Before I even turned 21, I was already going down a dark path and was on the brink of suicide. I was on a hopeless quest for love in all the wrong places. Although I did not know it was love I was looking for at the time. All I knew was that nothing and no one was fulfilling this longing, this desire that was deep down in my soul.
The vices I was searching for love in were leaving me feeling lost and abandoned. I was on a ledge and losing my footing by the day. I had everything to live for – youth, straight-A’s in college, people who cared about me, gifts and talents. But there was one thing I was lacking that none of these things or people could give me – and that was true love.
It wasn’t until I found myself in a dark pit I now know as depression (my ultimate rock bottom) that I was forced to realize that I was utterly empty inside. All of the things – the drinking, the fake friends, the appetite for excitement and indulgencies, had suddenly faded into the background of a fog of depression that left me numb. And I was made to reconcile with the fact that it was I who put myself there. And so, I hated myself.
But then LOVE stepped in. For no reason at all that I could have foreseen, love (God’s love) began to heal me – to save the lost. What was once bound in the chains of my own self-made prison was suddenly set free – liberated by LOVE, by God Himself.
This love is what saved my life.
God is Love. And Love is what saves and sets free.
1 John 4 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
And so, I am on the journey to live the life I have been gifted with by and through God’s love. Not that I have reached some kind of goal or been made perfect, but I do consider myself blessed and hope to be a blessing by remembering the love God has for me, and not just for me, but for the whole world.
I hope you will join me on this journey. Stay tuned for more related posts.