“Because you love me says the Lord, I will rescue you; I will protect you, for you acknowledge my name. You will call on me and I will answer you; I will be with you in trouble, I will deliver you and honor you,” Psalms 91:14-15
Have you been in a situation that you thought you would never overcome? A pain that was so enduring that you lost yourself. You find yourself changing into a person that you don’t recognize anymore. One day you look into a mirror and the reflection appears to be a stranger. I have been there.
There comes a point in your life where you do a 180, either for the good, or for the bad. I did a 180 for the worse. For about a year in a half I chose to stay at the lowest point in my life and never thought I would recover. I used to think that I was in love, but what I know now is that I was just scared to be alone, and honestly didn’t know how to love others. So instead of making myself happy after one relationship of five years, I jumped right into another one. I was damaged and it caused me to bring someone else to a low place in his life because I didn’t want to face my true colors.
I didn’t know how to love someone because I couldn’t love myself. I never talked about my feelings because I figured they would just go away sooner or later. My family and close friends knew things were going on and could see the changes in me, but I never acknowledged them. I knew I was changing but I didn’t want to admit that I was screwing that up also. When you are hiding all alone, your heart ends up turning cold. I got to a place where I was distant, pushed everybody away, and consumed a lot of alcohol. Alcohol was my drug, it was my full time pain reliever.
From experience and conversations I have had with people, the addicts are the ones with such big hearts. They feel differently than others. We love differently, we cope differently, and we ignore what is really going on in our lives. We are runners. Instead of running toward the problem, we run away. We run to that high or buzz that gets us into a whole other world. We forget what we are actually running from. It is like we put our lives on pause and forget to press play. We are at a standstill in our lives because we don’t want to face the truth, or the outcome.
When you start coming off that buzz, the feelings and memories are flooding back and it is like we make up this whole different person in our mind. We put up a façade. We pretend to be this person we’re not until we get that high back. Then once we get back to that buzz, we become numb to life again. That turns into our routine. Then one day you wake up and you are an addict.
It took me over a year in a half to realize I was an alcoholic. I was so oblivious to the situation that I couldn’t see who I was becoming. I loved the numbness I felt, the “I don’t have a care in the world” feeling, and the fact of hiding how I really felt deep inside. With the obstacles I went through, I never dealt with them. I ignored them totally. I turned straight to alcohol and drugs to numb those feelings and not have to think about them. I literally woke up one Sunday morning and realized that I had hit rock bottom.
I questioned God so many times throughout my years asking, “Why would you put these people in my life if you knew the outcome?” Boyfriends aren’t the only things I questioned about, but family members, and friendships as well. If God knew I would become this bitter, alcoholic, hell raising person, why allow these people in my life? Why did he let these situations happen? Let me just tell you why.
It is because I can say God picked me up, literally out of the pits of hell, and made me new. I can now say that what he did for me, he can and will do for YOU. I can show he will take the addicts and make us sober. He will take the most damaged and make us pure. He will take the brokenhearted and teach us to love again. He will take the hopeless and give us hope.
I had to hit rock bottom to see that God is the rock at the bottom waiting. There were times I thought I would never get over the situations that I was going through, yet here I am a year in a half later with more joy and love in my heart than ever before. I had to go through the things I went through to be who I am today. I used to think that Fireball set my soul on fire BUT, “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire, by the grace of God I am what I am,” 1 Corinthians 15:10. God is what sets my soul on fire now.
God is light, light invades darkness. Are you going to keep sitting in the dark alone or will you let God’s light overtake the darkness within you? No matter how damaged you are, no matter how deep you have gotten yourself, no matter what you have done in your life, you are a child of God. Because you admit your love for God, he will rescue you, he will deliver you, and he will forgive you. If you keep your eyes on the storm, you will question if God still loves you, because that is what I did. But if you keep your eyes on the cross, you will see he always has and always will.
The love I have encountered with God is better than any buzz or high I have ever encountered. Don’t get to the point to where you lose yourself like I did. Even if you have gotten to that point, God will take you just as you are and make you into the image that he sees you as. There is freedom in surrendering. Let him give you beauty instead of ashes (Isaiah 61:3). I had to learn that when God closed doors that I wanted so desperately to stay open, his no was not a rejection, but a redirection.
“In the day when I cried out, you answered me and made me bold with strength in my soul,” Psalms 138:3.
