It was just a few years into my marriage, somewhere in my late 20’s, and I was deep in heartache. I was facing a cloud of depression and a loss of control of everything I had “built” in my life. So, here I was, on my knees on my bedroom floor, tears streaming down my face. Crying out to God in a way I had wanted to for so many years, but had too many layers over my heart to even know where to start. In that instant, God broke through the layers of identity cover up and control I had put on my life. He did something I had been trying to do for years, but didn’t have the strength to do alone. “Lord, take it all. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters but you.” My heart cried out to him as I physically cried from my innermost being.
My husband and I had been facing years of infertility. What a strange season it was. You never imagine when difficult times are going to come, but when they hit you, it can shake everything in your life. For the first time in my life, I had zero control over the situation. I couldn’t fix it, I couldn’t put a bandaid on the pain, there was nothing I could buy or do that could cover up the deep wound running through my being. The deep pangs of loss over and over again. The depression that had hit, making it difficult for me to get through the days.
I slowly stopped going to social events. Even church became an unsafe environment for, as one mention of parenting would send me panicked out of the church service. Seeing the beautiful babies being born all around me would send me into a state of feelings to this day I have no words for. Could I look at those babies and be genuinely happy for their life and the gift they were to their families? Yes, I honestly could. But there was a pain deep within me, that I couldn’t fix in any way, a pain of loss, and I was at a major crossroads. I had always had a “fix” or “solution” in the past. I always kept moving, and could find something else to help. Not this time.
So in that moment on my bedroom floor, on my knees, weeping and crying out to God, it was more than just the infertility, it was a release of everything I had tried to control in my life. The layers of trying to fix and cover up pain from long ago, trying to achieve and “fix” things in my life, instead of allowing God to do it. The fear of man that I realized had grown rampant in my life. All the feelings of insecurity and shame I had carried. The layers upon layers of “stuff” I had used to try and mask my pain. The years of praying to God in confusion about the state I was in and not knowing how to fix it. And in an instant I completely broke. And in an instant, I completely saw what it had all become. “God, I want you! I want your plans, I’m done trying to fix my life, trying to figure out how to walk with you without letting go of the control I’ve so tightly held for years! Take it all, I want your dreams, your destiny, your love, I want all of it. Nothing else matters.”
God met me there that day, in my brokenness, and scooped me up. He smiled upon me and said, “Yes, beautiful daughter, in your brokenness, you’ve learned to submit it all to me and trust me.” And just like that, the chains that had held me in bondage for many years broke.
How did I get here Lord?
I was what you would call “goal oriented”. I made things happen. I fixed things in my life. I planned the next step, I kept moving. I decided to do something, and I’d do it. If I didn’t like something, I’d find a way to fix it. But I was also a little girl who loved God and I honestly can’t even recall a time before I had Jesus in my heart. I was a little girl who had radical childlike faith in my BIG God and felt a strong calling on my life. Traipsing around the woods behind our home, riding my pony, looking at the stars at night and knowing my heavenly father deeply. My mid-teenage years were filled with summer mission trips and pursuing God with all my heart. I had a call on my life, I knew. I felt it was big, and I carried it with me. I had a destiny!
And then, it happened. I hit an identity crisis. In my late teens and early twenties, I reached a place in my life, a place full of confusion. A place where I shook my head and said, “Lord, what happened?” Anxiety, fear of man, rejection, shame and comparison had gradually stolen my identity, my God given dreams, and left me with my head barely above the surface, swimming with all my might, in deep water, my eyes towards him, saying, “Rescue me! This wasn’t part of the plan!” My eyes were quickly searching the reflection of the girl I saw staring back at me in that murky reflection, wondering where the fearless confident girl I used to know had gone.
For many years, I couldn’t even understand what had happened. So I would cry out to God, “Lord, what happened?” The problem for me was that I had kept ignoring and covering up the pains that had happened to me and ignoring that they were even there. So I never gave God the opportunity to heal and restore my heart. I kept trying to control my insecurities and pain out of my own strength. This is important, many of try to fix out of our own strength instead of allowing God!
It happened slowly during my life, a small crack from the enemy, gone unchecked, continued to grow larger. Lies of rejection and anxiety. Inferiority, shame. I started to believe the lie that I didn’t belong and something was different about me. I started to feel like an outsider. Anxiety was a word I didn’t even have in my vocabulary, but it was a feeling I was becoming familiar with. I started having trouble sleeping at night, but I didn’t even know there was a name for what I was experiencing, a name called “anxiety”. I also started to live in a world of comparison, feeling unqualified or constantly like an outsider. There also started to be a timidity that took over and the fear of man controlled many of my decisions. I slowly stopped using my voice.
Thus, I found myself at that point in my life, in that place of deep confusion, trying to just keep my head above the surface, saying, “Lord, what happened?” Because of this, there were many years that I lost part of that girl that God had designed me to be. “Where is that girl that you called and whispered your dreams and your destiny into her heart?” I had lost sight of the love of my heavenly father. I had lost the confidence of that little girl running around outside and riding her pony, blond hair flowing in the wind. The girl that was confident because she felt loved and extraordinarily special. A girl that knew she had a purpose. A girl that knew God loved me. He made me. A girl who was not afraid to speak or use her voice.
The Shadow We See Through
During this time, the lies the enemy had planted started to create a filter by which everything would pass through. Slowly, this started seeping into how I viewed myself. I was too young and naive to recognize the reality and lies of the situation, and had not become grounded in my identity in Jesus enough to stay grounded in his truth.
It’s as if, when you are confident in God’s love, who he says you are, you see clearly and in color. Everything is vibrant and real to you, and then suddenly, you are given a pair of dark glasses. The hurts, rejections and pains, gone unchecked, begin to shadow everything. It becomes your new norm and you walk through life with a dark pair of glasses. When you look in the mirror, it’s a very different reflection than God’s perspective.
“It’s as if, when you are confident in God’s love, who he says you are, you see clearly and in color. Everything is vibrant and real to you, and then suddenly, you are given a pair of dark glasses. The hurts, rejections and pains, gone unchecked, begin to shadow everything. It becomes your new norm and you walk through life with a dark pair of glasses. When you look in the mirror,
it’s a very different reflection than God’s perspective. “
That’s what happened to me, it began to shadow everything in my life, including the most important thing – my heavenly father’s love. The weight of the lies I had slowly bought into, darkened how I viewed myself. When I looked in the mirror, it was the shadow of these lies I saw, not the truth of my heavenly father. It was a distorted view. Instead of allowing God’s love to be the barrier that nothing can penetrate, my new norm became one where my vision of myself was stuck in a dark shadow.
When that shadow is over your life, you look for ways to bring back that which you knew, the fullness of a life in color, the fullness and confidence that only can come forth in the presence of your heavenly father, with the whispers of his truth that speak louder than the lies of the enemies. There was a process during that time by which I sought something…anything to replace the confidence in my life I had once known. I would look at others in comparison, never measuring up, and think, “If only I was more like them. If only I looked more like them. Dressed more like them.” I felt an overwhelming need to “fit in” and “be liked”. But I wasn’t designed to “fit in”! Neither are you. We are called to be set apart.
Deuteronomy 14:2 says, “You have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure.”
You have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure.”
Deuteronomy 14:2
We are God’s own special treasure and the enemy will do anything in his power to make sure you don’t believe that you are so he can silence you. Take away your voice. Do you see how the enemy works? The areas he attacks us are often the very areas God wants to use us! That is why I believe the enemy tries to silence so many of God’s daughter’s voices, because God wants you to use your voice, and the enemy is very afraid of what would happen if you did!
I can now look back on this season and see very clearly that the enemy’s attacks on me during those years were very strategic in his plot to keep me from my God given destiny. I can also guarantee you that the way in which the enemy is attacking you is very strategic as well.
Where do I go from here?
After my years away at college, where I stumbled around seeking acceptance and wandering further away from the girl I once knew, I knew I had to make a change. I knew God was tugging at my heart. I longed to be in the place of intimacy with him and experience his love like I had for most of my life. I longed to come back to him completely and go after his call on my life with wild abandon once again, but where do I go from here?
I went to Bangladesh on a mission trip after college, and God met me there. The fire in my heart for him, for missions, the fire of his call on my life – it all came to life again. But the problem was I was held frozen in fear. Fear of the shame I carried, fear of being hurt again, fear of judgment. I didn’t know how to trust, I was very afraid of being wounded or rejected. I also was in need of some serious inner healing, I needed God to start removing all the things I had piled on myself to bring my false sense of confidence, instead of God’s confidence.
So there I was, and there I remained, frozen. I felt like I didn’t know the next step, I had no idea what to do or where to go from there. But God did hear the cry of my heart. He ignited within me the fire and the passion to align my life with him. I ended up spending the next few years doing what felt like grasping for God with a blindfold on. I would move towards him, cry out for him, make more mistakes, and cry out for him again.
During that season, even though it felt like I was blindly chasing after God, it prepared me, he prepared me, for that moment, on my bedroom floor, when I was finally able to yield every single part of my heart and brokenness to him. He had been with me every step of the way. He had prepared me and he gave me the strength to finally see the false sense of identity I had built for myself, and through him, I had the strength to lay it all at the altar.
You are free!
I wish I could tell you God completely healed me in that instant on my bedroom floor. That moment after years of infertility, on my bedroom floor, weeping before him, giving him years of hurt, disappointment and pain. “Take it all Lord!” I had cried out. Did the chains fall off in an instant? Yes, they did. I broke ties with the lies that screamed I had to keep striving for ways to gain confidence and happiness. In that moment, what I had been trying to do for years suddenly happened, I yielded everything to God. But the healing took years of submitting my heart into God’s trusting hands! The retraining of my mind (Romans 12:2), to stop believing the lies of the enemy and to believe God’s truth, also took years. It’s a continual process, but we are being sanctified!
Here’s some truth I want to share with you about the healing process. It requires you to move. The word repent means to make a change. A change of mind, a change of action, a change of thought process. When we make a decision to break away from the lies of the enemy that we’ve been believing, it actually requires us to repent and change. This includes the lies we believe about ourselves! God treasures us as his children, and when we believe lies, we have to repent and go the other way, the way of his truth and his Word!
“Here’s the truth I want to share with you about the healing process.
It requires you to move.”
James 4:7 says this, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The first part of this verse is really important. Submit yourself to God. Yield your heart to him. Every part of your heart. All your pain, brokenness, all the control. All the things you’ve tried to do on your own to fix or hide your pain.
So when I was crying out to God on my bedroom floor, I was actually finally submitting myself fully to him. Not holding frozen in fear and gripping onto things I had put in my life to bury pain, but fully and entirely submitting my heart. God had prepared me for this moment, and he used every part of my life to bring me to that place. It is so often in our brokenness that we learn to yield our hearts fully to God.
Walk out of that prison!
The next part of James 4:7 says this, resist the devil. Here’s where our action is required. We must resist him. What if I had submitted myself to God in that moment, as the first part of James 4:7 says, but took no action to walk out His truth and His healing power? What if I just stayed in a puddle on the floor? If I do not take action, there is no resisting of the devil on my part, and he will not flee. Jesus paid the price for our freedom, but we need to do our part of fleeing!
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
James 4:7
We see in Acts chapter 12, Peter was imprisoned by King Herod. He put him in prison being guarded by 4 squads of 4 soldiers! 16 soldiers were guarding Peter! Then it says that he was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. Then, an angel shows up and tells him to get up. When he got up, at that very moment, the chains fell off. The angel then tells Peter to get dressed and follow him.
Here’s what’s important about this passage. The angel tells Peter to get up, and as Peter does this, the chains fall off. Jesus gives us freedom from sin through the cross, and when we turn towards him and receive salvation, our chains fall off. But then we must choose to walk away from our past and towards the truth! Just like Peter had to choose at this moment. The angel said to follow him. He could have stayed, chains off, but still in the bondage of that dark prison with all the filth and the guards, or he could believe God sent the angel to rescue him and he could follow the angel out. The chains were gone, he was free!
If he questioned or doubted that God really sent this angel, or that God really wanted to rescue him, it could have created enough hesitation to stay in the prison. What if he started thinking that he actually deserved to be in prison in the first place? Or he became too depressed from the experience to get up? Or now that he had sat in this filthy place and wore those chains that there was really no point in even walking out to the light of day anyway, because he was so dirty now? How many of us do this? We are too ashamed of where we’ve been or how dirty we have gotten while there to actually rise up and go to the place of freedom that Jesus has paid for us! Listen, his blood makes all white as snow, not just for certain things or certain people!
You see, that was my story. I had started believing lies, and for many, many years I was frozen, stuck in the place of shame for many years, staying in exactly the place the enemy wanted me to stay in. I knew I was set free, but I didn’t have the strength to actually get up and walk out of the prison! Until that day, when I yielded all to God, and got up and moved towards him with everything I had.
What about you?
If you think you are damaged, unqualified, tainted, embarrassed, undeserving, weak, or dirty – that is shame manifesting itself in your mind. Shame is the feeling of humiliation or distress. Jesus bore your sin and your shame. He took it upon himself. Don’t get caught in the trap of being set free from your chains but hanging around in the prison in a head full of lies that scream shame at you. That is the number one trap the enemy will use to get you to stick around. But we are to submit ourselves to God, yield your heart fully to him, resist the devil, and he will flee (James 4:7).
Restoring Your Voice
So, here I am, many years later and I’ve received so much freedom in Christ that I never even knew was imaginable. I’ve asked God to give me the freedom I felt when I was a little girl, completely and radically in love with him. And he did! He’s teaching me how to let go and walk in that kind of freedom, the kind where you really are dancing before an audience of one. The beautiful thing, is every time I receive more freedom, he keeps showing me there is more, it just keeps getting better!
And he has given me rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit, flowing out of me in so much abundance that all I want to do is declare his glory! (John 7:38). I will declare his glory and all he has done for me, how could I stay silent? He has restored and strengthened my voice, the voice that the enemy had once stolen from me!
He has restored and strengthened my voice,
the voice that the enemy had once stolen from me!
By sharing my testimony, I hope and pray that God will reach some of you in a radical way, to open your eyes to the dark glasses that are in your life, or to an area of your life that you need to get up and leave the filthy prison behind. He is so good, he will meet you in every hurt, every pain, every sorrow. There is nothing his love won’t conquer. As you submit yourself to him, I can’t promise it will be easy, and I can’t promise the past will disappear, but I do promise that he forgives, and he will use it, every bit of it, for his good! His love will overtake you and become bigger than any hurt and pain you’ve ever had, and bigger than your past. And I do promise that through his strength, you will be able to walk towards his love and the amazing destiny and plans he has for you, and he will lead you. Don’t look back beautiful daughter, keep looking forward and keep your eyes on Jesus alone! He paid for your freedom with the cross, and it awaits, it’s time to walk out of the prison!
Jesus, I pray for every single person reading this. Reveal to their heart that there is hope, no matter their past, no matter their pain, no matter the shame they may feel. You are enough, your love is enough. You paid the price on the cross. Give them the strength to yield their hearts and walk out of the prison. In Jesus’ name, AMEN!
Love,
