Today I had a breakthrough. I went to a doctor before I was half dead. Well, it would turn out that I injured my cougher coughing. The solution to the back pain is ibuprofen, but how was I to know without her checking me out? Something about this experience seemed to break another level of fear in me.
I did a study on Romans last Saturday. I have had a weird reaction to it. On one hand, it has rooted my identity much more firmly in who I am now. That part is not a weird reaction. That is the expected reaction. Maybe the next part does not actually come from the study, but I have been wondering, “What if He is not actually there? How would I know?” Odd because even as I think that, I know I am His.
The concept of whether God turns away from us when we sin and turns toward us when we repent was brought up. No, God does not change. Our position with God does not change, but whether we are turned toward God is what changed because we cannot sin when we are turned toward Him. It has been a nice picture over the last few days. I was not focused on Him at all when I was living in my addictions.
I still am not sure how I feel about my current state of denial. It continued today. I even blatantly lied to my doctor. She asked if I ever struggled with depression. “No,” I said. “Never.” For about five years of my life, pretty much everybody in my life was trying to get me on depression meds. But I was a stubborn ox. I don’t go to doctors. Well, that is the old me. I keep hoping the new me does go to doctors. Today she did.
I do not mind being busy and laughing and joking around. It is quite pleasant. Not a form of denial except it all feels really surface. It scares me a bit that in order to function the way I am functioning, I have cut back on time with God. See any red flags??? My counselor is going to have a full work load on Wednesday! I am going to save it up and dump it in her lap.
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:31-39
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