Fleeing

I'm not sure where to start my faith story.  I spent many years without faith.  My family attended a Presbyterian church when I was growing up but somewhere around my twelfth year, we stopped attending.  We only said prayers on major holidays when we had a family dinner with our extended family.  I was not taught about our loving Father and His desire to have a relationship with me. 

I went to work with my parents when I was 28 years old and the long and the short of it was, I couldn't work for my parents.  In the six and a half years I worked there, I spiraled down into a pit.  I don't know what caused it, I don't know why it happened but I was experiencing pain that I didn't understand.  Not just physical pain, but mental and emotional pain - although this sometimes came out as physical pain as well. 

When my husband and I (we worked for my parents together) would get home from work, the first thing I wanted to do was turn on the television.  At that time we got the major networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and a couple of others.  Often there were only re-runs playing.  It certainly wasn't  that the stories were enthralling or it was great television.  I was fleeing the voices in my head.  As Ann Voskamp says in One Thousand Gifts "For all our frenzied running seemingly toward something, could it be that we are in fact fleeing - desperate to escape pain that pursues?" 

When I read this it struck home.  That is exactly what I was doing - running from the pain, the anger, the stress, the difficult decisions.  Television was one of the few things that could stop my mind from working.  It could still the self-doubt, the self-recriminations, the negative self-talk.  It wasn't that there was a specific show that would fulfill, it was just a way to quiet the mind.  While watching others' imaginary lives, I could focus less on my own reality.

At the time I was unaware of what I was doing (although it drove my husband nuts - thanks for sticking with me sweetie)!  I was unaware of my deep dissatisfaction with myself and my life.  I was unaware that I was trying to fill an emptiness that only God could fill. 

This realization only came after - after I had allowed myself to fall into the pit of depression.  And after God had lifted me out of it with His wondrous love.

I pray that we will stop "fleeing...the pain that pursues" and turn to God, allowing Him to heal the pain with His unending love.

In His Grace...