I am standing in a literal pile of dirt and manure, my shoes long since kicked off, coated in dirt from knee to toes. The shovel in my hands feels more like an extension of my body at this point with how long I’ve been moving dirt. Building a church sounds exciting in theory, but first we have to move a hill and level a 1,500 square foot patch of earth.
The blisters on my left hand have long since popped. Band-Aids cover my fingers and a bandana tied around my palm will hopefully prevent more damage. Sweat stings my eyes and my muscles ache in protest as I throw shovel after shovel full of dirt over my shoulder.
I sigh, thinking about my sleeping pad that no longer inflates and how my poor sore back will have to spend the night with only a sleeping bag between it and the floor of my tent.
Standing here, I am reminded of the dirt imagery that’s appeared in my poetry over and over and over again since launching in October. I’ve learned to pay attention to what my poetry says because it’s usually the most honest expression of my thoughts and feelings;
“You told me to be the moon—
Dirt made beautiful,
A reflector of something great…
But even the moon wanders,
Even the moon runs in patterns,
Even the moon floats alone.”
I feel something pop in my shoulder as I throw another shovelful.
When I stood in the midst of my depression, it felt a lot like moving a pile of dirt. It hurt, it seemed endless, and vastly impossible to deal with. And after a while, it started to feel normal… and kind of comfortable.
Despite the way I was hurting, hurting is all that I knew, and I allowed myself to wallow in it.
This month, God told me I was going to speak about my past depression and seal that season of my life for good. I accepted His charge to me, however, He didn’t tell me that before I could lay it down permanently, it was going to fight back one last time.
I hate to admit it, but depression crept back into my life this month. A vast swath of the first two weeks here, I hung in a cloud, not fully myself.
But this month, when depression came knocking, I fought and I fought hard. Since beginning to seek wellness, I’ve learned a lot about the world and about myself. I’ve learned how to vocalize the pain, name it, stare it right in the eyes and declare truths about myself instead. I leaned on the strength I have in community and struggled against my past chains.
And then I found myself holding a microphone, standing before Filipino teenage girls, speaking about my history with depression at a Beauty for Ashes event. I told them how much I hurt and how much I listened to the lies, hiding in shame.
Their pretty faces always pulled up in sympathy for me. And I always watched them carefully when I tapped my thighs and spoke about the scars still there, physical proof of how deeply my emotional hurt went. Here, in describing my deepest darkest, a few of them began crying.
Then came the best part. I got to tell them how God visited me in the dirt, drug his finger through me, and shaped me into something new. I got to tell them about finding true hope from a place of total hopelessness. I got to tell them they are forgiven and they are beautiful and that nothing from their past or present defines their future.
I spoke this message ten times, over the course of three days, to around eight hundred girls aged thirteen to nineteen.
And after I spoke, we broke into small groups to give them an opportunity to share what hurts them, and to ask us questions. They were brave, they were vulnerable, they sought hope and I pray myself and the other women on my squad were able to show them Jesus.
However, I’ve never felt more unprepared in my life than when these girls asked me questions. They were real questions, hard questions, some questions that I didn’t have answers to.
“Why won’t my father come to see me anymore?”
“Is it okay with God if I have atheist friends?”
“What do I do if I know my father cheats on my mother, but nobody else knows?”
“How did you learn to trust God as much as you do?”
“Why does a good God let bad things happen?”
“What do I do if I know my friend wants to kill herself?”
“Why can’t I live up to my family’s expectations?”
“How can I know God is real?”
But Holy Spirit did.
It’s a strange experience to open your mouth and have scripture based truth flow forth without your cognitive mind controlling it. But it happened time after time as I sat in these small groups.
By the end of the third day, I felt like a rag wrung out and stretched at the same time. The event was a blessing, but a small part of me wished we’d stayed digging up the church instead.
And I’m standing at the front of the stage at the end of the event as the altar call is given. The last thing my flesh wants to do is pray for these students. I wanted a donut from the 7/11 across the street and a bed.
But I stayed and I prayed.
Soon one of the girls who I had in small group came up to me. She was bawling and wouldn’t tell me what she needed prayer for. So I pulled her into a hug and prayed as the spirit led me. I can’t tell you what I prayed, I was so exhausted, but when I opened my eyes, she was staring at me, hope shining through her so clearly.
“I never knew that God thought I was beautiful until He sent you here to tell me,” she said, big crocodile tears still in the corners of her eyes.
I thanked her, hugged her, and retreated quietly to the back of the room to weep.
And, oh, how I wept.
This one phrase way will stay lodged in my heart forever.
Mostly because of everything it taught me. My first thought was “why me?” Why did God allow me to be the one to carry the message to these girls? Why was I allowed to tell them their worth, their beauty, the truth about their identity?
Moses asked The Lord something similar at the burning bush. I’ve always loved how before God answered Moses, He named Himself; “I AM,” that is, “I Was and I Am and I Will Be forever.”
In the pain of my depression, God Was. Proclaiming hope before hurting and question teenage girls, He Is. And for the rest of my life, He Will Be.
Maybe I carried this message to these girls because the months of pain refined me, taught me true salvation, and shaped me into who I am today. There is no shame in my past, no regret. God was there, and God was sovereign in my past. I know this now, and I’m adding it to my ever growing list of things that are true about myself.
When God said He was going to seal this from my life, I believed Him, but I could’ve never imagined how He would place me in literal dirt and pain, a reminder of the place I once wallowed, then bring me to a stage before hundreds.
And here, very near February 1st—my birthday and the one year anniversary of the last time I took an antidepressant—He has redeemed my past, for good.
Currently: Zambales, Luzon, Phillipines at Month 4 Debrief | 9:17 PM | 100% Funded | He’s baptizing me in the salty ocean waves, renewing me to run this Race well
