From Me to We
Question of the day:
How were you able to do it?
Do what you may ask? Given all that you’ve endured through the past year or even just the last couple of months (like myself), how did you rise above? How did you make it through?
Sunday, while working my regular shift and waiting for the meeting to start, my co worker and I began to just talk about all that we wanted to accomplish this new year. Of course you cant talk about accomplishments for the new year without reflecting on last year’s challenging and at some moments crushing events that transpired.
Such as…
1) My aunt got really sick and life expectancy for her was uncertain...
2) While dealing with my aunts health, we were notified that my uncle had stage three lung cancer...
3) Simultaneously, a really close friend/mentor to my brother and I committed suicide!! (I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about how not even a year ago my brother and I sang at his wedding...)
4) My aunt passed away....
5) A close friend of the family (my niece’s God father) who I would call my brother, lost his brother suddenly...
6) Three months after my aunt passed away my uncle who was battling the stage three cancer got worse and he eventually succumbed to the disease...
7) My uncle’s funeral was on a Monday two days before Christmas and we traveled back home the night of Christmas Eve... First Christmas without my aunt and uncle.
8) Exactly one week after the funeral, my cousin (the daughter of my uncle who we just buried) house burned down…her and her family lost everything!
9) First Christmas without my aunt and uncle....
10) My cousin/God sister lost her grandfather and exactly 100 days later, lost her grandmother who was a true matriarch! (She was such a joy and shining light. She was Grandma!)
11) Lastly, found out my cousin has a brain tumor, with swelling and some bleeding on the brain.
Strength Lord!!!!!
All while this was happening externally, internally I was facing my own personal demons. I felt myself mentally shutting down due to wanting to feel loved and wanted.
Unfiltered truth...
I went 23 years of holding on to something I find so pure, so powerful, so important and I let a person talk his way into my life and flip it upside down! I felt convicted because I knew it was wrong and I knew my life had changed forever!
That next day, I went to church for a conference called “FREEDOM”. At church, I released everything to God. Everything I knew I was struggling with and even things I had no idea about. I knew it would be a true journey to freedom but I was ready for the ride. As hopeful and motivated I was after the church conference, after it everything started going down hill. I knew the devil was seeking to discourage me and destroy everything. My mental state was at an all time low and I felt like nothing I did was helping. In the midst of the chaos, I was apart of a Young Adults small group with my church. I found myself sharing everything that’s been happening to me each week and each time they prayed for me. Each time they spoke life into me. I went from being secluded and isolated and not trusting anyone, to joining a group and sharing each time something happened because I knew that there was someone praying for me!
I say that to say this…. You will come face to face with adversity and even the devil himself feeling alone, feeling like there’s no way out, feeling as though nothing else can go wrong and then it does and then you start questioning why. It’s in that moment God wants us to surrender it ALL to Him! He wants to take those burdens and weight that easily bests us and carry it for us. He will surround us with people that will turn our lives around for the better without us even realizing it. He will then give us this peace that we can’t even explain. Then, your friends will start saying through all that you have been through how are you doing it? How are you ok? My answer to that question, it’s not me… it’s honestly God. I could never have made it without the power of prayer and friends who will speak life to you and walk out these hard times with you!
Find you a group, find you a friend, turn your ME into WE and add God in the mix and watch how those bad days turn to good, that stress turn to rest!
Isaiah 43:1-7 Message Version
“But now, GOD ’s Message, the God who made you in the first place, Jacob, the One who got you started, Israel: “Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you. When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down. When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end— Because I am GOD, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior. I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in! That’s how much you mean to me! That’s how much I love you! I’d sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you.” ““So don’t be afraid: I’m with you. I’ll round up all your scattered children, pull them in from east and west. I’ll send orders north and south: ‘Send them back. Return my sons from distant lands, my daughters from faraway places. I want them back, every last one who bears my name, every man, woman, and child Whom I created for my glory, yes, personally formed and made each one.’””
