I’m gonna tell y’all a little story. It takes place back in Georgia, when we were living there for three months. Well, it starts when I was a little kid, but we’ll get there. This is gonna take some vulnerability, which I hate, so bear with me.
Gainesville, Georgia. We had been there for over a month, and I was going through a rough patch. Logistically, everything was great. I still wasn’t homesick, my team and I were getting along, life was good. Except for one thing: I just wasn’t feeling the Lord. I felt like He was turning me away, saying I wasn’t good enough for His time. Obviously this wasn’t true, but I was just struggling. I was trying everything, but still felt like He was boxing me out. So I went to our incredible mentor, Madie.
I sat down with Madie and told her what was going on. She thought for a second, and then said she had an idea. She told me it must’ve come from the Lord, because it was really random and she never had suggested it to anyone before. Madie told me to go into the woods, and have a picnic with the Lord. She told me to get a rock, sit across from it, and talk to it out loud as if I was talking to the Lord.
At first, I thought she was crazy. Everybody was always going on walks through the woods, I would never be able to find somewhere where no one would see me. People would think I had lost my mind if they saw me sitting in the woods, talking to a rock. So I put it off for a few weeks, but nothing changed. Finally, I was so desperate to just hear from the Lord that I decided to try what she suggested, not caring what people would think. I grabbed my blanket, a flashlight, and headed off into the woods.
So there I was. I found an empty campsite, spread out a blanket, found a decent sized rock, and plopped down in front of it. Almost immediately someone walked by the campsite on the path, and I got really self conscious. I began speaking at the rock quietly, feeling like an idiot.
Ten minutes passed, nothing happened. I started to get frustrated, and spoke at the rock louder. Thirty minutes, nothing. A few more people walked by and looked at me strangely, and at that point I was fed up. I started yelling at the rock, asking God why He wouldn’t just let me know He was there. I told Him how desperate I was to feel anything, to hear anything. To get anything from Him to just show He heard me.
I sat in those woods for close to an hour, until it was pitch black outside. I was so mad at God. I chucked the rock across the campsite and stormed inside, knowing we had worship soon, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. Throughout all of worship I journaled, just letting God have it. I felt humiliated, stood up.
At the end of worship, one of my teammates walked up to me and asked if I was okay. That was all it took. I burst into tears, expressing my frustration with the Lord. A couple other teammates came over, and we went into a room to talk. I poured out my heart to my teammates, and they showed me so much love. They knew how much I hate crying, and they comforted me as I went through it. When I was done, they gave me advice and shared what worked for them in similar situations.
Most of it was stuff I had tried before, and I just felt so defeated. But that’s when it happened. The Lord gave me a vision. This is where we’re gonna take a little trip down memory lane to when I was a little kid.
When I was around five years old, I remember a very specific dream I had. I used to be terrified of men, and one night I dreamt that I met Jesus. I was sitting in a car and He was trying to pull me out, but I was so scared of Him. So I tried to run the opposite way, desperate to get away from Jesus. And then I woke up.
Throughout the years, I thought about that dream a lot. I was so confused as to why my instinct would be to run from the Lord. Yes, I ran from all men at the time, but I would have thought that I knew Jesus was a comforter, that He would never hurt me. Why would I run from Him?
So as I sat in that room, crying, the Lord answered my question. He gave me a vision, and took me back to that dream. Except this time, it was zoomed out. I could see clearly that young-me was in a car accident, that the car was flipped over, on fire. And I needed to get out. Jesus was trying to save me, reaching out His hand, telling me to trust Him. This time, I reached out and took His hand. I accepted His help, and He dragged me out of the wreckage and just hugged me. He grasped on to me so hard and wouldn’t let go. And the feeling of love that I was filled with was undeniable. It was pure peace, comfort, joy, the knowledge that I was home.
The vision was over in the blink of an eye, but I knew. I knew what I had just experienced, and I started crying all over again. But this time they were tears of pure joy. The Lord did love me, He had always loved me. He wasn’t rejecting me, I was the one doing all of the rejecting. I was the one running from Him when He just wanted to save me from my wreckage. And once I stopped running, oh that’s when life got good.
There’s going to be times in our lives when we feel distanced from the Lord. We’ll feel close to Him in different ways than normal, and that’s totally okay. But we can’t blame the Lord for those. I’ve spent so much of my life blaming Him when I didn’t feel like I was wanted, not realizing that I was the one closing myself off, afraid to get hurt. But the Lord will never hurt us. He will never abandon us. All He wants to do is love us. So let Him love you.
Until next time,
Brook
