There is one thing I have tried to wrap my mind around in my hiatus. We fall into this mindset that it isn’t okay to not be okay. Honestly, it is mind-boggling to me and has been something I have had to fight with during my break from writing.
I stopped writing due to many things, but the biggest was that I couldn’t write something that I didn’t believe in my own heart.
During this last year many things happened, bad things happened. I began to question my faith and if I was loved by the God of the universe and He would save people from darkness, why wouldn’t He take me from mine?
This thought festered in me from September to last week. It twisted and hardened my heart. I tuned out His voice and filled all the voids, but in the process, I tore open every wound. With each waking moment, the agony grew deeper and deeper into my soul.
For months I buried the pain with work, school and clubs, all the while my rage slowly festered underneath. It wasn’t until Isaiah 41:13 came across my social media last week that things began to change. It states, “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”
I do not know why this verse hit me as it did, but it made me realize something important. We cannot serve a perfect God and be perfect ourselves. We cannot come to Him pure and clean, for it is not in our nature. We are imperfect creatures, yes, we can try and stay on the straight and narrow. Yes, we should avoid sin. Yes, we should walk with a kingdom mindset. However, we will not be able to always achieve these things.
There are times in life, seasons you can say, that we will not be okay. We will feel as though He has left us to our own demise. It can sometimes feel bleak and that all hope is lost. Sometimes, we simply just stop caring. These times are hard. They seem as though they will never end, but there is a reason for the pain.
If we were perfect and if we never had any trials in our lives, then why would we need Him? It is in the moments that we are not okay that we need His love and His grace more than anything else.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul addressed this very subject in his letter to the Corinthians, saying, “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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
It is in our moments of weakness that He can show His power. You see, we are so stuck on the idea of being perfect ourselves, that we don’t let Christ come in and fix our hearts. We become scared that our reputation will be harmed if we open up and care too much about what others think of us. Because of this, we hide the fact that we are not okay.
The church was never meant to be a place for the perfect to parade their false perfection. It was meant for the brokenhearted, the outsiders, the sick, the poor, the addicts, the broken and the imperfect. Instead, we have created a culture that we hide our weaknesses from our brothers and sisters when they are the first people that we should share them with.
Paul, again, addresses this matter in Galatians 6:2-3 in his letter to the Galatians. He said to them, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”
Now, if you have read my article A Letter to the Church, you know my stance with the current state of the church. It is part of the reason why my heart has hardened and something I have to let go, but we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We must be there for each other.
I can guarantee that every one of us has been through, or is going through, something difficult. Instead of masking our pain with a false persona that lets it only grow deeper and deeper, we need to let it go. It is only in the admission of our weakness to Christ, and our brothers and sisters in Him, can we begin to find healing. Again, it is okay to not be okay.
