17 years ago I was a healthy kid who liked math, and liked to have fun. I planned to be a doctor when I grew up. School was interesting, and I liked playing sports and games with my friends and family. I wanted to enjoy life, succeed, and help people.

Then, one weekend in 2000, that life stopped. I awoke with an excruciating headache. Pain shot through my eyes, face, and the top of my head. I was dizzy, and wanted to throw up. Light hurt my eyes, and sounds were irritating. Trying to sleep was the one thing I could do. I rested all day, sure that I could sleep it off and wake up the next day to return to life as usual.

The next morning the headache remained, as strong as the day before. I was shocked. Pain was not supposed to last that long! The pain was gone on the third day, but it came back within a few days. Over the next weeks and months the headaches lasted longer and longer. Soon, they lasted for more than a month without stopping.

I felt constant pain, which sucked the fun out of my days. I felt worthless, like a broken toy, becoming a doctor and succeeding in life now seemed so far away. I felt stupid, the words I would form in my mouth sounded idiotic when I actually said them. I felt alone – no one I knew could understand what I was going through. I felt hopeless, that there was no help for me. Somewhere in the next year, at around 11 years old, I lost the desire to fight. If this was life, I did not want to live anymore. Death seemed like the best escape. So I waited for what had taken my health to hopefully take my life.

Why did I not kill myself? Because I believed two things: there is a God, and killing myself would bring me from the frying pan into the fire. So I asked God to end my life for me. Somehow getting better seemed to be impossible, and I would die someday, so why not sooner, before I had to suffer any longer?

Several years went by. The thing that stood between me and death was my belief in God. One day, as I stood in my parent’s garage, I had a clear thought pop into my head, “There is no God.” Just as soon as I thought it, I felt God say to me, “You know that there is a God. You know I am real.” I had to agree. I had seen and heard so many things that convinced me of His existence.

Seven years after the headaches started, something new happened. A wise friend taught me about knowing God as a close friend. I felt God tell me, “I love you.” I learned there is great joy in helping others. I gave up the control of my life to God, and gave up the things in my life that I knew He hated. I felt God’s presence, and that finally, someone – Jesus – understood what I was going through. I felt Him there with me in my pain.

A week or so before my 18th birthday, I was praying, and I felt God say to me, “I do not want you to die and go to heaven yet. I have things for you to do, and things for you to learn.” I said “Ok.” Something changed in my heart that day. I no longer wanted to die. I had a new desire to live. Even in the pain, I was so happy.

Almost 10 years later, my headache is less intense, but still there. From that moment until writing this post, every waking moment has included the pain of a headache. Yet I am still so very thankful to be alive. Every day is a gift. Each day filled with pain is also full of life and love. God is with me in the pain, and gives me the strength for each day, and a hope that one day it will be gone. I was broken, but God is putting me back together. I was alone, but the One who suffered more than anyone else is with me. He helps me understand and comfort others who suffer – which makes my suffering worth it. He lifts me up, He gives me worth, He gives life.

This is just one of the many ways that the gospel of Jesus Christ has brought me from death to life.

I had several personal annual traditions at VOICE, two of which involved music.

First, the food court in the OKC mall had a jukebox and anyone could select songs to play over the loudspeakers. Every year while VOICE was eating lunch in there I selected “Creep” by Radiohead. It wasn’t breaking the “no music” rule since it was a public place and music would be playing anyway. That’s what I told myself.  

Second, on the last day in Chicago, everyone’s last morning at VOICE, I would blast Matt Maher’s “Christ is Risen” as loudly as possible on my phone or computer and walk around from bed to bed to wake up the guys in my house (because of the “come awake” lyric). As annoying as that must have been for VOICE guys three years in a row, the song still remains a very special reminder to me to this day.

“Let no one caught it sin remain inside the lie of inward shame.”

Are you caught in the lie of inward shame? I am. For years, my internal dialogue has been a constant stream of shame and negativity. I often feel inadequate, unloved, and unsatisfied with myself. I’ve used these negative feelings as an excuse to make bad choices like pulling away from healthy relationships with people who love me because of fear and shame, or not trying for goals I know I want because I’m afraid of failing, and even accepting abuse from others because I feel like it is what I deserve.

But those are lies. God hasn’t created us for a life of inward shame. Christ has risen to save us from the weight of our sin. He has provided a church body to support us by sharing vulnerabilities and strengths. We can have confidence, security, and peace when our identity is rooted in Christ…I think. I’m not an expert. I’m trying to learn.

If you are facing a similar struggle, keep going. It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to reach out for help. Focus on the Truth. Come out of hiding. Come awake.

I don’t know about you, but spring is always a tough time of year for me. I’m a full-time student and teacher, so my days are extremely busy. Hardly a day goes by without experiencing some mini-crisis that revolves around school, work or relationships.

When life gets busy, it’s so easy to let my relationship with God sit on the back-burner. In the past, I would let things slip and slide until I realized that I hadn’t touched my Bible or prayed in weeks/months, and then I would feel consumed with guilt and shame. What an awful Christian I was! I would beat myself up about my failings, and think that there wasn’t any point in working on my relationship with God if I couldn’t do it “right”. So I would just stop trying.

Even now that I’ve learned how to be more consistent in my walk with the Lord, I still go through bouts where I feel like a terrible Christian. I let fear, worry and anxiety consume my life, and don’t trust in God’s grace and provision. Every day is a struggle where I try to hold onto things that God never intended me to have. I feel like I have to “fix” my issues myself before God will be happy with me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a song by Crowder called “Come As You Are”. The chorus goes like this:

So lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken
Lift up your face
Oh wanderer come home
You’re not too far
Lay down your hurt
Lay down your heart
Come as you are

It reminds me that no matter how many times I’ve failed to be the kind of Christian I want to be, God isn’t asking for my perfection. He knows that we’re full of problems, mistakes and exhaustion, and He doesn’t demand that we fix ourselves before He’ll accept us. No, He just wants us to come.

A wise friend once reminded me that we tend to have the wrong perspective of God. We view him as someone who looks at us and says, “Ugh, you are the worst. I never met such a lazy Christian in my whole life. Come back once you get your act together!”. But actually, it’s not like that at all. It’s more like God says, “Hey! I like you! Actually, I love you! I really just want to be a part of your life, if you’ll let me.”

Instead of letting my discouragement about my mistakes and forgetfulness drive me away from God, like I did for so long, I’m learning how to take those feelings of inadequacy and failure and bring them to Christ. I still have so much to learn, but I think the key is using those feelings to remind me of how much I need God, and that I’m nothing without Him in my life.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (ESV).

In my weakness, He is my strength. In my failures, He is my Redeemer. In my troubles, He is my rock. He’s not pushing me away; He’s asking me to come.