Jonah’s God Moment
For me, my “God moment” happened at 22 years old, post love, post breakup.
I was a Christian girl, born in a Christian church, with Christian friends in a Christian home with my Christian family. This meant I knew of God. I knew He was a lot of things - my Savior, Healer, the One in whom I found my perfect peace. But to actually know Him and have a relationship with him I soon found out was very different than knowing of Him.
The boy and I broke up in May. I was devastated, empty, broken. I was left with a huge hole in my heart and told God to fix it. So I went about my days going through the break up I best knew how - crying, hanging out with friends, “rediscovering” myself.
But five months later, I made zero progress. I found myself in tears, angry with the God I thought I knew. I came crying to Him, questioning everything I grew up on.
If you are the God of love, then why am I so bitter?
If you are the God who protects, then why am I so hurt?
If you are the God of healing, then why am I still broken?
So there on my knees, in my tears he asked one pivotal question,
“ Are you ready to let me heal you?”
Heartcheck.
It wasn’t that God didn’t love me, but rather that I didn’t let Him in. God is not an intrusive God. He won’t touch anything we don’t allow Him to. And that goes for our salvation, decisions, and heart. He longs for us so badly, but He also loves us so much that He wouldn’t change a thing if we don’t allow him to.
I had to face the hard truth that if I let God heal me, then I would finally have to let go of the boy. My heart clung to the familiarity of who he was. The purpose I found in my relationship with him. The comfort I found in the identity as his girlfriend.
Truthfully, I was scared to let go. I was fearful to leave the comfort of what I knew in the relationship. But God took me in along with my doubts and fears and on October 1, 2018, I said, “okay Lord, I’m tired and I don’t know what else to do. Let this life be yours.”
It wasn’t an overnight answer to a healed heart. Nor was it an easy choice to say yes to God. But each day I let God in, I was always met with a love that never fails.
I found everything I had been longing for. I found someone that loved me in a way that I didn’t know that I needed.
I was the girl who had completely forgotten who her God was. Who he created her to be. What she was called to do. I was a girl who gave her everything to the boy and was convinced that she was nothing without him. I was a girl who compromised boundary after boundary to try and prove she was worthy of love. I was a girl who put her worth in the love she received. I was a girl who convinced herself that her calling was to make this one person stay, and if I did, I achieved my purpose.
But my God rescued me from my death. My God caught me at the end of myself, in a place that everything in me believed was dead. My God took me by the hand and told me “little one, I say to you arise” because He was not done with me yet.
And so with Him I began again, known, healed, restored, and called me to something bigger than just me.