Between 30 hours a week at my part-time job, 15 credit hours of college classes, family, and friends, I’m exhausted. I’ve tried lighting vanilla scented candles beside a bubble bath. I’ve tried writing in a journal. I’ve tried numbing my busy mind with senseless Netflix marathons under the bed covers. The only thing that ever gives me peace, real and true peace, is reading my Bible in silence.
Life gets so loud and crazy that I often don’t take the time to sit down with God and just have a conversation with Him until I’m too overwhelmed to turn anywhere else. And I’ve finally realized that’s the problem. Instead of walking with Jesus, day by day, letting Him carry my struggles, anxieties, and sin, I seem to think that I can handle it myself. Or worse, I pray and hand it all over to Him, find peace in my heart, and then almost immediately take it back from Him. Sometimes I think I do this because I’m just a young adult, trying to show the world that I can make it on my own. Other times it’s because I question whether or not Jesus cares enough to deal with my silly earthly problems. I’m so incredibly wrong.
This world is broken and past the point of no return. And even though I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember, I often get tangled in earthly things that distract me from the life God wants for me. Whenever I sit quietly in my room, an open Bible on my lap, I close my eyes and talk to God. Sometimes it feels like I’m talking to myself, but other times, I feel as close to God as if He were sitting right beside me. I’m sure I’ll never understand how my heart can go from one extreme to the other like that because it is beyond my human understanding.
One verse that I keep returning to is 1 Corinthians 10:12-13:
“So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with testing, He will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
No matter how triumphant I feel, it comes from God. When I feel depressed and angry, it comes from God. When I was younger, I’d ask more mature Christians, “If God loves me, why would He let me feel like this?” But now, after hours of studying His Word and staining my Bible with tears, I understand. Whenever I read this verse, I think about how my parents taught me to swim. First, they’d get in the water. Then, they’d tell me to jump in after promising they’d catch me. Sometimes they did catch me, but sometimes they let me sink a bit until I flailed around enough for my heart to start racing in panic. Those times, they’d scoop me up with one hand and hold me above the water to let me catch my breath. This is the same way my relationship with God works. He goes before me in life, promises to catch me if I fall, and He never lets me go even though I flail.
I am not alone. Even though loneliness may plague me, I am not alone. Whenever I sit down with my Bible and expose my vulnerable heart to God, I find peace. And whenever I get discouraged, I remember the promise Jesus made to the disciples in John 16:33.
And so it is written, “I have said this to you, so that in me, you may have peace. In the world, you face persecution. But take heart! I have conquered the world.”
