It’s been four years since I last talked to God.
It’s been four years since I last had a relationship with God.
So if you told me last year that I would be spending my 21st birthday in the Amazon rainforest with 13 people I don’t know, doing ministry work, I would have laughed in your face.
I spent four years filling my body with cheap, materialistic imitations. Trading a healthy body and mind for meaningless affection and a meaningless high I was a slave to the pleasures of instant gratification. Always chasing the easiest physical, mental, and emotional way to feel happy and whole. If truth is light then I lived in the dark, I was safe there to hide with my lies. Free from judgement, shame, and condemnation. I was an empty, heartless, shell of a person.
I knew something needed to change so I came home from college to focus only on work and school. And suddenly I became obsessed with getting out. Out of my past, out of my
present and on to my future. I found this trip pretty quickly but scoffed at the idea of a sinner like me going on such a trip….I signed up anyways, and here I am.
The first two weeks of this trip were a huge slap in the face. Here were all these people with different experiences and God hasn’t abandoned them! How come when I pray all I hear is deafening silence? How come when I worship all I hear is my voice singing the praises of a God that isn’t even listening?
And then we talked about forgiveness. How it’s often discussed but rarely practiced. How it can set you free.
And I didn’t have this huge spiritual awakening. I didn’t hear Gods voice in my head. But He showed me the past four years of my life. On a trail in the Santa Cruz mountains. Yellow everywhere. Yellow paints the sky, yellow coats the ground. Im dancing in my racing uniform with Him. Fast forward and I’m getting my first set of sorority letters. I’m still on that trail with God but I’m distracted, my vision is blurry. Fast forward again and I’m stumbling down this trail in my formal dress, filling my body and mind with useless substances. He is still there but I can’t see Him reaching for me. Fast forward one last time and I’m sweaty, dirty, enough grease in my hair to rival a can of crisco. But this time we are dancing together again.
It’s like God had to SHOW me that He never abandoned me, He was with me the whole time if I had just reached out for him. I was never condemned, I was just lost.
His forgiveness in my life allows me to forgive all the people who labeled me in the past. Because it doesn’t matter anymore what my ex boyfriend thinks of me. It doesn’t matter what my family thought about me or how my friends define me.
It only matter what God thinks of me. And in that I can forgive myself. Who I am is not what I’ve done.
So it’s my 21st birthday and I’m in the Amazon with 13 people I’ve just met 3 weeks ago. Not where I pictured I would be on this particular day, but I know it’s where I belong.
