13 years

Psalm 119: 67-68
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.
You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.
I went 13 years before disclosing it to anyone. 13 long years. 13 years where Satan continued to make me believe that I was responsible for everything that happened. 13 long years of shame, 13 years of believing that every day was another day where I must set out to prove my worth, lest I be nothing more than a dirty little failure. 13 years of going astray. 13 years of running.
But thank you Jesus, he sent some affliction. Thank you Jesus that you sent my depression and my anxiety, thank you that you allowed me to be buried in such a deep pit that I had no choice but to turn to you, and to face the realities of my past, lest they continue to bind me for the rest of the future.
In Beth Moore’s Breaking Free this is what she says, “The measures God takes to woo us to liberty may be excruciating at times, but they are often more powerful evidence of His unfailing love than all the obvious blessings we could expound”.
This last year I have definitely had my share of excruciating, more than I thought I could ever bear, but I am still here. And I promise you, if God hadn’t taken the wrecking ball to my life, I would have never stopped. I would have kept on achieving and kept on accomplishing, and kept on believing that the next accomplishment would fill me up. That the next thing I did was going to be the thing that finally made me feel worthy of being alive, that the next thing would fill the deep dark emptiness. I would have never stopped had he not loved me enough to starve and suffocate my self-destructiveness to the point of near starvation. I would have let Satan bury me alive in a sea of accomplishments that would never add up to anything.
But he loved me, he loves me. He loves me enough to have wrecked my life so that I could rebuild it with him. And he loves you. Whatever you are going through, wherever you have been, he loves you enough to make you a complete a total wreck so that you will have no choice but to cry out to him. Where sin increases, his grace increased all the more.
He is the only one that can save you. There was no person alive that would have had the stamina to pull me out of the pit I was in, thank God, because if there was I would have looked right at them and said, “Can I call you Jesus?” But God knew better, he made sure no one else could save me, so that I would have no choice but to turn to him, and no choice but to acknowledge his love for me.
So, if you are in a pit right now, I promise you, there is no one who understands your pit better than Jesus. He has been with you this whole time, he knows you better than you know yourself. And there is no one else that can pull you out. Psalm 107, cry out to him, and he is there. He may have wrecked you, he may have allowed you to be wrecked, but only so that he could be right there to rebuild with you. He will build you back up, and he knows the plans he has for you, and believe me dear sister, they are far beyond your wildest dreams.