In a Moment of Desperation

To be desperate means one has lost hope or a situation feels impossible to deal with.

I often hear testimonies of someone essentially saying, “In a moment of desperation, when I had lost all hope, I cried out to Jesus and He saved me.”

Nothing makes me want to throw a pity party more than hearing those stories repeatedly. Hearing of others being healed through desperation makes me think Jesus must not want to heal me. My over-analytical brain takes over and my thoughts go wild. “Maybe I’m not desperate enough? Maybe I’m not sick enough? Maybe Jesus doesn’t love me and I’m not good enough for him either.”

Some people say the negative thoughts I hear or tell myself are from the enemy, and I often reply with “I don’t know how to discern the difference between the enemy’s voice and my own because it’s all I have believed for so long.” It makes me feel pathetic; how can I not tell the difference? It’s hard to believe I am smart when I can’t tell the difference between my voice and the enemy’s, am I that far gone?

Something often spoken over me is that I need to renew my mind. It is a lesson I continually fail to buy into. Why should I have to renew my mind? Can’t Jesus just fill my brain with positive thoughts, shouldn’t He be able to do that? What about all those times I have tried? I’ve started the day with my Armor, repeated memory verses, prayed in church services to let Jesus into my heart, or commanded evil leave my brain in the name of The Lord; yet I still find myself feeling hopeless and even wondering if God is listening or if He has just sent me to voicemail.

Renewing my mind will be a complete overhaul. As humans, we don’t hate ourselves inherently; we learn it from the messages we hear and tell ourselves. Since it seems that God isn’t going to infuse my brain with positive thoughts, I need to engage in whatever lesson He must want to teach me by not reaching down and rescuing me. I think He wants me to lean into Him and believe He is rescuing me even though it’s not an instant rescue.

The Word says God created ME and He was intentional about everything He did. He didn’t create me to be trapped in my eating disorder. Maybe I was created to live and not just get through; a lesson I am still learning daily.

It is one thing to hear all this and something completely different to believe it. It means learning and forgetting and relearning that God has never left me. I don’t doubt that He is real but there are times when I doubt His presence in my daily life.

God not instantly making all my problems go away doesn’t make me any less worthy of miraculous healing or any less important in His eyes. I didn’t buy the wrong Bible at the book store and I didn’t attend the wrong church service. I didn’t do anything to be less worthy of His grace. Maybe learning all of that is the lesson; maybe that is my rescue from despair.

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