When everything has fallen apart in life you may find yourself asking: Is there even hope for me? Do I give up? How to keep going? I know this feeling all too well. I’ve been there! I’ve been in seasons where your whole life appears to have fallen apart, you feel hopeless as if it has to be a nightmare! You cry out to God, feel hurt, angry and feel as if He’s abandoned you. You may find yourself thinking, how could He allow this to happen to me, I’m a good person, why me? These are all feelings based on our human logic, but our God is so grand and mysterious that His ways may not appear logical to us. We cannot even begin to fathom His ways. “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” Isaiah 55:8.
I remember one night, sitting at my kitchen table, crying and pleading with the Lord. It was as if everything had been stripped away from me. I was dealing with a situation that had left me completely alone, scared, angry and hurt. I remember picking up a pen and just writing down all my feelings and thoughts in the form of poems. Never had I done this until this particular night. The tears poured out effortlessly in the form of words hitting the page. My pen kept gliding across the pages without ceasing. That night I wrote about 12 poems! I remember jumping up afterwards, smiling and thinking to myself. “could this be part of my destiny?” I believe that night God planted the desire to express myself through writing!
If my personal life hadn’t fallen apart, I would have never come to a place of vulnerability that allowed me to express myself through writing. If I hadn’t been going through a terrible stormy season in my life I would not have had to depend on God alone. I would have not found myself hanging on to His word so desperately to survive. It was in my brokenness and fallen world that I desperately started to seek Him more. It was because of the hurt and pain that I had begun to grow as a Christian and discovered my purpose. Although I felt pain, God was able to use it for my good. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them Romans 8:28. Sometimes we need a reminder that all we need is Him! The storm is a huge part of my testimony! The storm didn’t knock me down, it made me the strong woman that I am today!
How to Keep Going
I encourage you to remember that sometimes God uses storms to move you in the direction you need to go! Sometimes He needs to use extreme measures for change to be made. Remind yourself that He is still there in the midst of the storm, even when it hurts, and you can’t find understanding. Why should you worry? He holds your life in His hands! Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Mathew 6:26-27. Remind yourself that we are more valuable to Him than the birds. You can trust that He will take care of you if He takes care of them. Trust His plan for your life. Trust that the storm has its purpose and its moving you in the direction you are supposed to go.
