It’s been a couple of months since I set aside time for God, time to pray, time to read the Bible. I started to feel anxious and I really felt a need to do it again.
It’s not like I didn’t pray – I pray during the day, I pray as and when things happen, short prayers. My desire still is to live the life God wants me to live, to do what He requires of me. But because I haven’t really spent time with Him, the path became fainter, and I started to succumb to the attacks against me.
Due to various things happening around me, and to me – from personal struggles about my marriage, to professional rejection in my job – I was feeling lost and dejected. I spent hours and hours trying to perform at work, neglecting my family, my faith and myself. Only to be shot down quite violently.
The rejection cut to my soul and spilled over to every other area of my life. It’s very clear to me that I need to address the constant rejection and shame from the past 7 years of unemployment and failed businesses, as this has definitely caused a very large wound inside me. I can’t stand the slightest critique – I literally burst into tears, with feelings of failure and thoughts of shame and even suicide, filling my mind.
However, in the midst of this, I got the clear direction to make a change and to take charge of even just one aspect, and that was my body. No matter what I did, I didn’t lose weight. And because of the hours I put in, I didn’t sleep enough and didn’t allow myself the time to exercise. So I chose to make the change: I started exercising in the morning while watching 1 episode of one of my favourite tv shows, and drinking water. Afterwards, I get dressed – nicely dressed. I decided also not to work past 22:00, and have since gone to bed even earlier, mostly not even working at night (at least not on the job that rejected me so badly).
And then, I made the effort to get up and do a Bible study, even though it felt so funny. I felt that because I hadn’t done it for so long, I wasn’t “allowed” to, I had to “work my way back”, like I had to do some preparatory things before I could open the Bible. But, I decided not to give in to those feelings and thoughts, and I just started.
Nothing around me changed.
But I did. I received blessings in doses of acceptance and patience, where there were struggle and resentment. My time stretched and I not only had time to do the things I wanted, I also had the drive and energy to tackle the ones I didn’t.
The attacks didn’t stop. The critique at work is ongoing and immense, and I still need to deal with that rejection monster.
But in one day of turning back to God, He has shown His mercy.
When you feel that God is far away, remember this: it is not Him that is far away, it is you. He is waiting – literally waiting!! – for you to turn back to Him. You need to give the first step – He is a gentleman and will not force you to do anything. So He’ll wait until YOU decide to go back to Him. He hasn’t left you.
He’s still here.
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