The transition from childhood and living under your parent’s roof to being a self-sufficient adult is a hard one. I don’t think we’re ever truly prepared for everything that life throws at us. It’s a hard transition. One minute you’re enjoying life with friends and the next you’re having to get a job, go to college, get married, or whatever steps you take next. You typically no longer have someone else calling the shots for you and you have to decide for yourself what’s the best. You have to make your own doctor’s appointments, make your own health decisions, and fend for yourself financially. I thought I’d learned a lot about health and wellness when I went through nursing school. I knew that being spiritual helped my patients and I knew about general wellness. When I got pregnant with my son, I started to look more into what I was putting into my body. I’d decided I wanted to try for a homebirth with a midwife and try to be as “natural” as possible throughout my pregnancy and birth. Well, I ended up giving birth in the hospital (not by choice but for health reasons), ended up with an epidural when it was looking like I’d need an emergency c-section, and gave birth in the middle of the night and wasn’t able to have my midwife there. While my birth wasn’t traumatic, I still mourn the loss of the birth I wanted. There were things I wish I’d done differently, especially as a first-time mom. I’m a nurse, I should know how to advocate for myself right? Wrong. I should’ve tried more positions or getting up more and moving around, the list goes on. Hindsight is 20/20.
That’s the thing about life and adulthood. You go through experiences and then look back and realize ten different ways you could’ve handled the situation differently or better, but that’s how we grow as people. When we apply God’s Word to this growth, we grow in our faith. Sure, in reading the Bible and learning more about God’s Word can do that, but I’ve found that at least for me leaning on God during those hard or stressful times, through those learning experiences, my faith grows exponentially. Before she passed, my mom would tell me, “God did not bring me this far just to leave me.” He is here with us through thick or thin, through the worst of times and the best. While I’m not perfect at it, I try to look to God when I struggle. Since giving birth, I’ve been looking deeper into the world around us, the things we’re told are completely safe yet have potentially dangerous ingredients. I’ve become what they call a “scrunchy” mom. I’ve been trying to get back to my roots and use more natural remedies as opposed to turning towards drugs with severe side effects and feeding my family healthy, homegrown foods not covered in chemicals. I’ve gone down the rabbit holes of medical articles regarding the declining health rates in younger generations and the links to GMOs, plastics, chemicals, and other “common” things we’re exposed to all the time. How our hormones and fertility and future health and that of our children are being affected. It’s depressing and it feels like fighting a battle even though you’ll inevitably lose the war. I want the best for myself and my family, but there’s so much information out there and much of it is conflicting, how are we even supposed to know what is true and what is harmful?
God knows. Truly, He knows. In those moments when I’m feeling overwhelmed by all of this, by the stress of trying to do my best but feeling like I’m failing, God knows and He sees me. I can give my anxieties up to Him and know peacefully that when He comes again and when we’re together in the new kingdom I won’t have to worry about the health of my physical body. Everything then will be clean and pure. On that note, if you aren’t strong in your faith yet or you’re just coming to Christ and you feel silly or stupid for jumping headfirst into Christianity, everything I just said may mean nothing to you especially if you haven’t experienced it firsthand. If this is you, I have a challenge. Something that helped me when I was first coming back to God after being the weakest in my faith I ever had been.
- Put on some gentle instrumental music in the background. I, personally, like something with a little piano and some hints of guitar, but whatever speaks to you the most works perfectly fine too.
- Next, close your eyes. You’re going to pray. You don’t necessarily have to fold your hands if you aren’t comfortable with that. Just close your eyes and just be for a moment.
- Focus on your breathing and connect with whichever feels more busy, your heart or your head. I found connecting with my heart brought out the most emotional and raw prayers, ones that brought me to tears, but this is also where I was feeling my pain and turmoil.
- Now, start talking to God. It doesn’t have to be formal, that can come later. Right now you’re working on that connection with Him. Just talk. You can speak out loud or just in your head.
I want to say my first prayer like this likely sounded something like “Hey God, been a while. A lot is going on in my life right now. Life kinda sucks, to be honest. I’m feeling very depressed. My mom just died. Just up and died. She was my person, my best friend. And now I am completely alone. No one else truly understands how I feel. And I need help.” and so on. I said anything and everything that came to me. I spoke without thinking and laid it all out for Him, even though He already knew everything on my mind and heart. I let out all of my emotions into that prayer, the anger, the sadness, the pain, all of it. By the end, I felt lighter and when I asked God to work in my heart I could’ve sworn I felt a warmth enter my chest and the sense of what I can only describe as an embrace. Here I am sitting on the floor, music playing in the background, sobbing my eyes out, being embraced by God. Being comforted by Him and reassured that I’m not alone and He never left me. This may not be your exact experience by any means, but it’s a starting place to build that relationship. God wants us each to have a personal connection to Him. He wants us to know that we can run to Him when we’re hurt or scared or angry or even when we’re perfectly happy and that He will be there. Very fittingly, the story we used on the bulletins at my mom’s funeral was Footprints in the Sand. It was the first time I’d ever heard it and if you haven’t read it before I highly recommend it (I’ve linked it here: https://www.geneseo.edu/~heap/footprints.html). Such a beautiful poem that of course made me cry when I read it (if you hadn’t gathered by this point, I cry easily and a lot haha). It’s something I keep in mind as I live my life. When I am having a hard time those words resonate in my head, “I carried you.” I mean how powerful is that? God truly is wonderful and I am so excited for the incredible things He has in store for you and for the impact you’ll make.
