GOD IS GOOD!
This past week I laughed and cried and sang like a crazy person. I was a counselor at Camp Undignified (a.k.a. the most awesome camp around) and it changed my life! I'm giving my testimony on Sunday so I don't want to completely ruin the riveting tale of my complete spiritual turnaround (thank you Jesus!) and I'm only going to share a tiny story. My cousin and one of my closest friends, Katelyn, passed away on September 23 of this year. It broke my heart and I still miss her so much, but I thought that the worst was over after we got past Thanksgiving, Christmas, and graduation with her being gone. But then at camp, people started getting healed all over the place. Ankle, finger, back, stomach, and leg pain was healed. Color blindness was healed. Asthma was healed. I found myself getting progressively frustrated as more healings came up. I had no idea why, so I took it to the Lord. As soon as I started praying I burst into tears. For those of you who have seen me cry, it's not cute. And this was the all out, 100% ugly cry (complete with snot and tears and no tissues anywhere in sight) and it was a cry of sadness and of anger. If God could heal these kids in a time span of 5 minutes, where was He when Katelyn was sick for all those years? Didn't my prayers mean anything to him? I got angrier and angrier, my crying got uglier and uglier, and some people came over to pray for me. I told them what was going on and they prayed that the spirit of confusion and anger would be gone and...it was! As I started to feel more and more free, the worship team began repeating the phrase "Death has no hold on me, Sin has no hold on me, You have the victory..." and I really felt like Katelyn's death has no hold on her, and it shouldn't have a hold on me. She is happy now, healthy now, in a perfect place where there is no such thing as pain and no such thing as the ugly cry, so I needed to be experiencing joy rather than unending sadness. I really feel like that's what God wanted and what Katelyn would have wanted as well. So I stood up and decided I needed to let go of my anger and enter into worship. I was able to let go of all my sadness and replace it with joy and for that, I am eternally grateful to Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the week, I got a word that said "it's time to let go of unnecessary burdens" and I truly feel like I was able to do that with the help of God.
I got home, feeling free, and opened my devotional book to do a quick devotion. Someone had randomly stuck my bookmark in it when it had fallen out, and they put it right on September 23 (the day Katelyn went up to heaven). I glanced through the devotional for that day and it literally was saying that it was time to be relieved of all burdens and be free in Jesus' name. I was so excited that I ran out and showed it to Dad who said: "I think God likes you a lot," with a fatherly smile on his face. I am so grateful to Jesus for showing up and for never giving up on me and giving me the freedom that I need to live out the rest of my life.
Also, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING NEXT YEAR! I shall announce it soon, for those of you who don't know. Have the best weekend, kids. Don't get too crazy.
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