installment 8: god in all things

from kairos

There are a lot of people in my life who I look at & can’t help but think, “how did I ever live without you?”

& I feel the same way about my friend God

Above everything, I am grateful I got to know God. He’s introduced me to so many beautiful people, incredible places, & continuously makes lasting imprints on my heart. He is my best friend, my best influence, & always reminds me that life is so good, even when it doesn’t feel like it. He’s the friend that holds me extra tight when I’m upset & whispers in my ear that it’s okay to be sad, but it’s going to get better. It always gets better. God has given me boundless grace, security in myself, & a whole lot of love

I still have moments where I struggle, but God’s always fighting with me. I trust Him & His plan for me, I know He has my best interest at heart always. Our relationship grows, evolves, & changes, but at the end of the day, God’s friendship has resulted in an absolute wild ride I would not give up for the world

God’s friendship, for me, is all love.

unconventional gifts that keep on giving

When I was in Guyana back in March of 2018, I had my lowest low as a Christian I’ve had so far in my life. It all started when I was riding in the bed of a truck while we were driving to a small community called Karasabai. We drove over a pothole, & since I was sitting in the bed of a truck with no seatbelt, I flew into the air & subsequently landed on my lower back (my coccyx, literally my butt bone).

I was immediately overwhelmed with pain. Riding in the bed of the truck was easily one of my favorite things about Guyana so far, but it was taken away from me. While I tried to move on & not make a big deal about anything, the pain was engulfing me. My comfort was stripped. I found myself placed in the front seat with the seat flattened as much as possible, unable to sit-down normally, & with pain shooting through my lower back into the rest of my back & legs. I felt awful; physically & emotionally. There are not many hurdles like physical pain.

After the incident, I started to get selfish. I was hurt, so I felt like I deserved special treatment & I wanted everyone around me to ask me how I was doing because I felt like I deserved to complain. I wanted everyone to know how much pain I was in; I stopped being intentional with my words & stopped considering others when making decisions. I was angry & sad, feeling like a victim of the world & a victim of my surroundings. The community we were visiting in Karasabai was beautiful, but I spent a lot of my energy thinking about my pain instead of spending time with the locals I was there to meet. I wasn’t engaging with the children, I was focused on myself. I was being, for lack of a better word, a complete butthead.

Feeling alone, I started praying to God that He would reveal Himself to me. I kept trying to find Him, but I felt nothing but pain. I’ve always found God in the sky, but that night I stared at the stars & felt nothing. I couldn’t stop thinking about what my life would become if God had abandoned me or if I wasn't Christian anymore. Those thoughts alone were terrifying & I could not stop crying. I kept praying harder & harder but still felt nothing from Him. Everywhere I looked I was desperate to feel something other than pain, but I couldn’t. I felt like I was being stabbed. During our reflection that night our focus was gratitude. I love practicing gratitude—appreciating good things & thanking God for them is at the very center of my life. I sat in the circle with my fellow group members, desperately trying to be grateful for my life, but couldn’t. No part of me felt grateful. I remember actively thinking I was a failure, my education was worthless, I was a disappointment, & that I was cared for by no one. I had tears streaming down my face for two hours & could barely breathe. After the reflection, one of the student leaders tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t get any words out. I just wanted God to come back. I wanted Him to talk to me & I wanted to feel Him again. I wanted to look at the stars & get overwhelmed with waves of reckless love like I usually did. I wanted the random circumstances that are too good to be true. I wanted the happiness that I felt at mass again. I kept begging God to reveal Himself to me, to give me a sign, but I didn’t get one. I knew that God was in the depth of the heart, but the darkness was extinguishing His presence. I thought God left me.

I fell asleep in my hammock that night still crying & woke up exhausted. My head was pounding & my eyes were swollen. I looked at my HydroFlask's G>ΛV (God is greater than the highs & lows) stickers & felt abandoned. One of our group members, a Jesuit, led mass & I held back tears. I kept looking for God. I tried not to talk to anyone, I couldn’t communicate without my voice wavering & I was desperately trying to move on. I kept feeling like I was disappointing everyone around me, that I was bringing them down. I felt alone. I played with a kitten, tried to feel something positive, & kept hoping it would get better. One of the staff leaders asked me how I was & I broke down again. I told him I felt empty. This was a new low. And on top of all of that, my entire body was still in a lot of pain.

I remember these moments very clearly. I remember what the sky looked like, I remember who I sat next to in mass, & I remember the pattern of the hammock I slept in. I remember feeling like I needed to come to terms with a life without God, getting into another car accident, & crying on the plane back to Los Angeles. I remember getting back to my suite at LMU, still being in pain two weeks later, & having to take a pillow with me to my classes because I still could barely sit right. I remember it all.

At the time, I tried to make sense of getting hurt, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure why my pain was so overwhelming, why God would lead me to feel so empty. I kept looking back on those moments & figured God & I just had a little rough patch. I was confused, but I wanted to forget about it.

However, over two years later, I view these moments much differently now.

Pain is so weird. Feeling broken is super isolating & scary. I stand by everything I ever felt those days, but I am really grounded by the fact my feelings were never “wow, why did God do this to me, I don’t deserve this, God is mean” or “God's not real”. I’ve been an atheist before, I know exactly how it goes. Instead, every part of me was begging God to come back. That was it. My faith was being tested, but it was not breaking. I was just longing for the connection I had felt so deeply the days & months before. While I felt like God's love for me had been extinguished, my love for Him, on the contrary, was actually just intensified & I became more overwhelmed by, more grateful for, & more infatuated with it when I felt connected to my Christianity again (which didn’t take long). I felt completely broken, but it was in these moments I discovered the strength of my faith. This was when I knew, for a fact, how much I loved & love God. Those broken moments were an unconventional gift I didn’t know I needed. I didn’t realize how important God had become to me.

After I bruised my coccyx, everyone stopped riding in the bed of the truck because we realized it wasn’t as safe as we wanted it to be & we ended up getting into a car accident. & while thinking about that accident still shakes me to my core, if I hadn’t gotten hurt the day before, odds are someone would’ve been in the bed of the truck & things would’ve been much, much worse. God knows I would gladly re-break my butt & have to take a pillow with me everywhere I go for three weeks any day before allowing any of my friends to get hurt. God knows me.