Spiritual experiences I feel are a very debatable topic. However those who have had them cannot tonight that they have experienced something not of this world. Growing up in the church, you were taught angels and demons were at war for your soul, and that you had to make the choices on the right side and it would determine your entire fate. I sometimes wonder if I believe what I believe because I was brought up and had an ingrained in me, or if I were to be introduced to the same material now in my life if I would still have the same conviction that nothing but this could be true. Because even in the moments of doubt, Even in the times where I wasnāt on speaking terms with God or I had shut down that part of my heart and soul that the relationship with him should have been dwelling in, thereās never any doubt in my mind as to his existence or his power or his might. There was only ever the doubt that he would ever care about me because I was insignificant and unimportant.Ā
Recently my life spiraled out of my control, and I was left with a choice to make. I could either stay where I was, with a job I loved but a life which was otherwise miserable and be living independently, which is what I thought I wanted. Or I could give up some pride and move back home and try to start fresh yet again. I chose to move home because I was a shell of a human at the time. After a dramatic falling out with my friends, a break up, and a miscarriage, I was emotionally drained and had no idea where to even start with mending my broken life. I felt like life had chewed me up and spit me out and didnāt think I could continue on my own. I knew that I could find a way to stay, but thankfully even in my dark depressed state, I saw that my best option was to just come home and try to let myself heal.Ā I resented that choice at first, especially when I was making barely enough money to make ends meet, had no friends, and just felt like I was never going to get out of my downward spiral.Ā
About five weeks ago, frustrated with my inability to find a job, I decided to return to my old job at Chick-fil-A, something that I had been putting off and dreading because I saw it as the ultimate failure that I had broke away from this place and now I had to go crawling back. As it turns out, this is exactly where God had planned for me to be, and my stubborn ass just refused to get there. Maybe I needed more time to accept it. Either way, it has been made clear that I needed to be back in this place. About a week in to my return to Chick-fil-A, Stacey,Ā the marketing director who was like the mother hen (no pun intended) of Chick-fil-A sought me out, saying she had been in a prayer summit and had felt the Lord put my name on her heart saying that I was going through a tumultuous time and had something weighing heavily on me and needed some extra prayer. So I sat down and spoke with her about my misgivings about returning to Chick-fil-A, and through this talk realized that a lot of these emotions would be traced to a boy who had broken my heart more severely than I thought I could ever be possible the last time that I was working here. Not someone that worked with me, butI went through the initial devastation of this heartbreak while working at Chick-fil-A, and so I associated my time spent there with this hurt. She revealed to me that God had told her that it was regarding a heartbreak that somebody had betrayed my trust and I didnāt know how to open up or even trust myself or love myself anymore because Iāve been so brutal he rejected and thrown to the side. Thereās no way this is something she couldāve known unless I told her her God told her, because no one else who knows this information or knows how deeply this cut me would have spoken to her about it. She prayed over me that day and I immediately felt a lightning of my spirit, and I felt for the first time as if I truly could get past this moment in my life and this devastating heartbreak that I had just assumed I would always carry.Ā
This weekend I went to Bakersfield for the graduation of one of my oldest friends little brothers, a friend who Iāve had a fairly tumultuous relationship with, admittedly because I was a stuck up bitch at times and made wrong friend choices and pushed her aside when she shouldāve been the one that I was clinging to as she has proven to be one of my most devoted friends and honestly just one of the most wonderful people that I have been blessed to have in my life. During our many many hours of conversation she reaffirmed everything that I have been feeling over the last few weeks and between Staceyās prayers and my conversations with Christina, it was like the light that I thought was permanently out inside of me has now been reignited. I also attended a church service this Sunday morning the sermon again reaffirmed the topics that Christina and I have been discussing the night before in terms of humility, knowing Godās purpose for you, and going where the Lord calls you and giving up your own plans for his. In that service I felt that all the haphazard prayers I had been throwing up with little expectation of response had indeed been heard and were now not only being acknowledged, but answered.
Iāve always been the kind of person that didnāt want to work unless I found a passion. I envy those who saw at a young age that their passion was music, or English, or, āI want to be a doctor, I want to be this, I want to be that.āĀ I never felt that driving passion where I couldnāt imagine what my life would be like without this. I never wanted to settle on a career until I had found that passion, because it seems like thereās no point in doing something for the rest of your life if itās not something you love. Because of this, I stumbled in and out of school trying to find a major that I enjoyed but was always discouraged because I just didnāt feel that fire lit with in me. When I returned home this most recent time, I decided to go back to school full time and hit several roadblocks on my path to pursuing my education. It wasnāt what I was passionate about, but I decided that I should just go through with being a nurse because I had done so much the foundational work towards entering a nursing program, and I knew I would be good at it given my highest spiritual giftings are hospitality generosity and compassion. So I basically went into school with the mentality of fuck it Iāll be a nurse, itās a good career Iād be stupid not to do it I can find my passion later in life, and at least be making enough money to pursue it. As it turns out, I was required to take an anthropology class as a prerequisite for this schools nursing program, and I fell in love with the subject. I was fascinated. I was watching documentaries, I was reading extra articles, reading every text book. I could not drink in enough Ā about Ā people and their culture and the basic foundation of what makes us human. This was what I had always imagined passion would feel like when I found my purpose and my calling, and so I was excited but also slightly frustrated because I had finally decided on a major and was almost there, literally I needed three classes before I could apply to a nursing program, and now I found this whole other subject that I loved and was I really about to change my major for this? I decided I would stick with nursing, but when it came time to register for my summer and fall classes I hit more roadblocks swear I was given incorrect information or misunderstood the information I was given. Either way, I could not register for the last classes that I needed for nursing. After a couple hours of wallowing in my frustrations, I decided to look into their requirements to get a degree in anthropology. As it turned out I was only four classes away from getting my Associates degree in anthropology, so I decided that rather than waste two semesters of being frustrated and feeling like I was stuck in a dead-end job with nothing else going on in my life, I would simply work on another degree while I waited to be able to take my remaining nursing classes.Ā
I have currently decided that I am going to pursue both degrees. I would like to get my bachelors in anthropology as well as attend nursing school and focus my passion of helping people and trying to make the world somewhat of a better place into nursing in impoverished countries and using my Anthropology degree to allow me to better immersed in these cultures and heal these people not only physically but hopefully on a spiritual field as well.Ā
As someone who had given up on hoping that I would find something that I was passionate about, discovering the sudden drive towards something that I never would have discovered had I not been forced to move home and attend a new school with new requirements, I canāt not see it as a God thing. It has led me to believeĀ very firmly that everything does happen for a reason. While I wish that my life hadnātĀ had to spiral out of control for me to find this path, in a sense Iām grateful that it did because I now have a focus and I drive that I would not have had if I had not gone through everything that I have in the last year. My move has also brought upon me a spiritual awakening that I did not foresee in anyway shape or form. For the first time in years, I am truly open and longing for a spiritual closeness with the Lord, and I want to bottle it up because I donāt ever want to lose this taste and this drive in this joy and pure grateful heart that I have at the moment. I felt lost for my entire life, and itās finally coming together and finally making sense and Iām sure that I will have hard years and hard times ahead of me where I feel like itās all falling apart again, but in this moment I have such clarity and such gratefulness and just such a hunger to do more and to continue on. Iām realizing how misled Iāve been in previous friendships, and what a true blessing and resource Christina is and how everything that Iāve ever wanted in a friendship has literally been right there all along for me. She is truly an amazing spirit with such a beautiful heart that she doesnāt hold against me the less than kind ways that I have treated her over the past years. I am thankful that I was forced to return to Chick-fil-A where God placed me on a womanās heart whoās path I would never have crossed had God not placed me directly in it. My biggest frustrations have turned into my biggest gifts. I truly feel that I have gone through spiritual awakening and change, and I feel overwhelmed but overjoyed by all the emotions that Iāve been experiencing and I want to preserve the feeling in anyway that I can.
In an additional revelation from the day, I have always been a destination person. All my life people have talked about the journey being the essential part of life, not the destination. I always disagreed, thinking it was best to get where I was going as fast as possible and enjoy it when I arrived. No surprise, Iāve taken the same approach in life and have consequently prolonged my journey to the point that it feels like God is almost teasing me by now stretching my school experience with repeated road blocks to make me actually stop and take in the journey. The phrase āall in Godās timeā has taken on an all new irony to me.