Nearly every Sunday for ten years of my life I sat in sturdy metal chairs with red padding that spread across the worship center of Independent Bible Church. I watched body after body dunk below the surface of the still hot tub water and raise to walk in newness of life. I listened to heart wrenching stories of salvation from the pits of despair, the depths of depression, from walking alone in a destitute life.
I knew it was expected of me to profess my faith for the deity that had been introduced to me at a young age, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The inevitable question was posed at the end of every teary eyed ceremony. “When is it your turn?”
On paper I had all the criteria. I understood the gospel, I could recite scripture at the drop of a hat, I participated in Bible studies and youth groups and missions trips.
I believed in God.
The problem being, God was not MY god.
I was.
For years, I followed my own path, walked my own walk. It led me into the hands of depression. The kind of sadness that doesn’t dissipate with a hug or disappear when your favorite song comes on the radio. The kind of sadness that cripples you, shatters you, leaves you an empty shell of yourself. I fell further and further away from God until I landed in the hands of addiction.
They say that left untreated, an addict is destined for jails, institutions, or death. It was within the white walls of a psychiatric hospital that I met this fate.
I had traded my padded red chairs for stiff blue ones that were intentionally too heavy to lift and use as weapons. Ground to the floor in a room full of people who had lost their grounding. I was hopeless. I was alone.
Living in a perpetual state of rock bottom. Lying, stealing, manipulating my way through life. Grasping for anything and everything on a chase to feel better.
It became a cycle. Drugs and drinks and sea salt tears. Bruised knuckles and bitten cuticles, quiet signs of suffering.
Alone.
There was no flash of lightning that brought me to my knees, crying out a desperate prayer. My salvation more closely resembled the eye of the storm gradually rolling away as I was reintroduced to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It was an agglomeration of deep conversations and mornings on the porch watching the sun rise, evenings of deep sleep and afternoons on the beach watching the tide roll in. Admiring God’s beautiful creation of life.
It dawned on me at no particular point in time that I cannot do this on my own. That I was created with a purpose and that my own path will never lead me there.
I need God, desperately. I need his presence and his grace. I need His hand to hold as we walk together through the complicated mess I’ve made. I need His guidance.
I’ve known God my whole life. But for the first time, I am putting my trust in Him.
God is my God.