The first week in Romania parents will join about half of my squad mates for 5 days of ministry. My mom and dad are unable to come. And that’s okay.
—
I graduated high school and instantly feared my future. How was I supposed to prepare?
This is when I had an epiphany. I was really about to start a brand spanking new season of my life.
“This is scary,” I thought.
Instantly I wanted to hide. Just crawl into a hole and not come out until someone made me.
Well no one did.
My friends tried pursuing me at the beginning of the summer after my senior year. “Come over and hang out! We can go on the lake. We can go to the country club and get tan before we all leave each other.”
I cringed.
“No. No.” I told myself. “I won’t accept that this is my last two months before becoming a big girl. I don’t want to grow up and start living on my own.”
Slowly I slid into a depression. I don’t even know if I want to call it that, but it was dark. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I quit my job. I thought the world was ending.
And boy, did it. The world ended because I accepted that it was. I thought I would never crawl back out of the hole I dug for myself. It was painful.
I spent many hours of the day lying on my pillow holding my breath. “How could I end this? How could I make this all go away?”
I figured everyone wanted nothing to do with me. I was living in pity. I wanted to just do my friends and family a favor and stay by myself.
No one could save me. There was no escaping.
—
That summer was not fun. But I wouldn’t go back and change it.
The Lord was breaking me. He was not my focal point at all, but He wanted to show me how dependent I was.
How dependent I was on man.
He was there beside me in my bed every day. He saved me from drowning. He saved me from dying. I thought I had nothing to live for.
My parents had been guiding me for 18 years. It was time for me to be guided by someone else. Jesus slowly grasped my attention. He took hold of my soul. He slowly fulfilled all of my needs.
I cannot say that since college orientation I never had those feelings again. I spent a couple semesters hating different situations that I was in. I kept letting what someone else thought of me get to my core.
All I wanted to do was run back to my parents. And all Jesus wanted me to do was rest in Him.
—
It doesn’t happen in an instant. It’s a process. The Lord wants all of us. He wants to adopt us as His sons and daughters. We are never labeled as orphans. He is everlasting, so we can have an eternal promise.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loved me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
John 14:16-21
