Have you ever had a situation that straight up just hit you in the face? Something that seemed to have come out of nowhere and just knocked the wind out of you and put you on your back? One day, you’re following Jesus and relying on Him and life is going great. And then, something unexpected and even terrifying happens and suddenly the fear of the future absolutely overtakes you?

I’m pretty familiar with this feeling. To the Lord’s credit, He has done a pretty incredible job of teaching me how to bounce back from these blows and major attacks over the years. For 23 years, He’s done nothing but show His faithfulness in the valleys of my life where fear has tried to grip me and keep me down...

But what happens in those moments when the attack feels too big? When our hearts feel too broken? The assault feels too overwhelming? The disappointment and the anger feel too heavy?

What happens when our foundation feels shaken… and the thought of standing back up feels like a weight that’s too heavy to bear?

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I look back at 2019 and think of 2 words that describe the year for me personally.

“Healing” and “Struggling”

This year has been so hard honestly. After years of entertaining bad coping habits and noticing unhealthy patterns in my life, as well as un-dealt with trauma, I decided that for myself, my future husband and family, and my future in general that I would dedicate the year, almost 2 now actually, to walking in the freedom that the Lord has provided for you and me. I did this by making room, time, and accepting resources to help me address everything I had been running from for years. I finally realized that by running from my pain I was actually giving satan power over everything I was running from. That by not dealing with my pain or issues, I was allowing him to keep me in bondage with all of the things I refused to trust the Lord with or believe He would give me the strength, comfort, and power to walk through.

As I’ve looked back and addressed things from the past, I’ve realized that in these 2 years, I’ve essentially been dealing with 23 years of trauma for the very first time and almost all at once. It has been SO healthy, and I can’t even begin to describe to you the leaps and bounds the Lord has taken me to in my healing, as well as my communication, relational, and coping skills. But even though it has been the best thing that could happen to me, it has also been an absolute nightmare.

Every blow and every attack over the years has felt like it’s hit me back to back to back over a 2 year period on top of dealing with the guilt, pain, and shame of the ways I coped with my pain in the past. Any time I’ve felt like I’ve had healing and any sort of progress, it’s felt like doubt and fear immediately follow as I address the next chain that I had given satan the keys to that has kept me in bondage for so long.

I have struggled…

…to have faith, to stay hopeful, to believe that God is good, to not let fear overtake me, to persevere, to pour into people, to trust in the Lord, to keep going, to get out of bed some days, to believe God is bigger and stronger than my pain and my circumstances..

..and honestly to continue to believe that I’m worthy of the love the Lord freely gives after taking a hard look at every. single. thing. I’ve had to own up to and ask forgiveness for. Every single sin that I partook in the midst of my desperation and pain that I would much rather just not address and pretend never happened. It has been a struggle.

I know that some of you are struggling.

I know that satan has convinced many of you that your struggle has made you unworthy or less than, especially in the Kingdom of God. I know that some of you feel like your walk with the Lord looks more like a limp right now. I know that satan has shown many of you pictures of where your faith used to be and you feel shame over the season of faith that you’re in now. I know that satan has been beating some of you down with fear. I know He’s convinced some of you to play it safe with your lives and your relationships, to put up walls with the Lord and others to keep you from ever experiencing the pain you’re all too familiar with ever again.

I know some of you are struggling daily. I know I am.

I’d be lying to you if I said that every time I walked into a room and felt a man look at me, I didn’t wonder if he was thinking about doing the same things to me as the man did hours before assaulting me. I’d be lying if I said that for the first month of dating anyone new, that I didn’t cry after every date because deep down I know I’m absolutely terrified to fall for someone again and it’s hard for me to delight in the thought of someone having that emotional power over my life again. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have many moments within these 2 years where I questioned the Lord’s goodness and wondered if He was who He said He was. I’d be lying if I said that every time the Lord brought another issue or stronghold into the light for me to deal with that I didn’t immediately want to sprint to anything and everything that was not the Lord in order to numb myself to the pain, emotions, and trauma that each of those things brought with it.

I’ve struggled… and for awhile I thought this was a bad thing.

I am so undeserving yet thankful for the Lord’s faithfulness as He has consistently reminded me what our struggle really means when it comes to our faith.

When you look up the word “struggle” in the dictionary, you will find these definitions:

1. strive to achieve or attain something in the face of difficulty or resistance.

2. engage in conflict.

3. have difficulty handling or coping with.

4. make forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction.

Over the last couple of months especially, the Lord has shown me something that’s become very valuable to me and that is this:

It’s OK to struggle.

It’s ok to not fully understand, to make mistakes, to fall, to doubt, to miss the mark.

Our struggle doesn’t disqualify us as followers of Jesus. Our struggle doesn’t mean that our faith isn’t strong enough and that we don’t love the Lord enough. Our struggle means that we’re fighting. It means that even though we’ve been hit, the hit isn’t going to keep us down forever. It isn’t going to stop us from moving forward. Sometimes our “moving forward” looks more like a hop, a limp, or honestly a straight-up crawl… but our struggle, no matter what it looks like, means that in the midst of our pain, uncertainty, and heartbreak, we’re still fighting instead of rolling over in defeat. It means we’re stilling holding on to the Lord and saying,

“Lord, fear and doubt are surrounding me right now.. it’s overwhelming me right now and I can’t see the hope at the end of this.. but I choose to trust You. I’m doing my absolute best to hold on to Your promises. I may not have much strength left.. but I choose to keep moving forward because I know You’re right here with me. I may not feel you, I may not see you moving in my life right now but I will keep moving until I do. I will keep praising until I see Your glory revealed here. I will keep pressing on, no matter how faint the attempt. I don’t have much to give you right now but what I do have, I give to you and I commit the strength I have left to drawing closer to you.”

Struggle doesn’t mean we’ve lost our faith. Struggle means we’re pushing back against satan instead of letting him steamroll over us. Struggle means we’re holding on to God and everything He’s promised us even when our circumstances and pain seem like they’re too overwhelming to overcome or too big to not to destroy our future.

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These last 2 years of struggle have been so much more rewarding and fruitful than most. It’s taken me back to a place where I’ve seen the Lord’s power be made perfect in my absolute weakness because by only having Him to rely on, I’ve seen that although I am weak, I am made strong as I cling to Christ. Although it may feel like a weak attempt, my attempt to fight is saying, “Lord, I trust you with this, and although I’m afraid in this moment, although I have fear, fear will not have me. My circumstances, my pain, my sickness, my heartbreak, my trauma, my sin, my shame, my doubt, my failure.. it will not have the last word.”

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” - 2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

Don’t be ashamed of your struggle. And don’t let satan convince you otherwise.

Bob Goff said this once and I love this reminder.

“God does not grimace at our failures, but delights in our attempts.”

The Lord delights in our struggle. He delights in our attempts because it means we’re attempting to choose Him, to obey Him. Don’t underestimate the Lord’s power and ability to use your struggle to direct you to the freedom and incredible glory He’s called you to.

I’m praying this week, this month, this year, that in our struggle, we would not look at the world around us for the strength and comfort that we need, but instead we’ll look up and find this in the Lord alone. I pray that we no longer look at our struggle with shame but instead with confidence as we recognize where our help comes from and that in this season, the Lord is making a new way!

“See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.”

-Isaiah 43:19

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This next part may be for some of you.

This also might be the place where some of you are good to stop reading.

Some of you out there reading this aren’t quite in the position to struggle right now because if we’re being honest.. life hit and it hit HARD and you’ve spent the last few days, months, even years.. running. Running to anything and everything to numb the pain or discomfort of your situation. What was supposed to be a moment of running ended up turning into a lifestyle of running. Mostly because in those moments where you stopped running and faced reality, you looked around at your situation and who you were becoming and either felt too much shame to go to the Lord or the combination of it all just felt like it was going to break you.. so you just kept running and running and running - anything to avoid addressing the pain being caused by your situation and honestly.. even yourself.

So you keep diving deeper, and running to things more extreme than before. And it works for a little while. It takes away the pain for a moment. But when it ends (because it always does.. nothing but the Lord can fully and eternally ease that pain), you feel even worse than you did before. So you keep running farther away from the Lord to places that harm you more than you could’ve ever imagined. But what else can you do when you feel like you failed so miserably and are so overwhelmed with pain that you don’t feel like you can even go to the Lord anymore?

If you are reading my words right now and feel like you relate.. I just have one question I want to ask you. I ask this with absolutely no undertones of judgement or shame or anything like it because I know this feeling. I have been here and know it all too well. I have run to some of these places before. And because of this, I just want to ask you:

Are you happy?

Do me a favor and take a moment to ask yourself if you’re really happy. Take a look at your life and ask yourself if you recognize who you are. If you feel fulfilled. Ask yourself if you love yourself. If you truly love you. Ask yourself the last time you opened up your bible. Ask yourself the last time you’ve let the Lord define you instead of the rest of the things going on in your life.

Some of you are exhausted. Some of your are in overwhelming pain. Some of you have shame and insecurity that feels too much to bear. Some of you are honestly just angry at God.

Whatever it is, I ask you in this moment to take a look at your life right now and be honest with yourself. And if the answer is no, if you’re not happy, I just want to challenge you to take a moment to try something else. Instead of running to all of these other things, I challenge you to go somewhere quiet, shut the door, and talk to the Lord today.

Forget the doubts or insecurities that have kept you from doing so and just talk to Him. Even if you’re mad at Him, tell Him! He already knows! Approach the throne of Grace. Because guys, the Throne of Grace… it’s not one like the devil wants you to believe it is. It’s not one of shame and condemnation and fear… it’s one of a friend, a father kneeling down with His arms wide open saying, “Son and daughter, I love you. I’m here. I am so sorry about what you’re going through. You didn’t know this but I have sat with you, I have cried with you, I have hurt with you even when you didn’t open up your heart to me. Do life with me… let me make everything new. Forget everything you’ve done, I don’t care, I love you exactly where you are right now in this moment.. Stop running and let me hold you in this moment and give you the rest that you haven’t had in so long. Let me carry this so you don’t have to. Child, give me your pain, let me take it so that you can heal. Let me take care of you for a change.”

Jesus chose the cross in order to bear the burden of our sins so that we could walk in forgiveness and so we could be so incredibly close to Him.

He saw every place we would run. He saw every sinful act we would make. He even saw all of those things you’ve hidden away that you’ve never told anyone and He said, “That is my beautiful son and daughter and I choose them.” Jesus endured the cross so that He could be right there with us in the trenches, in the pain, in the hills and in the valleys of the shadow of death. He made a way so that there could be no wall and no barrier keeping us from being close to Him and being in a relationship with Him.

Don’t let that go to waste.

Don’t let defeat and discouragement have the final say in your life. The Lord has SO much more for you.

I challenge you to run to the Lord today. I challenge you to put down this wall that you think is protecting you, and let Him in for a moment.. and watch what He can do in your life.

He’s for you, not against you. Never forget that.

I love you guys.

-syd

Anyone who has made it to this point, Lord, I ask that in this moment you would break down any walls or barriers, that anything keeping your child from you would fall to the ground in the name of Jesus. I rebuke any attack or assignment of the enemy on this person’s life in the name of Jesus and I ask that in this moment your Holy Spirit would surround them, that faith would rise up in this place and that you would pour out Your Spirit and peace over every individual reading this blog right now. Lord I ask that our faith would rise up beyond any shouts of the enemy, that Your love would reign louder than any insecurities or doubts in this moment and that a deep fire for You would ignite within us. I thank you that chains are breaking under the sound of my voice and that favor and rest would fall upon every individual reading this in Jesus name. Thank you, Lord for your presence, your kindness, your peace, your rest, your strength and your overwhelming love. Lord, reveal Yourself to each one of us in ways we’ve never known before today. I love you and thank you and PRAISE YOU in Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.