And You Sustained Me

"For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen." - Nehemiah 9:21

This is going to be the most honest blog post I've ever written on here. 

Here's the thing, the last year of my life has been a mess. A lovely lovely mess. You see it was about this time last year that God threw a major game changer my way, then in September I made the choice to follow His call to go into the mission field, and in around October and November my life changed drastically.

I have a major struggle that I deal with daily, and although I don't feel comfortable enough to tell the whole world about it, I will not deny that It affects every part of me. 

Compared to what other people have to suffer, then this is nothing, because it's not a physical thing. In fact, if I told people about it, they would probably think I'm insane. For a long time, I thought I was going insane. But I'm not, I know I'm not. (God bless the people that believed me, especially my best friend).  

But this struggle has changed me, it has changed my life as a Christian and as a woman. Let me tell you how.

It made me vulnerable. It broke me.

I think I cried in church every Sunday for about five months because the weight of this struggle in my life was so heavy. And the problem with my problem, is that it's the root of all of my problems. Even if I wanted to escape this issue, I couldn't. For the first few months, I tried dealing with this on my own and it was one of the worst mistakes I've ever made, because that only made everything worse, it was consuming me. But one day, God gave me the courage to tell my best friend about it, and I'm so thankful that God ordained her to be my other half because she supported me and never doubted me.

What I deal with makes me want to hide. Sometimes it makes me feel pathetic, and I cry. Sometimes it makes me feel like an outcast, even the thought of telling anyone about it scares me. I'm constantly torn between asking people for prayer, and never mentioning a word of this to anyone, whether they know about it or not. For a long time, going to church was a gamble, because my fear would find me there. Worshiping God with songs became a risk, but it was a risk I was willing to take. There were days in which I thought I would crumble. There are days in which I wonder if this issue is slowly sucking out my joy. To this day, going to bed is an act of courage, and I pride myself on that one. I've been up many sleepless nights crying over things that are not even a part of my reality, but that's the thing about my struggle, it's all based on deception. I have days in which I shut down, because the voices in my head are way too many. I thought many other things in my life had broken me, but this one...this one shattered me, and it continues to do so.

And through it all...God sustained me.

That's the point of my life. I would not have made it without Him. No, this isn't one of those "God gave me the strength to do this" type of cases (even though He did), this goes deeper, much much deeper. This is a life or death type of issue. Without God, I would have given up. To be quite honest, I wouldn't even be dealing with this if I wasn't following God, but the fact that I am, proves to me that I have a great God. I have experienced His power, His incredible power. But most of all, I have experienced His love. I have never seen God, but I've seen Him in action. I've prayed to Him many nights to hold me in His arms like a baby, and He has. The same way he sustained the Israelites in the desert for 40 years, He has sustained me in my brokenness all this time. He has loved me, sinful, little me who deserves to be going through this, but He has loved me enough to give me the victory in what I'm going through. 

This issue helped me discover that in Christ, I am indestructible. By being completely vulnerable on my own, I discovered that I am nothing without Christ, and I can do nothing without Him. I had to be broken in order to discover what my Christ is made out of. This struggle helped me discover my Father. The darkness around me does not compare to the light that lives within me. I discovered the authority of Jesus as King, and the true power of His Holy Spirit, and I'm not nearly done being amazed at the things He has shown me. 

On the days when my fear found me at church, so did His comfort. And at night when I know what's coming, I know my Dad's power is a prayer away. God is light, a light that has saved my life and my sanity way too many times. Just uttering the name of Jesus has given me life and peace at times when nothing else in all creation could have saved me. I'm not afraid of what I live with, because I know who lives within me. It's very possible I will live with this for the rest of my life, and I promise you this: God will sustain me. He always has, and He always will. What I live with, the many terrifying stories I'll tell those who need to hear them someday, that's all here not to show how special I am, but to show how incredible my God is. 

If everyone saw life through my eyes, we would either have more Christians or more mentally insane people out there. But I finally understand that I have been shown grace in what I've seen, what I've heard and what I've felt. The bigger this gets, the more grace I'll receive. I have made it this far, and I will make it even further because my Jesus is with me, and He will never leave me.

Life is full of dark moments, and if we look only to those moments we'll walk as blind men and women for the rest of our lives. But if for one second we choose to look for what's beyond our pain, our fears, and our brokenness, we might surprise ourselves with how far we can go, and better yet, how far God can take us.