The Beginning

Just very occasionally you can find a music album that you can really identify with. Music and lyrics that make your heart sing. I found one such album in “Revelation” by Third Day. While my moods were swinging all over the place there was one song that I most identified with when depressed and another I identified with when hypomanic. But there was a song that I really didn’t get. I mean, I liked it an’ all, and I thought the singing was lovely, but I knew that I had never really felt that way. Here are the words:

Today I found myself
After searching all these years
And the man that I saw, he wasn’t at all who I thought he’d be
I was lost when You found me here
And I was broken beyond repair
Then You came along and You sang Your song over me

It feels like I’m born again
It feels like I’m living
For the very first time
For the very first time
In my life

Make a promise to me now
Reassure my heart somehow
That the love that I feel is so much more real than anything
I’ve a feeling in my soul
And I pray that I’m not wrong
That the life I have now, it is only the beginning

It feels like I’m born again
It feels like I’m living
For the very first time
For the very first time
It feels like I’m breathing
It feels like I’m moving
For the very first time
For the very first time

I wasn’t looking for something that was more
Than what I had yesterday
Then You came to me and You gave to me
Life and a love that I’ve never known
That I’ve never felt before

It feels like I’m born again
It feels like I’m living
For the very first time
I’m living for the first time
It feels like I’m breathing
It feels like I’m moving
For the very first time
I’m living for the first time
In my life

As I listened to this song yesterday, I realised that I get it now. This is exactly how I feel. I have never felt this way before but I do now. It feels like everything is new. I have so much to process. This last year has been so hard. I have lost sight of who I am, lost my confidence in dealing with other people, in coping with my job, I have even questioned the existence of God.

But how faithful He is!

Last summer, I wrote about an experience I had at a church service one Sunday. The thoughts in my head were turning black at that point and I was suffering from high levels of anxiety. Here’s what happened:

One of the elders got up during the morning service and he said that he thought someone in the church had been thinking black thoughts. He wanted to reassure that person that God sees the depths of our hearts and all our thoughts and yet He loves us the same. I knew that that person was me.

That same elder prayed for me at the end of the evening serivce. I sat and waited, becoming more and more nervous with each passing minute. I had tears streaming down my face, I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t even breathe properly and I was just about to leave when he turned and saw me. He came over. All I could manage to do was to whisper, “I don’t like being prayed for”. He looked at me with such compassion and then started to pray. He prayed that I would come to fully understand the love God has for me, that God cherishes me, that I am His daughter. Then he looked at me and said that he believed I need to realise that I can be me; he said, “You are free to be you - be free. I don’t know if that means anything to you?”. I told him it does. He prayed some more then we chatted. I said that I had wanted to skip this service but I couldn’t because I was singing in the band. I had been fighting with God all the way through the service. He then told me that he was glad I hadn’t skipped because I was the person who came to his mind in the morning service.

Ten months have passed since that happened. Since then I have been on four difference anti-depressants, been diagnosed with Cyclothymia and started taking a mood stabiliser. Even though God reached down and touched me that day, even though that touch was so personal it took my breath away, I have still doubted that He exists. How little faith I have.

But now I am starting to get a tiny glimpse of what God was telling me that night. God saw my black thoughts, He saw my unbelief, and yet He loves me the same. He will never stop loving me, because I am His daughter. I am free to be exactly who I am, in all my oddities, my uniqueness, because that is the way He made me. This is why I can identify with that song. Everything is new to me. It feels like, all through this year with all the bumps and bruises I have sustained, God has been singing His song over me.

I feel like a rose bud just beginning to unfold its petals, just beginning to bloom.

I’ve a feeling in my soul
And I pray that I’m not wrong
That the life I have now, it is only the beginning