The devil is a powerful being. Today I discovered a whole new meaning to darkness. Isolation and secrets are the devil’s tools to feed the lies that he tells us so we won’t do God’s work speaking life into the world. No matter what we do, we will always have to fight this battle. We have to make a conscious choice every day to believe that what God says is true and who we are in Christ is who we truly are. I guess I’m not very good with imagery because I have a new understanding of darkness that is pretty simple. Isolation is darkness. Feelings, hurts, and shameful acts are kept in the dark, they are kept a secret. The hardest thing for us to do is shine light on these things because it means we have to trust something outside of us. But when you do trust, you find out that the things you have kept in the dark are actually being felt by others too and the shame you felt melts away. We have different stories but our stories are the same. That’s why God is so awesome. He created everyone so similarly but at the same time we are completely different.
Today I was feeling really isolated from the rest of my team. I couldn’t even put words to what I was feeling, there were so many feelings. The feelings I was feeling encouraged me to hide. I knew that the feelings I was having weren’t from God but at the same time I didn’t want to put myself out there and risk being the one who didn’t get what I needed or thought I needed or deserved. I stepped out enough to point out the obvious—that I was upset about a lot of things, but then I was pushed by one of my teammates just enough to have a long stream of verbal vomit and admit to all of the loneliness, frustration, sadness, and anger I had been feeling. God used it to bring us all together. We all face things like that and the devil tricks us into thinking it’s true. The only thing that made me talk was someone else speaking the truth from God that I knew but didn’t want to listen to because of self-preservation. What was best for me in this moment was not what I wanted to do. The best thing for me was to die to myself, to swallow my pride, and just be honest and say how I was feeling. This is hard. The World Race is hard. All the things that people usually use to define themselves: their family, friends, careers, homes, favorite foods are taken away. All you have left are the people God put you with to take the journey with and God himself. At times this fills you with joy and contentment and at other times it fills you with frustration, uncertainty, and loneliness. The only thing you have to depend on are the truths God has given you. I had to make the choice to press in and trust the truths God has told me.
