a good friend of mine told me a couple weeks ago that it’s okay to be broken. That’s how God uses us.
to give you some back story i grew up in a christian home. i gave my life to christ when i was 5. i remember feeling excited, but that’s about where the excitement ended. I went about my life doing whatever Jayme wanted to do.
around middle school i felt very alone. i was desperate to get people to like me and that wasn’t very healthy. it didn’t help that the girls i thought were my friends treated me with little to no respect. They would make comments under their breath about me. telling me i wasn’t skinny enough. i didn’t like how i looked. i thought this was normal. I was so desperate to feel loved that ignored it. when i look back on that time in my life i see a scared girl who didn’t know her worth. i thought i had to change myself to be loved. i didn’t like the feeling so i buried it. i made jokes and tried to be the funny one of the group just so people would see a reason to want to spend time with me, but i still continued to hang out with these people who were hurting me mentally.
about two years ago, i finally realized how they were treating me and removed myself from that group. It felt good to get away from the toxic energy, but i slowly started to feel alone. i didn’t really have anyone to hang out with. It was just me alone with my thoughts. This whole time God was not in the picture.
flash forward to this trip last year. i recommitted my life to christ and I was given the opportunity to get baptized. I gave my life back to christ on the same mountain as kait. I remember being so tired of feeling alone and God coming and just sitting next to me. He told me it was going to be okay and with him i could do it. it was the biggest, but most confident decision of my life. I was able to get baptized at the bay of chickens and declare i was going to live for him. I had just rededicated my life my savior and i was ready to tell people.
it’s the school year now. I’m back to my regular life, but something was different this time. i had Jesus.
as the year continued the insecurity that i had been ignoring my entire life came back out. fear of man.
This past school year it became a really big thing. Any situation i was in i would over think. If you saw me zoning out it’s because i was thinking of everything i just did wrong. or what the people around me think. It consumed me to the point where after i did anything on the drive back home i would ball my eyes out. I didn’t tell anyone. I was embarrassed that i cared so much of what people were thinking. I began to feel confused because after giving my life to christ my fear became even worse. i didn’t understand. i began to doubt God and whether or not I was a christian. If i was a christian then this wouldn’t be happening to me. I shared with one of my leaders what was going on and she told me something i’d never forget. She said Satan sees that i am pursuing Christ. He sees how in Love i am with Him. and that terrifies him. Satan found my weakness and he was abusing it. These words encouraged me because it showed me that God was still there. I was still in step with him and satan was just trying to tear me down. I began to understand what relying on God really meant
as i said earlier i’ve always been very self conscious with how i look. i thought i was too big and when i was younger some friends told me i was. Those thoughts have always stayed with me. Around christmas this past year i got really sick. I couldn’t eat. i barely had an appetite. when i finally recovered i noticed something. i had lost some weight within the span of a week because i didn’t eat anything. I saw this as a win. I decided i was going keep doing that. I stopped eating all together. My head was filled with lies that if i were to eat a cheez it i would pretty cause me to self destruct on the inside. I was still walking with christ at this time, but was just ignoring the fact that i was hungry all the time. I kept losing weight so i didn’t see a reason to stop.
I became convinced that people would like me if i was skinnier.
Kait figured it out very quickly that i wasn’t okay. But she also knew that i had to figure it out on my own. she kept telling me i was hurting myself but it just inclined me to keep going. this went on for a few months.
Around may i hit my breaking point. I wasn’t finding joy in anything. I decided i had to tell my parents. after i told them they were very understanding but also in shock. They had no idea. I guess i was pretty good at hiding it.
They told me that God could heal me. I found that very hard to believe. The God that i recommitted my life too has been running me over with a truck for the past year.
After i told my parents things became easier for me. my dad would check in on me and even my friends kept checking in. that was only for like a month. then it got really bad again. My parents thought i was better but i clearly wasn’t. I didn’t know how to go to them and say i’m not doing so good. so i ignored the pain. i stopped eating again and began to throw up even more this time. my brain was in a constant state of terror out of the fear of eating. I was working a lot more too about 12 hours a day and just decided i wasn’t gonna eat during my shifts. I fell down the rabbit hole again. Utterly terrified of what was gonna happen next. I was confused because i was going to God every day with my fears but nothing was changing.
Right before this trip i was a camp counselor at a christian camp. Going in i was terrified that the only thing i was gonna be thinking about was not eating. i was afraid I was gonna ignore my campers. I shared this fear with the other counselors and they prayed over me that God would help me focus on my kids.
at the end of the two weeks i saw something. I saw God answer a prayer. I didn’t worry about eating the entire time i was there. I wasn’t worried about what i looked like. i was able to give my all the my girls and help lead some of them to Christ. I was given some clarity at camp to. I realized that people don’t like me based on how i look. It’s what God is doing on the inside of me that matters. i had been putting my identity in how people perceived me when i should have been putting my identity in Christ.
Right now i still have negative thoughts but i go to God as quickly as I can. I learned this past year that God uses broken things. You have to allow yourself to be okay with being broken. God has showed me so much about myself and i wouldn’t have found those things without letting myself be broken. I can confidently say right now that i’m still broken, but God is my strength. God is using the people around me to build me back up. Wilson said we are called by God to be in relationship with one another. Without the relationships i’ve made this year i don’t think i’d be here right now.
moral of the story is that it’s okay to be broken and also talk about how you feel. no matter how uncomfortable it makes you. once you admit what’s going on, working through it become so much easier. God knows what he is doing. I learned that trusting God in anything is possible. The verse isaiah 41:13 is what kept me going this year. it’s says, ““For I am the LORD your God, who upholds your right hand, Who says to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you.’” this verse was my rock this year. it reminded me that God was right there with me while all this was going on. I may have only rededicated my life to him last year, but he has been with me since the beginning.