If you’re anything like me, you might have grown up in a religious household. You might have been expected to go to church about four times a week and take part in all the programs. I was a part of my church from a young age, which had always been fine with me, until I started experiencing certain decisive events in my life. Due to the trauma I was experiencing, I started thinking that God had abandoned me, so I decided to abandon him too. I felt liberated as I stopped attending church or being that kind of person. I started to hang around people that also dismissed and maybe even hated God. We all believed our life wasn’t fair and we needed someone to blame.
It wasn’t until recently that I stumbled upon a sermon—that, at the time, I wasn’t ready to hear—by Sarah Jakes Roberts about accountability and taking your life into your own hands. This sermon spoke to me on a deeper level, as it was only then I realized I had been living in victim-mode my whole life. Not to say that my trauma isn’t real: it is and it haunts me everyday but maintaining a victim mentality in the mundane life was just not it. I wouldn’t study for a test and then blame the professor for making it too difficult, or I’d find my relationships would lack luster and then blame the other person for being distant. Roberts’ sermon made me reflect on the question: ‘who am I?’ and ‘Am I proud of the person I am?’ It was shocking to me that I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, but I curious to find them out.
I began to search for God in everything in life. I wanted to better understand this force of judgment and overseeing, and soon after, I had a moment of prayer where everything hit me. I realized that the things I’d blamed God for in my life were a result of complete randomization, someone else’s ill will, or my own doing. Once I realized God wasn’t a bearded man in the sky, but an eternal state of love and vulnerability, I began to seek his truth. I have been implementing divine love into my life since and it feels as though a veil of hatred has been lifted off me. Anything feels possible and I have found a new love and appreciation for life. My life has now become in service to all the people around me so that they can experience that unconditional love I have grown to understand.