Learning the Hard Way
If you’re anything like me, you’re a little stubborn. And if you can agree with that then it probably means that you’re REALLY stubborn.
I’ve been a Christian my entire life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t consider the will of God in my life. Even when I was young, I was hyper aware of the fact that there was an invisible God with me.
Of course I didn't have a great understanding of what this meant, but the presence of God was always something that I allowed to influence my life.
I was devoted for as long as I can remember. And because I prayed and spent time reading my bible and trying to live a Godly life, I thought that this meant that I could do no wrong because the footsteps of a righteous man are ordered. Duh.
Remember how I mentioned my stubbornness? Well hindsight is always 20/20, but I now see that I was more stubborn than I was Christian.
It was May 2022. A lot was happening around me and I was dealing with a lot of church hurt and realizing that these people I’d looked up to spiritually were nothing but just human beings.
Terrible, huh?
I was finding out that God and man are two separate entities. That God could use a man for his purpose and that the man can proclaim the good works of the Lord and be as broken as broken can be.
It seems obvious, but when your theology doesn’t teach the balance between humanity, grace, and being a child of God, it can lead you into depths upon dephts of misunderstandings of what Christianity truly is.
As my spirituality began to unravel, I was then forced to seek God for my own. I couldn’t trust my pastor. I couldn’t trust my church. I couldn’t trust God because how could he allow this type of behavior in his house?
And I was dealing with the troubling realization that my family was less than welcome in the church that we helped to build and maintain for more than 20 years.
I was overwhelmed.
I had stopped going to that church every week. I found other ways to commune and hear from God. Thanks to Covid, there were many only services available for me to join and I enjoyed them more than I had in the church I'd been going to.
And even though my bed room services were great, I knew I needed to be in church. And so I would pray and try to go back to that church even though I felt in my spirit that I should stay home. I had a deep desire to not be there, but I thought that going would be the right thing.
And so I forced myself to go and to try to listen. I went the 2nd week of May and then at the beginning of June.
I remember not wanting to go to church that morning in June. As I got dressed, I remember feeling a weight on me and this burning desire to stay home and pray, to hear from God. Then when I got to church, I felt I should stay in the car.
Once again, I ignored this prompting. I mean how could going to church be a bad thing? This prompting had to be the work of the devil.
And so I dragged myself to church that June morning and I remember leaving feeling so drained and defeated. The pastor used that day to throw some subtle shade to preach against my family again. And the weight of the judgment and rejection was so strong on that day, that I felt my spirit sink inside of me.
A part of me was dying and I had no idea how to keep it alive.
That day I felt myself being shaky and nervous. I had to take some deep breaths to keep myself calm. The next two weeks were about me giving myself some rest, because I no longer had the capacity to deal with anything even remotely stressful.
Then on June 17th I decided that I would take something to help with the stress.
I decided to take an edible.
I’d been taking them for months by that time; just a little every few weeks. I wasn’t really concerned about it, because I had it under control and it had been months since I’d tried it before then.
Oh and I was really stressed out. This was the perfect time.
Except I felt in my heart that taking them would be a bad idea and it was time for me to stop taking them. I felt like God was telling me that it was enough of using this to mask my pain. He wanted me to deal with these emotions; he wanted to heal me.
I didn’t want to deal with anything. I just wanted to relax and go to bed and so I took the edible.
Within an hour I was unconscious and the ambulance was called.
Looking back now, I finally understand what it meant when the bible talks about the prompting of the holy spirit.
That nudge that you feel in your being that gives you information that just seems to make sense. Or the lights and images that form in your otherwise colorless and dark mind. The invisible hug of safety and security that envelopes you when you’re in a tired place and you’re crying out to someone to do something for you.
I had been expecting something, but I hadn't expected any of these expressions. I hadn’t expected that throughout my life God had been speaking to me and I wasn’t being paranoid or overthinking. He was leading me and guiding me.
It took a trip to the hospital, three hours completely unconscious, a week of little to no sleep or food, and a week in a mental hospital for me to finally realize how I’d allow my stubbornness to extinguish my ability to hear from God.
It’s funny because even now I still get these subtle prompts from time to time and even when I feel like that doesn’t make sense, I always stop and say to myself…
Maybe I should listen.
Life Word
