I am weak, but You are strong.

I've spent the past couple of years wandering around the dark corners of my mind wondering why I've been so hurt, wondering why I enter every situation with my wall up. Diving deep into every memory, peeling back the pages and reliving the moments that I feel could have started this great divide between true joy and this often soul-crushing pain.

It feels endless sometimes, to be honest. It feels like all that I can do is try to move forward and forget the situations that brought me here. To now. To the person that I've tried, at all costs, to avoid. This closed person that's straying far away from who God made me to be, and losing the ability to love like He loves. Simply put: I've become so jaded.

Don't get me wrong: I'm so happy. I have a beautiful family, a really cush life and the best of friends that God could ever bless someone with; and not even for one second should you think that I don't acknowledge any of those things. But, I won't lie, and I think that I speak on behalf of my generation when I say that there is an unexplainable pain that I find deep within myself that crushes my self-confidence and leads me further from the Truth.

I know the love of God. I've felt it, I long for it and I want everyone that I know to feel that moment when you realize that God's love overwhelms your brokenness. But if that's true, then why does this pain keep resurfacing? How do I make it never come back? How can I put down the walls that I keep so high so that I can show others what it's like to feel free beneath the wings of a loving God?

I was thinking a lot about this the other day when I came across this really amazing quote by Saint Augustine:

"All anxiety is caused by the collapse of a false idol"

That's it. That's the pain. The pain is our addiction to the idol's in our lives. Idol, by definition, is "A representation or symbol of an object or worship." I guess that I just never thought about the fact that I make relationships an idol in my life. Or I make friendships or buying clothes or my work an idol. Something that I worship and devote the most amount of my time to, when God clearly told me not to worship anything but Him. And when those things fail or when they walk out of my life or there is an unexpected collapse, I am left with nothing but the empty and lonely feeling of anxiety that is attached to worshiping a false idol. God promises to never leave me and to never fail, yet I so willingly choose to put my worship into earthly situations and people; into things that I think I can control.

So those painful memories, the times where people left me and the times where I failed, and the walls that I build are because I choose to worship fleeting objects first and the God of the universe second. What a joke.

"And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down
All down at Jesus’ feet.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I Owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow

Oh Praise the one who paid my debt
And raises life up from the dead."


You are so faithful, Jesus.
I stand repenting for ever worshiping something before You.
For making idols out of transitory objects,
and for not trusting in Your perfect plan.

Thank you, Father, for Your cross; for Your commitment to my joy
and for paying my debt when I don't deserve that gift.

My life, to You I give.