When I lost so many people who I thought loved me, it forced me to go to a place I’d never gone before. I’m not sure how to judge how well I did. My life turned dark and I got so down I wanted to die. I wasn’t able to “pray my way out” or decree what I thought should happen or tell God what to do. I didn’t feel all close to God in the secret place. I felt forsaken and forgotten – except by those who were lying about me.
I’d long prided myself in not only being a survivor but an overcomer. But now, I wasn’t even sure I’d survive. My days were long and dark and my nights were worse. I didn’t even know how to process what I thought would never happen to me.
I spent a couple of years questioning everything I believed and what I had clung to as being the truth. I had to have many face to face meetings with what I had desired for my life. It seemed to be laying in ashes around my feet. Honestly there were times I hated – I hated others and I hated myself. I was honest with God about it. It scared me but it did not scare Him.
There’s a lot I had embraced as truth that at this point in my life sounds prideful, self centered and worldly. I can’t listen to certain people anymore and have found out more than I ever wanted to know. It’s not from bitterness that I speak but from wanting others to know it’s okay when they go through the valley of the shadow of death. Even when it feels like it, God never forsakes us. Even when everything and most everybody falls away from you, you’re never alone.
I’m not chasing some upgrade or promotion in order to acquire earthly gain. I’m living simply and peacefully, having lost care about what others think about me. God can direct my life anyway He chooses, I don’t have to figure it out or try to build some big thing in order to keep Him happy. He’s God and that’s enough.
Author: Tina K Baker
Tina K Baker shares many heartfelt lessons she has learned from her own walk with God to encourage others. She is from Cleveland TN.
The sweetness of His love and peace is found in no one. If He chooses to bring another of His precious one’s in my life, ok – if not, ok.
Hi, Tina. To encourage you-I want you to know your relatability to what so many are feeling socially is a step toward healing and unity. I think the LORD has brought His most precious ones to a very lonely and isolated place to be our ALL in ALL in this valley of refinement, He is simply testing us to the breaking point. When do we give up on being horizontally driven and get vertical with Him? I’m still not all there, as past hurts and resentments keep popping up attempting to bring me to a valley of unforgiveness. Let me just say horrible betrayals I never dreamed the apples of my eye of past friendships were dishing out. This morning I laid my burden down for one tornado of hurt that came my way from tornado alley. A friend I used to confide, laugh, dream, eat, even travel with turned her back on me. Then I heard the silly song, Thanks for the Memories. Jesus reminded me of the laughs., silly times, tiffs we had shared, and it almost erased the current pain with which the current betrayal was trying to vex me. Almost, but no,, it did not. The pain was worse than the past joys. He put the good on a scale. And the ugly on the other side. The ugly side far outweighed those memories, dragged it down like a bigger kid on a seesaw. Then he showed me a scale like this: all the hurts of a lifetime I inflicted on one side. All the hurts I have suffered at the hands of loved ones on the opposite side. The ones received far outweighed the ones that rendered me guilty. My “victimized” side went flying up like an underweight kid that could never push the seesaw down. Then He reached up, pulled me off like the skinny little kid I had been in my playground days. I had always avoided the seesaw because of my size. In a childlike way, it was Grace enough for me to let those hurts slam to the ground, I could forgive, and “never the twain shall meet” to that betrayer. Yet I’ll cherish the good memories and erase the bad. Only by grace. By being the skinny kid on the teeter totter, it will produce lightheartedness. He will reassure us that He sees how we were trespassed against as much as He sees our trespasses. Because mercy triumphs over judgement, I believe He sees us as plaintiff rather than defendant even more. In the courts of Heaven. Nonetheless, never stay a victim. Even though the swing may be lonelier than the seesaw, He will always push you to go higher and higher. You don’t need to try to reconnect with those long lost frenemies, but in Christ, you can love them and give thanks for the good times you did share. Love covers over a multitude of sins. Some loved ones will be too precious to let go of, but if the scales show the preciousness is overshadowed by the hurtfulness, let them go. Kind of like Peter. Vs. Judas. But always weigh loved ones on a scale. Sometimes there will be Peters, sometimes there will be Judas types. Just be sure you lay them at Jesus’ feet to figure out who the Love its vs. the List its are. He will show you the wheats and tares on a smaller scale, so to speak. He did not come to bring peace, to the earth, but a sword. But always let Him guide how you divide with that sword. I often had encounters with Jesus by a big tree with a tire swing. Now I know why-mystery solved.🧩 He wanted to take me to a lonely place of childlike faith to push me even higher.. Shalom.
Hi Tina. I can identify. If you ever want to talk to someone human, Jesus is the best choice, but if you want someone who’s still living down here on the earth, I’d like to make myself available. You can send me an e-mail to AK4RN.TN@gmail.com and I can share my phone number and address. I live in Fairview, TN, about 25 miles west of Nashville.
This is so refreshing….even though we love Him and meditate on His Words, praise Him, pray, fellowship with our Heavenly Father through Yeshua to realize that taking up our cross means that He brings our heart in the narrow path of His Love.
His Truth sets us free but also it brings me to say not my will but Your will be done on earth has You desire from heaven. And it does hurt. I look forward to meeting you in Heaven and again so refreshing for those that are struggling like I am to realize that many of His faithful are going through much trials. Blessings to you! Terry
Thank you, Tina. “He’s God and that’s enough.” A realization we will all need to come to. Or we will lose out on God’s best for us. I praise Him that He has never let you down. You can never let Him down because you have never been His support. I’m going through similar things, although not to the depth you have–yet. May the joy of the LORD be your strength as you abide in Christ. Love to you, sister.
From a different Stacey, I have been walking thru what feels like the shadow of death and questions have abounded just as the writer spoke.. When everything around us is shaken, all we believed and trusted, God is there and He is not taken by surprise, He will deliver!