This Is Not My Life
Author Anonymous
Have you ever felt as though your world was not only crashing around you, but that you were going down with it? Much like a house built up to withstand anything, yet one small earthquake brings it crashing down like a house of cards. At these times we just want to curl up inside of ourselves and not watch what is happening, hoping that it will be better just to not know, all the time saying to ourselves, “This is not my life!”
I have felt this way for the past two years. I was happy and joyful in my innocence and childhood, knowing what I thought was enough to get by. That was when the reality of my life smacked me in the face. My uncle was going thru detoxification for his drug usage, and my grandfather was battling cancer, among many other problems in my home. On top of all of that, I had my own issues that suddenly came to light. I was down-hearted at all of this news. At first I tried to stay positive - think of the ways I was blessed by the Lord, and it helped a little. I would pray to him daily and ask for help and things started to straighten out. When I thought he had answered my prayer I stopped praying, and as soon as I did, the problem got worse almost instantly, and I found myself saying, “This is not my life!”. I tried everything from finding solace in my friends, to writing in journals and cutting my own hands, hoping that it would stop the pain. When it did not help, I lashed out at home and became someone that no one would ever want to be around.
Over a year later things were still just as bad if not worse; my problem seemed to have grown so large that it was everywhere that I was. I rarely smiled and my grades started to suffer, and in a last ditch effort to salvage my life, I started praying again. As I did, my head started to clear and slowly I was able to start seeing God’s plan for me. My problem was not just magically fixed in a week or two; no, instead, the Lord sent certain people into my life to help me to make smarter decisions or to help in some other less obvious way. It took months and months of heart-to-heart discussions and the interference of other people in my family for the Lord to rid me of the great problem that had ailed me for so long.
Now things are looking up, and yeah, I know that there may be a few bumps in my road, but I am ready. I think that next time however, I will do as 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says, “Pray continually” and let the Lord do the driving and not try to stuff him into the backseat. He doesn’t fit back there anyway.