Since I can remember I’ve always struggled with depression.There were things during my childhood that took me to a dark places. At the age of 8 I started to self harm and by the age of 9 I had attempted to end my life several times. By the grace of God this April I’ll be celebrating 2 years since I last self harmed or attempted suicide. Yay God!
The dark places my head would take me to have been vacant for a long time now, but this month my mind wanted to go there again.
It all started with the desire to begin this year really submerging myself in the Father and surrendering certain areas of my life to him. As I prayed to the Father to show me the way he’d like me to go about it I started feeling in my heart the need to do the Daniel Fast. So, on January 3rd I began my 21 day Daniel fast. Honestly the first week and a half I was surprised to find it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. However, that feeling didn’t last long enough. Toward the the end of my fast I began getting really down, sad, and at one point I even felt mad. I was craving all the things I couldn’t have, sadness quickly turned into resentment and as a result I became angry. I was so tired of veggies!
What this also did for me was begin to reveal that these emotions were all just layers covering up what was really happening. All of a sudden I found myself wondering if going on the Word Race was me abandoning my loved ones. I began to ask myself if the moments I would miss with them throughout the 11 months away was worth it. I was the one choosing to leave them and in some twisted way hurt them. Needless to say, I found myself in a very dark place in my head. The last week was by far the toughest. I didn’t want to open up my Bible or even get out of bed. I felt like I was going crazy and everything, no matter how small was making me cry.
Here’s the beautiful thing about it though and what made it different from all the other times I felt like this: In the midst of this chaos I heard a still small voice telling me “Everything is going to be okay.” As I heard that voice I could feel the spiritual warfare going on around me for my life. Through it all God continued to go to battle for me.
One day I was laying down on the couch in the living room, out of nowhere something came over me and I needed to get up, I could no longer sit and watch my life pass me by. I hurried down the stairs to the basement where my room was. Something in my spirit was uneasy with the way I had been feeling over the last week and it had enough! I started pacing back and forth as emotions were building up inside me like a bomb. Then the silence broke, I began to weep and break down, I was tired of carrying all I had put on myself. In my sob a broken heart began to lay down all its worries and troubles. I began to ask for strength and courage and for truth to be spoken over my life.
And that’s exactly what I got. With every word I spoke I could feel strength rising within me, I had no idea where it all came from. My cries turned into pleads, and the pleads turned into declarations. I found myself standing firm with boldness and declaring “He who is with US is STRONGER than he who comes against us!” This roar came from within me.
If you’ve ever watched the movie War Room, I had became Elizabeth, the main character, during the scene where she was walking through her house and shouting at the enemy demanding that he’d leave her life and stop lying to her. She let him have it and so did I.
.
I was tired of all the lies the enemy had been trying to tell me so I started speaking against it. No longer were his lies going to confuse me because I know the truths my father speaks over my life. That day my life changed because I got my roar!
So in case no one ever told you: you have a voice so let the enemy hear you ROAR!!!!
