A burst of thunder and a flash of lightening sent my four-year old running into our bedroom shouting, “Mommy, Mommy, I’m scared!” Half awake and half unconscious, I hugged him and replied, “It is okay, Dakota. It’s just a storm. Go to your room and go back to sleep. God will be there with you.” He turned and slowly walked back toward the door. Suddenly he hesitated. His small figure stood in the unlit doorway for a moment and then said softly, “Mommy, I’ll sleep in here with Daddy. You go in there and sleep with God.”
One of the most common human experiences is that of feeling alone and isolated from others. My son, frightened by the storm, needed reassurance but had little faith. Psalm 23 also pictures someone in need, but this someone has faith in God. Let me remind you of a few of those verses. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” Now listen to the reverse of this, so that you may get a picture of what life is without faith, without God.
There is no God. I am utterly alone and on my own. I am filled with desire for things I cannot or should not have. Even when I try to resist, I cannot. My mind races. I worry about what other people think of me, how I can get what I want, and how others will get what they deserve. I have to make my own way in this world and lookout for myself, because no one else is going to do it for me. If I’m going to be somebody important, I have to do it on my own. When I am in the valley of hard time, I have no one to turn to. I am at the mercy of evil and temptation. I cannot control anything, and I feel everyone is against me.
That sounds pretty negative, doesn’t it? Well, many people in this world feel or have felt this way. Have you ever felt alone, isolated, or unloved? Do you ever feel as if no one cares about you? Rest assured. You are only human.
When I was a little girl, I was an only child and very lonely. I was spoiled by my grandparents with material things but was rarely taught about the unconditional love of God. On the inside I was full of fear and always feeling like I did not belong anywhere. By the time I was 14 years old, I was extremely depressed. Because I knew no other way to numb my feelings, I turned to alcohol, and later drugs, to console myself. On weekends, after my parents would go to bed, I would sneak into my dad’s liquor cabinet and pour myself a full cup of bourbon. I would take it to my bedroom and drink it as I sat there in candlelight, listening to music and writing stories and poems about how sad life was. There I wondered about God. I believed He existed and longed for His presence in my life. I didn’t understand that at the time. I just knew I had a hole in my soul. I felt like I was totally on my own and that no one truly cared about me. I felt like the world was against me. I didn’t have Psalm 23 to comfort me. In fact, I felt just the opposite. Where do these feelings of isolation come from? There are three major sources of isolation: Falling, failing, and feeling rejected.
Falling means doing something that embarrasses or humiliates you. Whether it is true or not , you assume everyone else’s opinion of you has fallen. You feel separated from certain people and you do not know how to fix it. Failing means not measuring up to your or others’ expectations of you in some way. You may feel you have disappointed your parents, or even God, by something you did or said. As a result, you feel disappointed in yourself and guilty. And you do not know how to fix it. Feeling rejected means not being accepted by classmates or peers. You may feel rejected when you are not included, when overlooked, or when someone doesn’t respond the way you had hoped. In some situations, you really may have been rejected because you are different or because of your convictions. As a result, you experience isolation.
Isolation can make us feel, think, or do things differently. We start feeling that no one cares about us. Because we do not think they care, we may build up a wall to protect ourselves. If we can protect ourselves from what others think, what others say about us, or what others try to do to us, we think we cannot fall, fail, or be rejected. And now because of this wall, we begin to feel worthless. We begin to transfer our feelings about ourselves to others by thinking, “Nobody likes me,” or “Everyone must feel the same way about me as I feel about myself.” We also start transferring our feelings onto God by thinking things like, “I guess I am just meant to be unhappy,” or “Maybe God is punishing me for something I did.” So, what do we do to break down the wall and shatter the isolation? The answer is faith! It sounds really easy and it can be. All you have to do is believe. Believe God doesn’t make junk. Until I believed I was worthy in God’s eyes, I felt helpless and hopeless.
For the next 14 years, I turned my life over to alcoholism and drug addiction. That became my god. It is only by God’s grace that I landed in a treatment center and, through a 12-step program, was introduced to a God of my own understanding. Several years later, I was baptized and introduced to Jesus Christ, my miracle. It was a slow process but all along I had faith in something bigger than me. I knew there had to be more to life than what I was experiencing. I vowed at a very young age, not really understanding what I was doing, to break the cycle in my family of alcoholism. Before I knew what was going on, I was in the middle of the storm myself. But I believe God heard me that day and brought me through what I had to go through to do his will in my life. Today He gives me strength according to my faith in Him. When I trust in Him to take care of me, He never lets me down. When I am doubtful, He shows me the hard way. Sometimes, however, He simply knows I need a miracle.
Faith, you see, is a sense of God’s presence, an awareness that there is more to life than what we can see, touch, hear, or smell. It is confidence that God is good and can be trusted. It is in trusting that God will give us what we need to grow in His purpose for our lives. It has taken me a long time to completely trust God to give me all that I need. Sometimes I still give things to Him and then take them back. I try to remember a poem I once read in a bookstore called, “Let Go and Let God.”
As children bring their broken toys, with tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God, because He is my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him in peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help, with ways that were my own.
As last, I snatched them back again and cried, “How can you be so slow?”
“My child,” He said, “what could I do? You never did let go.”
Faith means letting go and letting God. Faith in God removes the need for protective walls we build between ourselves and others. We do not need those walls when we can trust God. Jesus challenged his disciples to let go of the things that would hold them back and to follow him into a new life in God’s love. Jesus calls us to do the same. What is your choice? Will you let go and let Jesus lead you?
The week I came home from the hospital after having my first son, my mother came and stayed with me. Although we were never really close, it was actually a good bonding time for us. However, she gave me some disturbing yet intriguing news about her past. She told me that eleven months before I was born she gave a baby girl up for adoption. In essence, I had a half-sister. I was excited and bewildered at the same time. For years I encouraged her, even begged her at times, to try and find my sister. She always promised but was very hesitant. My grandmother told me to leave it alone. I became bitter about the whole situation, but faith is like a strong rope that connects us with God. When we are stuck in the storms of our own feelings of isolation, rejection, or fear, we have this rope of faith by which God saves us. I am learning that He always gives us what we need when we need it, not necessarily what we want when we want it.
Slowly, over the years, I was able to completely turn the whole situation over to God. I felt deep in my heart that it was God’s will for me to one day know my sister; in His time and not mine. I had to remind myself of Matthew 17:20 when Jesus says that if we have faith, real faith, it only takes a small amount to make a big difference. When I began to fully accept this, I simply prayed about it and put it in His hands.
On Wednesday, April 18, 2002, around 9:30 pm, my husband and I were lying in bed talking. The phone rang. As he answered it, I thought to myself, “Who could that be at this hour?” He handed me the phone and said it was some girl for me. I said hello and immediately heard a familiar voice but could not place it. She asked me if I had talked to my mother that night, and I said I had not and asked her if I was supposed to. My first thought was that something had happened to my mother and it was not good. I was not panicked, as I usually would have been in a moment of fear. I felt calm about me as if someone I loved was wrapping their arms around me in sheer comfort. She proceeded to tell me that her name was Lynda and she was my sister. She had hired a private investigator to find her birth mother. She called my mom earlier that evening and my mother gave her my phone number. She presently lives less than 30 miles from me.
It was the oddest feeling. I was filled with excitement but more than anything, I was filled with love, comfort, and joy. Hebrews 11:1 tell us that “Faith is being aware of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I had believed and God had delivered, just like that. Over the course of our conversation, I learned that this was truly one of the best gifts God had ever given me. Not only do I have a sister, but we are so much alike it is unbelievable. For the first time in my life I felt a connection like no other. I discovered we actually went to school together for most of our lives. I remember her but never knew her. She rode my bus home from school in junior high. We have a lot of the same friends. She lived about two blocks from me for years. She even went to the same church my mother’s family went to. She remembers some of them and especially knew my cousins. My mother always thought she lived one state over where she had been adopted. Lynda has had similar, if not identical, problems with drugs and alcohol. God has blessed us both through our storms, and it all started with a little bit of faith.
In the 12-step program that both Lynda and I now belong to, my favorite saying has always been, “Let go and let God.” Letting go means breaking down the walls and reaching out to God with an armful of burdens. It does not mean giving up or quitting. It means simply surrendering those things that you have no control over. Letting God means to hand God the burdens and do with them as He sees fit. Oprah said it very eloquently in her magazine a few months ago: “If you are willing to give up your attachment to expectation, you will be rewarded with a life much grander than the one you’ve been reluctant to release.” I have realized that God’s love enables us to let go of things that prevent us from realizing our full potential and purpose as His daughters. In Matthew 16:24, Christ calls us to die to the things that get in the way of His love. Are you ready to die to those things that are separating you from God?
In closing, faith is letting God shape our lives in such a way that we become the unique creations He intended. That means reaching out to our Creator from behind our walls; stepping out of our comfort zone into God’s design for our lives and letting Jesus Christ show us the way.
These days I enjoy listening to music that is spiritually uplifting and writing things that inspire and encourage others. I have just given you a sample of my most recent writing, and now I’d like to give you a sample of one of my favorite songs that couldn’t fit this talk or my life today any more perfectly. It is called “When I Let It Go,” by Sierra.
This time I’ve got to trust You
I’ve got to accept Your plan
I have tried to guide my circumstance
But there’s just no way I can
When will I learn this lesson
Your ways are not like mine
Lord, help me to surrender
The control I try to have on my life
When I let it go
You take my hand and gently lead me
Then You let me know
Just how peaceful my life can be
When I let it go
Your never-ending blessings
Like a river start to flow
When I let it go
Too many times I’m searching
For the things I think I need
When I try to look for more
I always seem to give You less of me
Lord, help me gain this wisdom
My foolish mind still lacks
‘Til I find a way to let go
Of the part of me I’m holding back
Now I would like to challenge each of you today to always expect a miracle. The next time Satan comes knocking on your door, simply say, “Jesus, would you get that for me?”
Fly with Christ!
passionwolfcreative 