There was once a time when I was so overwhelmed with sadness and loss that I would allow anger to rise up inside of me and take control of my actions to the point where I would spew out hateful words to anyone near me. There was a time when I was so riddled with unnecessary fear that I would cling to my little baby for dear life and fearfully pray “God please keep us safe” when in reality, no one was coming to hurt us. There was a time when I would only maintain friendships with people who made poor choices and who I viewed as less than in order to make myself feel like the choices I was making and the lifestyle I was choosing were okay. I used to spend so much time pushing all of the good things in life away, only making space for “fun” and “easy” when all I really needed to do was give up.
I vividly remember a day when I heard the closest thing to the audible voice of God that I’ve ever heard, wake me up from a nap in the middle of the day. He said to me, simply, “It’s time for you to get out.”
Up to this point I was living with my boyfriend in total turmoil. I tried to deny it but, deep down, I knew that serious drugs were coming in and out of my house on a daily basis. I had come to a place where I was so paranoid that I would go to the bathroom door and listen in on the person in there to try to guess whether or not they were doing drugs. I would look behind picture frames and inside of different decorations that I had to try to find hidden drugs. I would pull up sections of carpet and tear apart tennis shoes and dig through laundry and … unfortunately, more often than not, I would find exactly what I was looking for … anything from pills to meth to little balls of foil to hollow pens to anything else you could imagine. I would wake up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep to an empty spot in the bed next to me and fearfully walk down the stairs, knowing that when I opened that garage door, I was going to be overwhelmed with disappointment, fear and outrage. I would get into physical fights while pregnant and have to have our roommate bust into our room and physically break up the chaos that was going on between us. I would run out of the house barefoot with no phone in the middle of the night having absolutely no idea where I was going to go. Everything was broken and by the time I finally had my sweet little baby, I was just numb.
I created an alternate reality in my head where everything was perfect and both of us and our families were living on the high of welcoming a new baby into the world that I honestly believed that everything was different and the drugs all just miraculously disappeared.
But then God.
When He woke me up (literally) and told me to get out. I had no clue what I was in for but I was honestly so numb that I didn’t really even feel anything … good or bad. I called my mom and told her that I needed to move back in with her and the rest was painful, but it all worked itself out eventually.
My heart though. My heart was broken into a million pieces. I had absolutely no self-esteem. I still … after five years, blamed myself for my dad’s murder and now, I was 21 years old and a brand new mother. I would tell God that I didn’t feel ANYthing, I would shout it at Him. I didn’t feel Him, I didn’t feel sadness or joy or peace or chaos. I only felt frustration that I was numb to it all. But I told Him that I knew how to be obedient. So I started to read my Bible and go to church. It was all I knew to do. I felt so out-of-place in church and I was so ashamed of the places I’d been and then things that I’d done that every time I stepped foot on that property I could feel people looking at me and I felt like they could see right through me and that they knew I was a fraud. I hated when worship would come on. I would wait and wait and wait for the preacher to get up there and start talking because logic and reason and learning, I could do. But pretending to feel and praise a God that I had no real relationship with was just painful for me and it felt fake and if there’s one thing I’ve always hated it’s inauthentic people, so I wasn’t about to pretend that I wanted to worship a God I didn’t think I knew.
Eventually, I met people who I connected with and I began to hear His voice and feel His presence. I would love to go into every detail about my whole journey of finally coming to the Lord but honestly it was so slow and gradual that it would probably bore you to bits (I am happy to go into more detail personally though if you want to message me and ask!). However, I can say that if I’ve learned anything about the character of God in all of this it’s that He’s SO patient. He meets us right where we’re at, no questions asked and He doesn’t care about our past in the same way we do. He doesn’t look at it through shame or guilt or condemnation. He looks at us through the blood of Jesus and he sees us as pure and Holy even when we’re in the middle of a gross and messy time in life. He asked me to physically leave my apartment that day, nothing else. He didn’t ask me to change who I was, He didn’t ask me to worship Him when I didn’t feel like it or to stop being mean to people. He didn’t ask me to do much of anything. He gave me one step at a time and He blessed me each time I made a good choice.
I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago about God’s grace and he said something that resonated so much with where I’ve been in all of this. He said, “Grace is the supernatural enabling power to do what God’s called you to do.” and then he said, “When you justify your decisions, you separate yourself from His Grace.” I realized that it all started long before my dad died. It started with me in Jr. High and High School justifying one decision after another and then finally, I wound up with my life a complete mess. But after every decision that I had made pulling me farther and farther from His calling on my life, He still waited there patiently never pushing me. All I had to do was give Him one small yes, and then I was back under the covering of His Grace. I didn’t have any grand plan for how I was going to get my life to where it is now. I just gave him a tiny little yes when I was completely broken and had nothing left to give. But He took it. And He used it … and He used it for MY good, how crazy is that?
If you are in a place right now where you feel like you don’t know who God is. Or you feel like you’ve made too many choices and fallen way too far down the rabbit hole or that you’re too far gone, let me tell you … you’re wrong. He loves you so much. Right where you are. Broken, lonely, sad, confused. He thinks you’re a worthy investment, He thinks you’re beautiful and He sees you through the blood of Jesus, pure and Holy. If you feel like you can’t hear Him or feel Him, that’s OK. Keep talking to Him, you will … and, He hears you.
Psalms 56:8 says, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” And He does … not a single tear is wasted and He redeems all things, especially you!
Christie Zahner 