Hide & Seek


By: Emily Blumer
   
     My life has been a constant game of ‘hide-and-seek’. Not the kids’ game, but a real life version.  I was painfully shy as a child, and I never really learned how to share important things with people.  I would keep anything hard bottled up inside.  I didn’t know how to ask for help with the little things so they would get harder and harder to deal with as the pain inside kept growing.  
This led me into a deep and dark hole of depression. By freshman year of high school, I was at an all-time low. I couldn’t take it anymore. Finally after building up a lot of courage to talk to my mom, I started going to counseling and soon enough got anti-depressant medication. Things seemed to be getting a lot better, but that hole still wasn’t completely filled.
     I had recognized how much I had been hiding from everyone with how I was feeling, and yet, like the game, I was still seeking hard for something more.  I longed for love and affirmation. Before long, I realized that I could kind of find that sense of satisfaction through guys. It turned out that all that would do, however, was mask up my true brokenness. I got to a point where I had been played and used one too many times, and I realized that this was not going to fill the empty hole I had in my heart; nothing seemed to ever truly be able to satisfy me. I prayd to God numerous times, crying that he’d get me out of the situation I was in.
In college, I just knew God was the only one that could help. All of my sin had separated me from God. I had taken control of my life and gripped onto it tight, I was essentially trying to live life my way, not God’s, and even through all of my hiding, denial, and depression there was one person who knows all about me, and he adores me still! God was working in my life and my heart the entire time, working to draw me back to Himself.
      2,000 years ago, God already knew everything I would be going through and planned for and done all of the work to rescue me. Jesus lived the perfect life and died to pay the penalty that I was supposed to pay. He ultimately came to reconnect me with God. Now, as I grow in a relationship with Jesus, things are changing all over my life for the better.  The more I am embraced in this personal relationship with God through Jesus and in community with others, the less my sin and depression defines and controls my life. God is healing me and drawing me out of myself as I am able to stop hiding from others and be honest about where I’m at. I am no longer stuck seeking for a purpose in worldly things, for all of my worth and acceptance is placed on me by the cross.

Jesus has set me free!

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