If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.

do you believe that? no. i’m serious. do you believe that? because if i’m honest with you, i don’t know if i do. or if i had. up until this time two years ago, life had, overall, run quite smoothly. it is never without its bumps, twists, and turns. but two years ago, fall, would begin what has been the most overwhelming and painful two years of my short life.

there is something about writing about my pain and all that i am learning that begins to free it. begins to move it. i know i have written about this before, but i have been reminded by the person who i care about the most, yet have perhaps hurt the most, that my reactions, the things i do, and the things i say are indeed- unhealthy.

three years ago, i came into college- ready for what life had to give me. ready for the best time of my life (as i had been told). and for a year i was thriving. relationships were budding, i was carefree, with only laughter and a genuine sweetness to share. my heart was full of passion. i have journals to prove it. passion for my best friend, passion for my other friends, passion for God, passion for other cultures, passion for those who don’t know Jesus.

but soon, unbeknowst to me, that colorful passion would fade into a dreary grayness. a gray that covered my entire existence. it sucked the life out of relationships- with God, with Joseph, with everyone I went to church with. it told me that i did not have purpose. that i was worthless.

the gray was so suffocating. so all-consumming that i could only attempt to claw my way out of the depression by holding on to and counting on anything within my reach. church should have done it for me. Joseph should have done it for me. my family should have done it for me. organizations should have done it for me. small group should have done it for me. my future should have done it for me. Senegal should have done it for me. being missional and talking about Jesus with those who don’t know him should have done it for me. saving the world with liberal politics should have done it for me. art should have done that for me.

but it didnt.

nothing has done it for me. and now, all i have left is this weakling faith. faith that i have not nurtured. faith that i did not believe would pull me through in these times. faith that can be so abstract and so invisible that you wonder where on earth it comes from. and how in the world, when the fire has completely damaged, the walls have been torn down, the glass shattered, can there remain something that will hold you. yet, why has it taken for me to come to this point of complete and utter brokenness and vulnerability to say- “oh. YOU are the one to fill those canyons.”

i have tried and tried to fill those canyons with everything i could. and i have been depressed for two years. i have reacted in anger, in coldness, in rebellion, in absolute bitterness towards those things that have failed to measure up, those things that fail to fill the canyons that only God can fill. those things that i doubt because they don’t give me the vibrancy and fulfillment that i expected them to.

but still. that is so…abstract. what does it mean that He can fill those? i’m still trying to figure that out. my mind is whirling with thoughts right now. so many thoughts and so many connections that i wonder if i will pull this together in a coherrent post. and how on earth will i be able to get them all down.

i lock myself in my closet, half of the time weeping, just praying that this time it will stick. this time i will form the habit of always running to the One who holds all things together. this time i will treasure the fact that He is sovereign and i can count on Him to sort everything out. this time I will remember that He is the One who gives me life. and that this time i will truly seek out the healing that must be inevitable at this point.

God help me. let that be my official statement that i do not have it together (which i’m sure you know), but in all seriousness- i. am. in. need.

forgive me, for these next statements are still a little bit abstract, but i can sense that there is something big being revealed in my mind. it began with me reading that book- Things Unseen.

one of the chapters hits on John the Baptist and his disappointment in Jesus leaving him in prison and going around doing miracles for all these other people, while someone SO close to him is left to rot in prison.

but what if our faith was based on our circumstances? on what Jesus will do for me right now?

There are those whose lives seem to always be blessed, and those who seem to always encounter tragedy and pain. Buchanan explains that we don’t hope in Jesus to hope for the things that he does for us, but to hope in Him. Faith is not to get its strength from the capriciousness of circumstances, always being answered by miracles. But blessed are those who have not seen and still believe. Hope cannot be built on Jesus’ works, but hope in Him because he has the words of eternal life. If hope is built on nothing but a divine miracle in the temporary, we are to be pitied, because hope is in something I might get- not in Jesus himself. and it is in Jesus himself that we are to hope, and that we are to receive life.

i really believe there is something here. i haven’t quite understood it all yet. but looking at where my life is and the feelings i have experienced over the past couple of years, i really think there is something here. please let me know if you have any thoughts.

i realize that this entry has strayed far from the verse i opened it with. but i don’t believe it has to be. faith takes many forms, and for me for the past two years- it has just been something that i felt was supposed to be part of my life. but it has not been firm, it has not been that which i truly hold on to. cling to for dear life.

i don’t desire to take the blame for that, or to hold onto all this guilt about all these things i did wrong and all the faith i should have had. because God does not put that on me, and i do not have to put that on myself. truthfully, we must learn as life comes our way. we have our entire lives (however long God has chosen for that to be) to grow and to learn and mature. i just hope all those that i have hurt in my path to realizing these things will be able to forgive me and my lack of maturity and the growth that i still have to do…