It's my last day of Spring Break. Youth Convention was absolutely amazing, mind-blowing, convicting, life-changing, challenging, all that jazz.
I laughed. I cried. I lost my voice. I challenged myself to do hard stuff. God help me.
Sometimes you do things that God told you to do that you don't completely understand. Sometimes it's fun and easy and exciting, like maybe you make your commitment a little bit stronger by reading your Bible more or praying more often.
And other times, it hurts. You do it, and the pain doesn't hit you until maybe later. You don't realize how much it hurts until you're all alone. And suddenly you're asking yourself, "Uh, wow, what did I do?" You say, or scream, "God, I did not sign up for this. I know I'm doing what You told me to do, but I thought it wasn't going to hurt this bad. I didn't sign up for this kind of pain. I didn't sign up to feel like a punching bag. I thought I prepped for this. I thought You said You'd help me through this, where are You?" and you're crying yourself to sleep yet again wondering why you allowed yourself to start something in the first place when you knew that if God ever called upon you to give it up it'd hurt even worse.
I think it's kind of appropriate, since today (or, I guess now, yesterday) was Easter, for a little reminder. God's been there. He knows where you're at, what you're feeling. Don't forget, He did kinda come to Earth, humble Himself by robing Himself in human flesh and dwell among His creation as a servant. He was humiliated to the uttermost that a human can be humiliated, falsely accused, beaten within an inch of His life, forced to carry His own torture device up a hill while His own people insulted and screamed at Him, then nailed through His hands and His feet to a cross that had splinters and jagged edges of wood piercing the already bloody, bruised, torn up flesh of His back. He hung there for a few hours, slowly suffocating and succumbing to the agonizingly horrendous amount of pain that the people He'd come to reconcile to Himself had inflicted on Him.
And He endured all of this without raising a single protest.
Why? Because He was thinking of the future. He was seeing a kid about 13 or 14 years old, depressed to the point of attempting suicide who decided to see if maybe there was a God instead of ending his life. He was looking ahead to someone who looks like they got everything together when in reality they fall apart as soon as they're alone to when they'd finally find an altar of prayer and repentance and break before Him. He was looking ahead to you, to when you'd decide to turn to Him. He shed His precious blood to bridge the gap between you in your broken state to Heaven. He wanted to give you a connection to Him, and He wants you to know you're not alone. He didn't leave you. He knows exactly what pain you're going through. He made sure He would so that He could identify with you, so that you'd know just how much you're loved.
He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to feel the same pain we do as humans living in a jacked up world. And He didn't make it jacked up, you and I did with the choices we made. He just made a way so that we could have a different way to live. Life's not easy no matter what way you live, whether it's in the world or following God. But even when it's hard, if you have God you at least have the knowledge that you can get through it.
Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm overemotional. Maybe it really does hurt and there really is nobody I can really turn to except for God to help me through the painful transitions that I'm going through. The fire still burns, the surgeon's knife still hurts, but at least I know the God of the fire and the Healer behind the knife. He knows what we can handle.
Tears endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning, right? The nights we go through may be long and hard, but dawn's coming. Just hold on, man, dawn's coming. No matter how dark it gets, just hold on, dawn will come. Dawn will come.
Love you guys. God bless.
--Sonya
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