Well, here I am, with only 3 weeks left. It's kinda crazy that I have been here for 2 and a half months. It feels like its been much longer and yet at the same time I can't believe I only have 3 weeks left. Time is a funny thing if you think about it.
So as everyone reading my blog knows...this has been the desert for me. However, about a week ago, I had this moment where I realized I am grateful for my time here. That was kinda a revelation for me. I mean I knew that I was glad, but it hadn't really hit my heart until about a week ago. Through a series of events, I finally came to this moment where I realized that I am not the same that I used to be. I never will be. I am not the same person that I came here being. I have experienced so much freedom from things that were really controlling me.
With that being said, I would not live this over again but I also would not trade it for the world. Anyone who has been through a desert knows that though you are eternally grateful for what you gained and the remolding the Lord did in that time, you do not want to experience the pain over again. That is how I feel.
Once I realized how grateful I was, I was flooded with an overwhelming desire for more. I begin to cry out to the Lord begging Him not to let me breeze through these next 3 weeks. I want more. I am so ready to go home, but at the same time, there is so much more I want before going home. (I am starting to see that when I go home, the work will continue). I am not really sure how much of this overwhelming feeling was me or the steroids. I came down with pneumonia since being here and thus I was put on steroids which if you have ever taken steroids, you know how much it messes with your...well, everything. I felt like a basket case. Not that I haven't felt that way the whole time I have been here or anything ha.
It sounds crazy to have pneumonia in Hawaii, I know, but actually, it was kind of a blessing. Most of my life I have been really hard on myself and in my mind, the reason I have always struggled with being sick was because I chose it. I looked back on all the years of me being sick, including the time that I was at UGA, and blamed myself for it all. For the first time maybe ever I realized I actually really do have asthma and that it wasn't all my fault. I actually felt pity for myself as a kid. Kinda rare for me to feel pity for myself, but a huge revelation for me. For the first time I offered myself some sort of understanding and stopped blaming myself.
THE COOLER PART--> One night one of my roommates asked me to go to this prayer and praise time at the cafe on campus. I didn't really want to, but then something inside of me said yes, you need to go Grace. So I gave in and said okay. That night as we worshipped, they asked if anyone needed healing. I tried to avoid it, but then one of my fellow classmates here called me out on it. Thus, I raised my hand for prayer. I told them I had pneumonia and asthma. As they prayed for healing, I could feel my chest/lungs hurting. It's almost like the pneumonia went deeper, which was kinda weird for me to comprehend why it would do that, but then I just really felt like the Lord was saying, I am cleaning out your lungs. I am allowing you to forgive yourself. You will be healed.
WOW. Now I cannot tell you that I feel this immediate relief. But I have faith. I know that the devil wants to take perseverance from me. He wants to make me believe that because it wasn't immediate it wasn't real, but I choose to believe otherwise. I am healed. I am walking in the revelation of what has been done.
So up to this night, I had been on a kind of emotional high. I was finally feeling like I was coming out of the desert. Then the next day arrived....
It reminds me of Jesus when he was baptised and the clouds opened and the spirit fell on Him and God said this is my son in whom I am well pleased. What a cool moment right? But then He is immediately taken to the wilderness where the devil tempts Him. I had always looked at this story and thought how it was showing that Jesus resisted the devil, which I am sure it does teach that lesson, but it wasn't until a friend pointed out that this story shows that Jesus really does understand what it feels like to suffer. He gets it. I mean even when He was in the garden before the crucifixion, He asked the Lord if it was possible for Him to take the cup away. He felt pain. It wasn't some easy experience that He went through just to show us that He could do it. He was actually a real man who felt the pain of the experiences and He didn't really want to go through it, but he chose it anyway.
As I have struggled through the past few days, it is this story that my friend told me that has helped bring me enough hope and comfort to get through. You see, Jesus understands what it feels like to get this emotional high aka the baptism where His Father tells Him that He is pleased, and then to all of the sudden be in the wilderness being tempted. He gets the pain and how hard it is. He doesn't think it was easy. He didn't go through that just so He could say, well I did it. He went through it so he could say...I get it. I get the pain. I feel the pain with you. I am not angry...I get it.
So my guess is you're wondering what caused me to struggle. Well, its nothing new really. The devil is NOT a creator...he uses the same tricks everytime. Only God is the author of creation so the devil can only use counterfeits of what God has created and he uses the same ones always. So that is exactly what he did. I was on a high. I just had someone pray healing over me. I was crying out to God for more. So of course he was angry and wanted to distract me, so he threw the age old card of beauty in my face again.
You would think I would know how to battle it by this point, but I don't. You would think its simple, but it doesn't feel that way while I am in the midst of it. I get so trapped in my mind. My thoughts feel like they are raging and roaring. I can't think straight. It feels like no one understands. I feel isolated. My mind isn't present. I begin to dwindle, and wonder if I will ever get out of this. Will there ever be a day when I am not obsessed with my body and when I won't have this love/hate relationship with food? Will there ever be a day when I love my body and I don't use food? When I will finally turn to God and not to food? In my mind, I cant imagine it. So I sink deeper, deeper, deeper.
The depression sinks in when I begin to think I will never get out, and that God is so tired of this. When I begin to lose sight of God's love for me then the devil can start twisting the way I see God--that's when it gets really bad. You see, something I have learned here is that the devil wants more than anything for us to not understand who God really is. If he can twist the truth of God's character then he can cause our whole lives to unravel. We have to stay grounded on WHO GOD IS. Not who we think he is, or how we are feeling towards him or even how we think He is feeling towards us. We have to stay grounded in the TRUTH of who He actually is. Who does the Word tell us God is? You can read a passage out of context and make Him some big, angry God, or you can really sit and try to understand who God is and you will always find that God is good. God is trustworthy. GOD IS LOVE. He is Abba...our Daddy.
This is the choice we have to make. You see, in the midst of all my pain, God is not asking me to get myself out, He is asking me to choose to believe in who He is. Only then can HE GET ME OUT. I can't get myself out of the sin that I am in. I can't get myself out of the pain. It is too much for me, but it is NOT TOO MUCH FOR HIM. So you see, the choice is mine--do I believe God cares? Do I believe God is good? Do I believe God is real? Do I believe GOD IS LOVE? It's hard for me to when I am in the midst of all the pain. I bounce from feeling so guilty that I can't imagine that God could love me to the opposite direction where I blame God for the pain and for not getting me out sooner. But I have to CHOOSE to let that go. I have to CHOOSE to believe that God is love. God cares. God's heart is breaking for me. His heart is not angry, but rather shattering into a million pieces as he watches me fall to pieces in pain. God did not become man so that He could sit up above us and say well I did it...no no no. God is looking down saying, I know it hurts...I know that the pain you feel is so real you could sweat blood. I know that the sin you are in is more than the way you are acting, there is actually a deep deep pain inside. I know that it is weighing on you and every part of you is crying to get out. I get it. Just let me help you. I already paid the price, you just have to turn your eyes to me and believe in who I am. That's it.
Maybe it sounds like I understand how to do all this because I am writing it, but it actually is a revelation that is coming to me as I write. It's kinda like the Lord teaches me as I write this all down, and in faith I write it because I want to believe it. I want to truly believe in who He is and by writing it, it is kinda like my proclamation saying that I will choose to believe this.
This is actually the first moments of clarity that I have had in the past few days.
I woke up this morning in a lot of pain. Physically and emotionally. I got out my journal and pen and barely knew what to say. I felt numb and nothing sounded better than just sleeping the day away. But in a place like YWAM, you don't really get the option to avoid pain. Even if I just wanted to go through the motions, so much truth is in your face, it makes it really hard. I think God did that on purpose. I think he brought me here to take me through some really tough things because He knew by being here I could not avoid it. I would remain tender even when I wanted to grow cold. It amazes me how well He knows us. I don't know why it does--I mean He is my maker, but somehow I always forget that He knows me better than I will ever know myself.
Anyhow, as I journaled, I felt numb. I wanted to be real with God, but my heart is so deeply hurting and I just could not figure out how to get through the walls I have put up over the past few days in order to survive. Then this video popped into my mind. "Jesus Skit-Lifehouse Everything" on youtube. I looked it up, and as I watched it, the walls fell. (crazy how much God can use the arts to tear down walls). Tears streamed. That is exactly how I feel. I want out of this battle with food and weight and beauty. It's like this addiction that I cannot seem to break. And I don't just want some coping mechanism where I learn to count calories. I want FREEDOM. I want out of it. And I believe that there is freedom. It may be the longer, more painful path but I choose the journey WITH HIM rather than the destination without Him. If life isn't about the journeys we go through with Him then what is it? Just destination to destination? I have lived enough of my life that way and I am done with that. It just left me always running with a discontent heart...nothing ever satisfied. So I choose the journey. It may hurt. It may be long. It may be painful. But I choose it. I choose it for me. I choose it for my daughter. I choose it for all the other women who are trapped in this. And I praise God that He has given me the opportunity to choose Him. I praise Him that He has given me enough strength to say, Here am I. Take me through it.
I had a dream last night. Twice actually. In the dream I wake up from a nightmare and I want my mom. I am terrified. I can feel this darkness all around me. I get out of bed and as I try to run to my parents room, I can't barely move. There is this weight on me and am I trying to move but I can't. I literally am grabbing hold of countertops to pull myself forward. I go to scream and I can barely make a sound. I keep trying. I keep pulling. At one point, there is literally something pulling me backwards away from my mom's room. I had to grab hold of the bed to keep myself from slipping back into it. In both dreams, I never made it to my mom's room. BUT...my mom made it to me. Somehow, though my voice could barely make a noise, she heard me. She came running. The dream ends there. Safe in my mom's arms.
I think the Lord is showing me what I am going through. The pain is so much that is weighing me down. I can barely move and barely speak. But He hears me. He is coming. He is going to meet me. All I have to do is hold on. Just like I held onto the countertops, just hold on. He is running. And the way He sees me in the midst of my deepest pain and darkest sin is just how my mom sees me. He sees me with a heart that aches for me to be free. He is running to try and fix the pain. God wants to be my mom. We always make God masculine, but women hold a part of God that is vital. God wants to be my mom right now. He wants to hold me and help me and just rock me until the pain fades.
Realizing this has been vital for me. In the midst of this battle, it actually is the only thing that can get me through. I had begun to lose sight of how God saw me and was beginning to think He was angry. But He's not. He is with me, and He feels the pain. Just like my mom feels my pain everytime I call in tears. My mom wrote me this letter when I was at UGA 2 years ago. I was in so much pain there, and my mom could barely stand it. She couldn't barely talk to me on the phone because it was so much on her heart. She wrote me the letter to let me know how it was killing her to watch me hurt but she knew she had to let me grow. The letter remains a treasure in my heart. I will always know the way my mom loves in the depths of her soul when I read it. No matter my age. As I have been writing this blog, the Lord has been reminding me to go back and read it so I can see how much He really does hurt for me right now. He has the heart of my mother.
I think one of the most important things I am going to leave YWAM with is knowing that GOD IS LOVE. There is nothing that can change our lives the way that piece of truth can. If we could only grasp how He loves us, the problems might not disappear, but hope would tower over them.
I really encourage you all to watch this video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfrbIleVf58
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