Coming Home

I would first like to apologize for not posting too much on here recently. You see, I have been going through a time of doubt where I did not feel God's Presence like I did before. And it frightened me. I did not feel worthy to share my faith when I had so little of it to share at the time. But now I have rediscovered God and feel His Presence stronger than ever. Like the Prodigal Son finally came home, so I have finally returned to the light. Let me explain:

One day, I drank some bad water. And this water made me so sick that I spent that next 48 hours going in and out of sleep, doubled-over in pain, only able to drink water and hydration packs. I prayed so hard, begging God to heal me, to take the pain away, to make it stop. But I was alone, in a foreign place, with no one that understood what was happening. When I woke up two days later, I thought it was over. But then, my hands and feet broke out with these little red bumps that itched more than anything I'd ever felt. It looked as though thousands of ants had bitten me. They itched so much that I couldn't even sleep. I couldn't close my hands, I could barely move my fingers. (Which, since I was using sign language to communicate, was a serious problem...) I asked God, "Why? Why are you doing this to me?!?!" I kept crying out but there was no reply. Two agonizing days later, the bumps receded into dark spots that later turned into blisters and peeled off, one by one. To this day, no one knows what I had, why that happened. When I returned home from my trip, I could feel a difference in me. Even though I still proclaimed my faith and trust in Christ, there was something different. Something wasn't quite right. I could feel this doubt growing inside of me. And no matter who I spoke to about it, I couldn't get around it. There was just something in me that didn't believe any more. But I knew that I had to fix this. So I prayed, I kept talking to people about it, I read my Bible (not as often as I should, but I tried). But it just wasn't working.

Then, one day, I got some bad news about a family member. I have never prayed so hard in my life. I begged and pleaded with God to change it, to fix it, to take it away. And He did. Just like that. And that was the turning point. That was the moment I started climbing back up the mountain towards God in all His Wonder. The doubt was gone, dissolved in the Light of His Glory. And I could feel His Presence stronger than ever before! The joy had returned to my life and I knew that God is REAL. I knew that God CARES. I knew that God is AWESOME.

And as I sit here writing this, I'd like to say that it's all good from here. I'd like to say that I'll never falter in my faith again. I'd like to say I have it all figured it out. But the truth is, I don't. There probably will come a time when the doubt trys to creep back into my heart. But I know that even though we may go through a period of darkness, a time when we feel so far away from God that we think He doesn't exist, that we can always come out on the other side closer to God than we ever were before. "Every storm runs out of rain and every dark night turns into day." Always remember, sometimes God will allow us to go through a storm so that we can see his amazing power pull us through it. We just gotta hang on to our faith just like God hangs on to us.