I don’t claim to have a fantastic testimony; I haven’t experienced terrible hardships or incredible miracles. But God has still left His fingerprints all over my life, and to me, it’s fantastic. So, here it is.
I was born into a Christian family and accepted Christ when I was four years old. I grew up attending the same church of which I am now a member. Up until recent years, my faith has been all mental - no heart. Throughout the years, I’ve caught glimpses, felt flashes of that fire in my heart, but it never stayed long. One of the highlights was when I went to Chic ’97, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. I found my best friend there, a friendship that God has been using for the past eleven years to mold me into the person He designed me to be.
I started working with the Jr. High part of the youth group as a necessity. My church doesn’t have much for the college/career age group, so after graduating, there wasn’t any ministry for me to get involved with, other than helping with the youth. I was enlisted to help with music for the Jr. High in 2002, and a couple of the kids convinced me to stay for the entire time, instead of leaving after the music was done. In April 2003, I was asked to chaperone the Sr. High Spring Retreat (our 8th graders go on that retreat, as their introduction to the Sr. High group), and started working with the Sr. High as well. It was something else to keep me busy, back then. I thought working with these teens would make me happier and bring me closer to God.
Things went on like that for a few years: Breakaway (Jr. High) Wednesday nights, SNL (Sunday Night Live, for Sr. High) Sunday nights, leader’s meetings once a month, retreats, Sunday School, and such filled my calendar, but that fire was still missing from my heart. Even through the first half of this year, I knew something was wrong with my life. But I just couldn’t figure out what.
At the beginning of the summer, I had pinpointed the problem to not being where I should be in my faith. I felt like I was stuck in quicksand, but I couldn’t figure out how to get myself out. I was stagnant – I had stopped growing spiritually. But how to get moving again? I was hoping for something to happen when I went on my summer vacation at the end of July: Soul Fest. This was my fourth year attending Soul Fest (a Christian music festival located in New Hampshire), and has been the one place I’ve consistently felt God’s presence and inspiration in the previous three years.
Last year was different. The usual excitement was a fraction of it’s former self from previous years. I didn’t know what to do, why I couldn’t feel anything, even there, at Soul Fest. I couldn’t understand why I was stuck in the numbness. I drifted through Soul Fest, experiencing and enjoying it, but I never experienced the “something” I’d been hoping for. I went back home feeling somewhat disappointed and wondering how I was ever going to get out of this quicksand and shake the numbness.
I got home Sunday, August third, and called my parents to let them know I’d made it back safe. My Mom, who I’ve never gotten along with well, got on the phone after I’d talked to my Dad, saying she had something she wanted to talk to me about. Rolling my eyes, I listened as she took a deep breath. But her next words took my breath away: “I think you’re suffering from depression.”
What?? She kept talking, but my mind was stuck on those six words. Me? Depressed?? My brain didn’t want to accept it, but something about it just rang true. And as my Mom described how she’d seen the same symptoms in a coworker and friend of hers earlier that year that she saw in me now, I realized that, thought I hated to admit it, she was right.
Me. Depressed. I can’t describe the shock it was to finally put a reason to the numbness – a name to the pit of quicksand. It was also somewhat of a relief. Now that I knew, I could do something about it. I made a deal with my Mom, that she would give me the chance to work with God on getting to a better place. If that didn’t work, then I’d try “her way” – medication.
And so, with the help of my dear, best friend that I found at Chic so many years ago (who also happened to be struggling with depression at the same time), I set my sights on God and started clawing my way out of the quicksand.
Looking back, I can find evidence of my struggle with depression going as far back as high school – it just got worse over the years. Here’s an excerpt from my journal, the last entry before my Mom pointed out my depression when I got back from Soul Fest.
“But the feeling still isn’t there. Why do I feel almost… dead inside? Numb. And I’m realizing that maybe… if I’ve numbed myself to the pain, have I numbed my heart to everything?” 8-2-08
Over the past six months, looking at that entry (and writing more), I’ve realized that my issues with trusting people have filled me with that numbness. I’ve known for a long time that my inability to trust people extended to God. I knew it shouldn’t, but if close friends and even family have failed me, broken my trust time and again, how can I place my trust in a God that I can’t see?
Flawed logic, I know, but that’s just the way my brain works. Trusting God before I trust myself – that’s definitely been the hardest thing I’ve had to work on in the past year.
It’s been a difficult year, for sure, but hindsight is a beautiful thing. From here, I can see that God never left me, even when I felt abandoned. He was always there, just waiting for me to reach out to Him in my despair, so that he could scoop me up into His arms.
And that’s just the best place to be!
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 09, 2009
Thoughts on James ch. 1
So, as part of our normal weekly Bible Study routine, my best friend and I are trying to synchronize our daily Bible Readings. Me? I've been decidedly lax on this front, so I told him I'd follow his lead. At last night's Bible Study, we decided, at random, to start at James for now, reading a chapter a day. We agreed to meet up online at night, to basically make sure we'd both read it. I did not intend to really write anything, but just jot down a few notes to help me remember what I'd thought. Here's what I ended up writing.
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Thought One
How hard is it to face trials and suffering with PURE JOY????? How often do we actually do that? The bottom line is, trials suck. And it's not until afterward that we look back and can see the journey or maybe even glimpse the reasonings for the trial that we find, not joy, but satisfaction in knowing that we persevered. But, this passage is saying it should be otherwise!! We should persevere, knowing, without a doubt, that God will bring us through, and find joy (yes, JOY!) that this trial is happening to us "...so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (vs. 4) Looking at this verse, it tells me that we are going through a trial because we lack something. And if we persevere through the suffering with an eye towards finding what we should be learning from it, we just might find that something we were lacking. But, we have to take ourselves out of the little pity-party we normally love reveling in, and realize it's not about our suffering, but about how these trials will make us a more complete person in God's eyes.
Thought Two
"Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (vs. 19) Again, something of a rarity these days. It is so easy to be angry in situations we don't understand completely. And so, we shoot of our mouths with so-called righteous anger, never taking the time to listen to the other's viewpoint - to try and put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak. How much better would this world be if we stopped to think about any situation from someone else's position, instead of always leaping to our own, often completely wrong, conclusions? And this does not just apply to being angry... whenever we make judgments about someone, have you thought about why they act the way they do? I know I am exceptionally guilty of judging people's character, even though I try so hard not to. Something to definitely be more conscious about.
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So, there it is. This was only the first day of reading, so whether or not I end up writing something for each day remains to be seen. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it, and maybe finds it a bit eye-opening, as I did.
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Thought One
How hard is it to face trials and suffering with PURE JOY????? How often do we actually do that? The bottom line is, trials suck. And it's not until afterward that we look back and can see the journey or maybe even glimpse the reasonings for the trial that we find, not joy, but satisfaction in knowing that we persevered. But, this passage is saying it should be otherwise!! We should persevere, knowing, without a doubt, that God will bring us through, and find joy (yes, JOY!) that this trial is happening to us "...so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (vs. 4) Looking at this verse, it tells me that we are going through a trial because we lack something. And if we persevere through the suffering with an eye towards finding what we should be learning from it, we just might find that something we were lacking. But, we have to take ourselves out of the little pity-party we normally love reveling in, and realize it's not about our suffering, but about how these trials will make us a more complete person in God's eyes.
Thought Two
"Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (vs. 19) Again, something of a rarity these days. It is so easy to be angry in situations we don't understand completely. And so, we shoot of our mouths with so-called righteous anger, never taking the time to listen to the other's viewpoint - to try and put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak. How much better would this world be if we stopped to think about any situation from someone else's position, instead of always leaping to our own, often completely wrong, conclusions? And this does not just apply to being angry... whenever we make judgments about someone, have you thought about why they act the way they do? I know I am exceptionally guilty of judging people's character, even though I try so hard not to. Something to definitely be more conscious about.
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So, there it is. This was only the first day of reading, so whether or not I end up writing something for each day remains to be seen. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it, and maybe finds it a bit eye-opening, as I did.
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