.
How do you handle that? Where do you go from there? I felt so alone and like such a failure. I was broken in every way, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically. Feelings of depression and anger started to stir up within me. I even became angry at God. I couldn’t understand why He would allow this to happen to me. I had been serving Him faithfully for over 7 years and I had absolutely nothing to show for it. All I wanted was to see His promises, the ones in His word and the ones He had given me through several visions when I first got saved, come to pass in my life. But after 7 years of trying to work towards them, they seemed father away and more unreachable than ever. I wondered, was I so awful that even God had given up on me? Had He abandoned me just like everyone else? I must admit that devil had me entertaining those foolish thoughts for quite a while. I was still praying to God, but I felt like my prayers were just hitting the ceiling and bouncing back. Did He even care to listen?
It wasn’t until one random day when I felt like I was going to explode from all the pressure that I decided I was just going to do the one thing that I was still good at, fighting and arguing! I started pacing the living room back and forth like a crazy maniac and figured the first person I was angry with was me and that I wanted to tell myself off. So I did, using various explicit words and derogatory phrases of course. Then, once I had done enough self bashing, I decided that it was God’s turn to receive a piece of my mind, and oh He better listen! I proceeded to have a one-sided argument with Him about everything I had been feeling, and how unfair it all was. I questioned Him as to why and even questioned His love for me. The funny thing about arguing with God is that you know you can never win. He’s always Going to be right!
After about a good 2 hours or so of none stop arguing, yelling, and crying, I found myself on my knees face down on the floor, snot everywhere! I had finally gotten all the emotions out of my system and was reminded of who God was. Now I was ready to sit still and listen. His response was simple, “I’m all you need!”
It took me loosing everything to realize that God is all I need. That He is my shelter and that He’s the only one who will never leave me or forsake me. I learned that I should trust in Him no matter what circumstances I face. So now that I face the risk of being sent home early from the race, a thought which had honestly terrified me for quite some time, I will choose to think back on that time and remember what I learned.
