When I was growing up, I often found myself alone. I would play by myself or read a book or play Sonic on my Sega and all the while feel a void in my heart that no amount of fun could fill. Mozambique was a hard month for me, I was on a new team and didn’t really see how I fit into the new dynamic. I felt alone a lot of the time and didn’t really know how to cope with it. I felt that same void creeping back into the depths of me and often retreated to a hammock or tree-crook. One day, I was having a particularly rough go of it and a squad mate told me that when I was alone I should seek time with God. What? But that isn’t the same, I thought to myself but I acquiesced. The next day when I found myself sitting alone, I began to reach out to God. I began to talk to Him and tell Him how much it hurt and how confused I was by it all and how I needed Him to fix it.
I have realized that God will do some really cool things if you let Him. Slowly but surely he began to draw the hurt out of me like poison from a wound. It took two months to get to a point where being alone didn’t hurt me, to where it was a gift. I would pray, constantly and write them down as my way of giving my hurts to God, they left my heart and went to His as the ink left my pen and went to the page.
Dear God,
Lately the devil has been lying to me a lot. I am so sorry for believing him. Julie has challenged me to accept compliments and Jason poured into me about it as well as far as not believing the lies and knowing my worth. Daddy, sometimes I feel worthless. Sometimes I feel ignored and unwanted. Please break this off of me. Let me see myself the way that you do. Jesus, I need you to hold my hand. I want to love myself, so show me how because I can’t seem to figure it out at all. I need You. I really need you to show me who I am to and by You. I am so scared that the lies are true so help me to see that they aren’t. I can’t receive and it scares me. Help me Father, heal my heart and rid it of the scars that make it calloused. I want to walk with comfort and self-certainty; I want to walk with You. Help me to know, to feel, to believe your truth about me. Amen.
Many of my prayers look like this. They are cries to the Lord asking for deliverance, for comfort, for Him. In Mozambique I became thirsty I became unquenchable. I began to understand that the void in my childhood had not been filled because I did not know God; I did not know him as a friend or father but now He is both and so much more to me. God has rescued me from the disaster of my own self-pity and low self-esteem and delivered me to a spacious place.
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
