Tag Archive for: childhood

When it feels like God screwed you over.

/in ,

I’ve never been able to compartmentalize my feelings to one situation. If someone has wronged me it spills over into our entire relationship until I have properly dealt with it. But until I do, it affects everything. I don’t love that about myself, but I know it’s a part of who I am. It goes hand in hand with being empathetic and sensitive, always asking deep questions and needing the answers.

I know I need God. My head believes in a higher power that looks out for us in ways we can’t comprehend. I believe that there is good in every situation and that angels surround us, stroking our hair when we cry and as the world falls apart around us. But the God in my head and the one In my heart just aren’t the same.

I came to this conclusion a few weeks ago with the help of my therapist. I have been feeling distant from God, craving lots of space from the evangelical normalcies I had grown up with my whole life. I can’t connect to many of the things that the modern church stands for, and yet there’s so much I love as well. I’ve realized that there’s a divine being that I know that I need, one I’ve been searching for my whole life, and then there is the God I’ve been hearing about my whole life. And the two are not the same.

As I grow and gain life experience, I am not willing to pretend anymore. I will not accept answers that explain away doubt and fear. I will not settle for another bible verse to stick into every situation. I want way more than that.

But in order to get there, I know I have baggage to resolve with the God of my heart. My past is riddled with painful moments where I don’t believe with my heart God was present. Everything I have learned might tell me that of course, He was. But I’m not there. I’m not feeling it. I need to work through the junk standing in my way so that I can cling to the feet of Jesus once again and fully believe that He is with me as has been with me this whole time.

Denying that I feel this way won’t help me. Walking through life submitting to the beliefs of others won’t free me. This is my journey to a deeper relationship with God. A deeper knowledge of this higher power who I am sure is much less like the God of the modern church than many of us think.

Are you there? Are you desiring God but unable to fit yourself into the box He’s been put in? Do you need to know it’s okay to rearrange every piece of your faith? Tear it all down people, rebuild brick by brick. Take the time to figure out who God is. Learn to separate that from cultural Christianity and find freedom in the beauty of both. You are not alone. So many of us are doing it. A journey to die to our own selves, and to really be more like Jesus-not who others say He is, but who He actually is.

Happy Friday dear friends!

Thank You. Love, Me.

/in , , ,

I was 16 years old. Sitting alone in the middle of an international airport. I knew my dad would catch up to me soon. I’d just escaped a plane ride to a destination I greatly feared. I had every intention of bucking up, bravely enduring the trip and what was to come after, but in the end, the fear was too great, I had to get off. He had followed me, I know he had, grabbing our bags in the process. I knew I was in trouble.

I was ashamed, still afraid, trying to get control of a situation I had zero control over. You see just 24 hours earlier my parents had told me I’d be going to Georgia, to a therapeutic wilderness camp. I’d looked it up online, researched my fate, made peace with it. But as the hours passed, It felt too scary, I wanted to be brave, but I couldn’t.

Back at home after our first attempt to go, the fear overtook me. I sobbed, I self harmed, I screamed a million obscenities at everyone in my path. I was 16. Bigger than a child, but yet still a kid. And I was scared. Scared I would never make it through a wilderness camp, scared of what life looked like ahead of me, scared I would never live a life of peace and joy.

So much in my past that makes me cringe to remember, that causes tears to roll down my cheeks when I write about it. “Who even was she?”, I wonder aloud. “Thank God I’ve grown,” I commend myself, “I’ll just forget about it all, leave it in the past, cover it with this newer model of myself. One that is a little more mentally stable, more sure of herself, more socially acceptable”.

God, no I hope I never do that. I hope I never forget, never stop sharing, never stop thanking little me for everything that has come before now. I’ve been fighting since I was a teeny little thing. Fighting for a better life, for hope that I knew deep down existed. Battling mental illness, and traumas that rocked my little epathetic self. How brave I have been. How dedicated to my future, to the real me that lives deep down inside, to exposing the mess and embracing the truth. So brave.

It’s so much easier to blame the past isn’t? Or to mourn everything that the past could have been had we only done something different. But we didn’t. We have done the very best we’ve ever been able to do in order to survive. The “me” we are today has everything to do with all that came before, the person we’ve been, the choices we’ve made. We are they and they are us.

I’ve been brave. I’ve been strong. All that I am has brought me to this place.

Thank You. Love, me.

? Marisa Kinney photography


I’ll leave you with this, my friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Y_YiZp6gM

“I am the Lord your God, I go before you now
I stand beside you, I’m all around you
Though you feel I’m far away,
I’m closer than your breath
I am with you, more than you know”

When it feels like God screwed you over.

/in ,

I’ve never been able to compartmentalize my feelings to one situation. If someone has wronged me it spills over into our entire relationship until I have properly dealt with it. But until I do, it affects everything. I don’t love that about myself, but I know it’s a part of who I am. It goes hand in hand with being empathetic and sensitive, always asking deep questions and needing the answers.

I know I need God. My head believes in a higher power that looks out for us in ways we can’t comprehend. I believe that there is good in every situation and that angels surround us, stroking our hair when we cry and as the world falls apart around us. But the God in my head and the one In my heart just aren’t the same.

I came to this conclusion a few weeks ago with the help of my therapist. I have been feeling distant from God, craving lots of space from the evangelical normalcies I had grown up with my whole life. I can’t connect to many of the things that the modern church stands for, and yet there’s so much I love as well. Ive realized that there’s a divine being that I know that I need, one I’ve been searching for my whole life, and then there is the God I’ve been hearing about my whole life. And the two are not the same.

As I grow and gain life experience, I am not willing to pretend anymore. I will not accept answers that explain away doubt and fear. I will not settle for another bible verse to stick into every situation. I want way more than that.

But in order to get there, I know I have baggage to resolve with the God of my heart. My past is riddled with painful moments where I don’t believe with my heart God was present. Everything I have learned might tell me that of course He was. But I’m not there. I’m not feeling it. I need to work through the junk standing in my way so that I can cling to the feet of Jesus once again and fully believe that He is with me as has been with me this whole time.

Denying that I feel this way won’t help me. Walking through life submitting to the beliefs of others won’t free me. This is my journey to a deeper relationship with God. A deeper knowing of this higher power who I am sure is much less like the God of the modern church than many of us think.

Are you there? Are you desiring God but unable to fit yourself into the box He’s been put in? Do you need to know it’s okay to rearrange every piece of your faith? Tear it all down people, rebuild brick by brick. Take the time to figure out who God is. Learn to separate that from cultural Christianity and find freedom in the beauty of both. You are not alone. So many of us are doing it. A journey to die to our own selves, and to really be more like Jesus-not who others say He is, but who He actually is.

Happy Tuesday dear friends!