I heard someone say today that the Lord provides for His people. I then quickly recalled all the moments during my trial where I wondered when or if the Lord would provide for me. I asked what I needed to do to feel normal again. I wondered if somehow what that man did to me had made me less worthy of God’s providence. I plead with God, begging Him to work His powers and heal me already. I believed He could. Why wasn’t it working?
While I felt pain, it was easy to ask where God was? Why I felt forsaken? What I was doing wrong? After the hurt has been majorly healed, I have a different question: How did God take care of me during my healing?
Honestly, a response to that question doesn’t readily come. For a few years, I couldn’t see or feel Him clearly, consistently, or sometimes at all.
Nowadays, I don’t know how to articulate how God was there, but I am certain He was.
I hope, as I continue to heal and work on my relationship with God, I can see more clearly where He was in all of it. In the meantime, I’d like to share a few things that I held onto and repeated to myself often during my “spiritual drought,” if you will.
Do not abandon a good thing, simply because you are not feeling good yourself.
I will keep the promises I made to God when I was feeling something! I will keep my end of the deal, because that is who I am. I remember thinking, I may not feel God now, but I have felt Him before. In this state of mind, it is not the time to abandon the truths I used to feel were true. Now is the time to hold onto them and work toward healing.
Let someone in, even if it is scary.
After being lied to, manipulated, betrayed it can be very challenging to know who to trust. Especially considering the hardest person to trust is yourself and your own judgment. However, choosing to heal is a journey that is harder to travel alone. There’s no need to carry this by yourself. For me, there were few people I let in. The first was my husband. The second was my therapist. And eventually I added a couple friends. Not all my attempts to let people in were successful. Some of them didn’t go well; for some reason or another they couldn’t help me carry my burden. At first I was hurt by this, but later I realized that other people not knowing how to react, struggling to be there, or distancing themselves is okay. They have their own history, and this is a heavy burden. I believe that the people that were capable of being there for me were the angels God sent to lift me in my time of need.
When I have not yet healed, more questions come than answers.
Before major healing, it was easy to believe that God didn’t care. It was easier to believe God had abandoned me, because the alternative was that He had some part in this, yet didn’t stop it. There were so many other feelings that led to questions like “Does God really love me,” “Does God really exist,” etc. My thoughts during that time were really convoluted, filled with hurt, and lacked understanding. I had question after question. The core of everything I had believed throughout my entire life felt like it was hanging by a thread. Having so many questions was overwhelming. What helped me the most in this regard was realizing that having questions about my beliefs was a normal response; it helped me not worry so much about having them. Often, I would visualize placing them on a shelf for when I had greater capacity to find the answer. It was a large shelf.
No matter how dark it gets, no matter how worthless or alone you feel, you belong to God Almighty. You are His.
Believing I was God’s child was something that has empowered me my entire life. That connection to deity gives me strength beyond my own and helps me strive to do the impossible. Now did I have many days where doing the impossible felt doable? Not during my healing, no. In fact, I felt depleted, struggled to leave my bedroom, and felt three times as heavy on a consistent basis. Nothing was normal and going out my front door was terrifying. So many things were hard, but remembering this truth would always make me feel like I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew that if I remembered whose I was, I could take one small step toward healing.
Every little thing is gonna be alright! Trust me on this one, my friend. Healing comes, clarity follows.
Don’t give up on you! Don’t give up on God!
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