The Breaking and Remaking

Yesterday I broke. I was standing on the second-highest rung of a ladder and painting the top of the chapel wall, when a wave of hopelessness swept over me. In an instant, certain faith changed to utter purposelessness. Light turned to horrible darkness. I sat down on the top of my ladder and stared into nothing. Despairing thoughts filled me mind: I thought "What is the purpose of my life?" "Am I even serving God?" "If camp is all I have to look forward to, have I made it an idol?"

I could not work up the will to move, even to change the song playing in my headset. And in the midst of the sudden storm, thoughts like a torrential rain, one thought dug deep into me like a single raindrop slipping into a crack: "Is this Christian juice?" I've learned that what comes out when pressure is applied shows what is inside. When you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. When a Christian is 'squeezed', their response ought to befit the faith they claim. 

The storm lasted close to half an hour. I moved to my cabin when my director forced me to and I cried in my bunk, unable to open the blinds in my heart to let in the light. It was like I was at the bottom of a deep pool, out of air to force my body into motion. So I texted a friend: a young woman who walks with me from afar most of the time, but walks closely at camp. She ran to the cabin, flung open the door, and said "Can I pray for you?" She did for me what I could not do for myself: she opened the door into my darkness and let God in. 

Camp has often been for me a place of spiritual formation. God works through this plot of land and the staff here. As I child I learned here to listen to God's voice; as a young adult I learned to rely on God to be my strength. To be changed by God is sometimes to be broken by him so that He can put you together properly, and my constant prayer is that He would "mold me, make me, bend me, break me" if it will make me more like Him. Yet I know that evil forces can also push us to break. A friend of mine is sensitive to spirits, and she has felt evil within this camp. Where God is powerfully at work, Satan is bound to oppose Him.

I do not believe that the darkness I felt yesterday was an act of God. God is a God of light, not darkness; of order, not chaos. However, what is intended for evil, God can surely use for good. 

Today I am close to the light. I feel God's presence around me, and I hear His voice. I delight in Him. And yet, I am grappling with things God has revealed to me that, in my deepest human nature, I wish were not to be. I am undergoing spiritual transformation still, and although it stretches me and often it hurts, I continue to pray that God would do everything necessary to make me wholly His.

- Aliya