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Hi.

I’m going to be real honest here. Real honest. This is Whitney-is-not-perfect honest. Confession time on steroids. If you're a Grace student, sorry--your secretary doesn't have it all together right now. If you didn't already know that from all the mass emails I've written, and corresponding mass emails correcting the first ones. 

But this post is probably my most raw one I've ever written, but I'm proud of myself because these past few days made me wonder if I’d ever blog again.

You see, these past few days. Have been horrible.

And I may keep using that word—horrible—throughout this post. Excuse the repetition. There really is no other word I can think of, despite all my AP English teachers’ lectures on word choice and variety. Sorry, six traits. You are taking a back seat because I still have reading due this week.

It has been horrible partly because I am a horrible person. Wednesday of this week I called up a friend and told her that despite every truth I knew and used to cling to, despite every promise that provides me so much hope, despite how strong I’ve become from my past, I was just done. I didn’t care about following God anymore. In fact, I was angry with Him. Livid. What makes me such a terrible person is that I ran away from all the things that should have helped me. I didn’t care, and I didn’t want anything to do with God anymore. And if I had cared about theology at that point, questions about apostasy and whether I was ever a Christian in the first place could have occupied my mind for awhile. But again, I didn’t care. And the word “God” made me want to vomit.

I stopped praying that day.

And that night I had a nauseating conversation with a friend whom I love. It was a necessary, messy, horribly hard and painfully predictable conversation that left me running to the practice room with my face in my hands and my shoes thrown angrily across the room and my neck and chest blotchy from my sobs. I would have told God I was done with Him but I vowed not to pray anymore, so I just ignored Him.

I don’t think I had ever been so upset. This isn’t like “oh, I had a bad day” kind of issue. I know I’m a drama queen, but please understand me that I was completely undone. It was…HORRIBLE.

And I knew I was being a brat and I didn’t care. When people offered to pray for me, my heart laughed at them. When people prayed with me, I cried but kept my eyes open.

Prayer does nothing, don’t you realize? I have been praying for months and came out with a broken heart. These silly, immature friends. Thinking they’re helping me by “praying”.

But somehow their prayers comforted me.

And God. I just wonder what He was thinking during this whole time. I’m sure He was smiling just a little bit when our choir sang its signature song entitled “Baba Yetu” which is THE LORD’S PRAYER in Swahili. Yes, folks, I was singing a prayer even amidst my pride and pain—and refusal to pray.

He is funny.

And He never let me go. Most people have to force themselves to believe the promises of God during times of extreme loneliness, rejection, and pain. I, on the other hand, curiously had to force myself NOT to believe these things. I would slap my hand when I caught myself saying “God is still good” and I caught my mind starting to pray on more than one occasion. I knew my logic of leaving God made no sense. But the fact was, I just didn’t care.

I realized that this whole non-Christian thing was going to be a lot harder than I thought. My stubborn heart started to waver, and I thought about returning to Him on more than one occasion. But the immense pain and despair and fear of anything like this ever happening to me again because of Him made me mad again. No, God. Never again.

So for five days I lived like this. No relationship with Him, no worship, no prayer. I was sure I was going to get in a freak accident and lose all my limbs and then God would have my attention and the fear of Him would be put back in me.

One night I just had to read the Psalms. I’ll never forget that immense desire to read the Word of the God I hated.

And in the midst of these five days, instead of my heart growing cold, it was filling up with praise and love. It was getting harder and harder not to tell Him how great He was. WHY WAS IT SO HARD NOT TO PRAY? I remember driving and I put my hand over my mouth because if I didn’t, I would start singing or praying or saying “God You are good”. And I was so confused that after the immense pain that He allowed, all I longed to do was worship Him.

There is something powerful about that, I think.

But this morning I found myself ready for church in record time, with twenty minutes to spare. And I almost heard Him say, “Whitney. Please talk to me.”

I dropped to my knees, and I wish I could tell you it all turned around there. That I was full of conviction and repented and re-surrendered everything to Him. But it was actually quite un-eventful. I told Him of my anger and confusion and pain. I told Him that I had nowhere else to go, that though I knew He deserved to be priority, He was actually my last resort, oops. I asked Him to please do something.

For the first time in five days, I finally prayed.

I still don’t know quite where I am. I’m still pretty mad, and I’m not praying a whole lot. Not like I used to, and definitely not like I should. I know I’m still selfish. And I’m definitely still angry. Pain is dictating a lot of my emotions and actions, and I know that isn’t right. My roommate gave me a letter before she moved out (yet another reason for me to BAWL MY EYES OUT) talking about the immense love of God and I’m not going to lie, I’m not sure how I feel about it all.

I haven’t sorted through it all. I don’t fully trust Him with my heart right now.

But I asked Him to do something.

And I really think He will.