You have turned my sadness into coca-cola

September 22, 2010 3:04 PM

This morning I woke up and felt completely empty inside. I was physically and emotionally drained. My body was weak due to lack of sleep, and no exercise (I miss running and swimming). In addition I felt distant and disconnected from God. I had feelings of emptiness, I felt alone. I laid in bed for what I thought was hours, arguing mentally with myself. I felt like I was ineffective and unable to serve and help here in Haiti. I felt like this whole trip had been a waste. I'm not

gonna lie, sometimes I tend to think dramatically like this- and it is not the hardest thing in to world to bring me near depression. However, I was trying to find the root of this feeling. I called out to God, and called out, and called out. Still no answer.

After a while of just sitting there in silence I opened up my Bible and started to read. Then I closed it and remained sitting in silence- listening. still nothing.

funny thing is- I thought I had been up for hours, I thought it was around 11:00. However it was only a couple minutes. The moment I woke up I started having these feelings and thoughts and down I go. The downward spiral pulled me down faster than I could even realize. Before I knew it I was knee deep in emptiness, completely drained.

Then I snapped out of it, praying "please help me to get out of this funk, I don't know where these feelings are coming from but I want them to stop" and I kept praying and kept asking God. But nothing happened.

It was only when I had stopped asking God, that I was rescued from these thoughts. Then thats when I realized- God doesn't just want me to ask for His help when I am in desperate need. He wants me to depend on Him 24/7 not just in hard times. Then I t

hought to myself "it is actually all the time that I am in desperate need of God. Not just when things are tough, but also when things are going good- I desperately need God."

Now after prayer and God's word, I am doing swell. It's amazing how the devil uses even the smallest things (such as being tired, and a little sick), as a foothold. But what is even more amazing is the love that God has for us that He cares enough to reach down into our lives and pick us up once we fall and set us on our feet, scrape off the dirt from our knees and wipe the blood from our elbows and say "I love you, no matter how many times you fail".

another crazy thing is, how good coke taste in haiti. its like a magical unicorn sent from God picked the ingredients and decided that high fructose corn syrup should be replaced with pure cane juice. and then the angles said, "let's replace the can with a glass bottle."

and all I have to say is amen.