Clarification of My Testimony.

I feel like this should be posted. It’s rough, and it sucks. But it’s my testimony. I feel like those of you who read my blog may not understand all of where I’m coming from, and what a better time for you to know. It’s still early in the trip.

The past few days I’ve felt like I’ve only been halfway displayed here. That only my happy and sometimes really sad parts have been showing. Both are genuine, but there is so much more hiding under this rock-hard skin of mine. This is an explanation of who I was, am, and hope to be by grace.

I have always been a “Christian.” I’ve been in church since the time I was born, until last year. I started up again this year after getting out of school for the summer. I blamed my absence on my busy schedule, and on not sleeping and being too tired to go. The reality was I had a huge fear of approaching the throne of God. I never said that to anyone, of course.

Before my senior year of high school and my first year of college a “trial” or “test” from God was something I heard about from my parents or read about in a bible story. Not something that I had to experience. Then senior year came with heart breaking trials. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. It’s all I can really say. I sat and watched it take over my best friends mom… forget that, my sister’s mom. “Nothing will ever be this painful. Ever again.” That was my promise to myself. For some reason or another, through this trial I decided I could do everything myself. I was going to make sure nothing hurt me. I was going to make sure that I was strong for my sister. I was going to make sure that God could never hurt me again. (I came up with this phrase in one of my journal entries.) Stupid, stupid, delicate, girl.

When I went away to school a friend of mine was in a car wreck, and the week she was in the ICU I got news of several others passing away. While I was waiting to go to her funeral, I was attending another. So on and so forth in this way until I had enough. And all this time I was making sure that I was only running on my own strength. Stupid, stupid, delicate girl.

As you can well imagine this didn’t work so well. My sadness and suffering turned into numbness. A state of being that will occasionally take me over from time to time. I can’t fully explain the numbness, but it is completely emotional, spiritual, and physical. I hate it. For a long time I couldn’t figure out how to get out of this state of numbness. I tried everything… and I do mean everything to get rid of this numb feeling. Nothing worked.
Then came time, far past its due date, to approach God.
Thiiiiiis wasss gonnaaa suuuuuck.

There was no big moment, no sudden turn around. There was me, being forced to go to church again. And there was me scrounging around on the spiritual dirt floor looking for a second wave of feeling to come around so that I might stand up and start climbing the ladder to my Father. I was in church, which was great; I felt nothing towards it, which was bad. But I was forcing myself to read the Bible, and to pray. Whether or not I felt anything at all.

Here I am now. Standing on that same dirt floor I was crawling around on a few months ago. One hand on that ladder, and I’m ready to go. My stubborn nature has helped me fix what my stubborn nature started. I still don’t understand all that has happened, and it still makes me cry before I fall asleep. But now my faith is well placed, and my heart is in good hands; however, broken. And each night that is difficult is another day that I will have a something to say about how my God saves.

Amen.