Daria's testimony. Part IV.

It can be said without a shadow of a doubt that Daria has considerable writing talent. In this installment, she presents the bumpy road of an already Christian woman.

To the Glory of God for you Daria:

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NEW BEGINNING...Again, I am not able to determine the exact circumstances, but at the same time I began to think more and more about God, and these thoughts began to crowd out the previous ones. I became more and more aware of His existence, and a conviction came into my consciousness: you have been wandering all the time, and you are still going nowhere.

Still occasionally, in some spare moments, I came across various interesting information, articles, films and documents that made me realize more clearly that The foundations of the Catholic Church are not even based on biblical teaching. From then on, my old theories slowly began to fall away, because understood that the Bible itself was certainly not written for the same purposes for which the Roman Catholic Church was founded - for if so, why the blatant departure from its contents?

Slowly, I was learning entirely new explanations for issues and phenomena that I once believed negated the existence of God. Slowly I began to connect the threads and a full and clear pattern of how world politics and religious authorities operate began to emerge. I discovered some important missing links that I could not count on from the self-absorbed and blinded by empty conspiracy theories of atheists or New Ageists, becoming like them. Somewhere around last September I began to receive more and more very clear signs from the Lord that could not have been coincidences.

Finally I really understood my mistake. But it wasn't anything spectacular yet - I couldn't talk to God, still I felt an unjustified uncertainty, reluctance, even fear. I tried, but even the thoughts in my head didn't add up to a coherent whole. I couldn't decide what I wanted to say to Him, where to begin, and whether I could even begin to communicate anything at all... I would close my eyes and literally stutter in my thoughts, immersed in guilt, not yet sure what I was doing.

But what's interesting is that every time I wanted to go back to certain unhealthy habits associated with anorexia, for some reason I started thinking about God again. I kept telling myself that if I started doing it again - if I forgot myself even once - no one would save me, no one would help me, and maybe that's how I would ultimately reject Him. I was afraid of that, deep down I really didn't want that, and I was slowly becoming disgusted with all the meanness that I had done without thinking for so many months. By the way, it was finally starting to break through my desensitization guilt and shame over how unfairly I treated my mother.

This continued for some time. I returned to this topic and thought whenever the opportunity arose. Instead of focusing on more information about the ubiquitous manipulation and the occult, I simply began to read about the Christian faith, the new birth, and building a relationship with God. It all seemed so complicated, complex, yet hopeful to me at the time. I felt that at that stage it was the only way I could turn for help.

One evening I decided that I couldn't go on living my lie, that my theories had long since fallen with a thud. I didn't yet know if I would be able to afford to make enough sacrifices to start building a real relationship with the Lord, but I already had some faith that He would just get me through it. I first turned to Him in prayer. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I declared that I wanted to give a good testimony with my life and act like Him. I repented of my sins, asked for forgiveness and continued to be guided along the right path.. Looking back, I think that first confession was too claiming, not very sincere. Unfortunately, I feel like I handed over to the Supreme then: "well, come on, show me what you can do", not fully aware that without my devotion and goodwill it would not happen.

This conventional turning away from sin and all the bad past in prayer did not have much effect. Of course, I didn't expect spectacular miracles right from the start. But the lack of improvement continued for weeks - I still felt a heavy weight in my heart, something still seemed wrong, I fell a lot more often than I might have expected. I have had brief periods of euphoria when I have enjoyed every little thing anew, seen more beauty and joy in everyday situations, managed to stick to new resolutions, and felt what seemed like the fullness of God's love...only to fall away from it altogether shortly thereafterOvercome by some renewed weakness. Again and again in acts of frustration I would distance myself from God, blaming Him for my own failures and every bad mood, reproachfully asking why He doesn't help me with it. Every so often I would stop talking to the Lord regularly / forget about it / set aside time to pray until it became apparent that I no longer had that time. Still the affairs of the everyday world reigned supreme, and I could only listen to the Bible from an audiobook, It was difficult for me to maintain inner peace, and all the stress was made worse by a deep sense of guilt for these constant deviations - on the other hand, I could not give up the things that came between me and God. I did not yet realize that I was waiting in vain for a miracle, without giving anything of myself and without talking to Him, or that I was still relying on my human reason and trying to be my own judge....

There was a time - late October of last year, to be exact - when I came down with a nasty flu. Out of nowhere, without any previous signs and with such force that I have never experienced before. For the first three days with an extreme fever I was only able to sleep, and even then it was impossible to get out of bed. During this second phase of my illness, a thought occurred to me: Since I already have time off that I cannot use for other things, why don't I finally start to read the Bible really, honestly, and thoroughly? Maybe I will devote more time to God, maybe it was meant to be? Funnily enough, some time before this happened, I read somewhere an interesting post by a Christian woman discussing in detail the subject of requests for healing (more from the point of view of light illnesses, not necessarily from the very severe or fatal ones). It made it germinate in my mind for the first time the realization that even such ailments the Lord may want to use for our growth in faith, so in essence we should be grateful for them and humbly try to give that extra time to God....

Unfortunately. Back then, frustration over "wasted" time and lost schoolwork still won out over me. I got busy with something else entirely, and forgot about that suggestion.

I soon recovered, went back to school for only about a week and... I was out of it again in no time. My illness lasted for about a month and a half, when I would either get better or all the symptoms would come back and make me stay at home longer or give up extra drawing lessons. Actually, this alone taught me a certain distance... On the one hand, I was annoyed by how many art classes I was skipping, but I was beginning to understand that I had no control over it, and the most important thing was to finally take care of my health and get out of it once and for all.

Before I came to this conclusion, however, it was again getting harder and harder for me mentally. On the one hand, I felt guilty and ungrateful because of my constant departures from God; on the other, I was irritated because my illness did not even allow me to study normally or to devote time to painting and further development. I felt that I was slipping further and further down the ladder. I was failing neither here nor there, I was letting God and myself down.

One night, when I was thinking about all this, the bitterness overflowed and I simply cried like a little child. I cried for a long time in utter humility, silently calling out to Him, apologizing, admitting that I really don't know anything, I can't accomplish anything on my own, and I really, wholeheartedly need Him to reveal to me what He thinks is best for me, because He alone can repair all the damage in me. Then for the first time I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, fI felt an incredible peace and love as if He wanted to soothe my crying. And for the first time, ready for any sacrifice, I trusted Christ implicitly. I remember that I was exhausted with all the emotions that had been running through me before and I quickly fell asleep, but with a great sense of hope and joy.

The very next day, Asking for the Holy Spirit's guidance in prayer, I separately confessed to the Lord all the sins I regularly committed and begged for deliverance from each of them. That's what helped me the most - understanding what was really driving me away from God and what was causing me to not really give Him anything of myself. That evening, during that prayer, I reached into the deepest recesses of my past, pulling out all the things that were weighing on my heart, filling it with shame and reminding me of myself over and over again. Of course, the Lord knows my heart, and all of my past - and right from the get-go I was under the mistaken assumption that it would be enough if I simply declared that I was turning away from it all. But He wanted me to be the one to consciously understand and confess exactly what had gone wrong in my past life and what I needed to avoid from now on. I could not be ashamed or embarrassed to simply return to these things - but rather bear the burden of my guilt with full responsibility and faith in the healing. Besides, if I could in any way resemble a Christian before, it was only a very, very lukewarm one - remembering God only when I was in a good enough mood....

It was then that I finally understood that He had already forgiven me, that He was willing to accept me with a clean slate and write it all over again. I also learned to "forgive" myself (which was by far the hardest part, and I'm still constantly working on it today), and then forgiving other people's wrongs proved surprisingly easy and accessible. For many years, somewhere in my subconscious, I blamed every single person who had ever hurt me for my failures and broken relationship with myself. I knew how I had been negatively affected by their words and actions, and for that hurt I gave them an unquenchable, powerless, and suffocating hatred that accompanied them for years. When I surrendered my heart to Jesus, He made me realize that all this old suffering is irrelevant to my new life. The wounds are slowly healing. No one owes me anything anymore, no one else in my thoughts needs to be held responsible for any of my past failures - it's all gone."And Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they divided His garments among them, casting lots." (Luke 23:34)

I no longer had any excuse by which my own cruelty to people could be justified. The fact that I had reflected someone else's evil on me didn't matter - my entire future depended from that moment on nothing but my own relationship with God and His work in my heart.

I began to understand that if I hadn't gone through those complicated, difficult years of life, and if I hadn't found myself at the complete moral bottom - and at that very stage, in humility, I hadn't started to look for Him, to beg, to call out - I probably wouldn't have met Him until the end of my life, persisting in my delusion of happiness. I used to envy the eternal success in life of 3/4 of the people around me, respected and esteemed despite their own noticeable hypocrisy and falsehood (the latter additionally drove me crazy). Today I am infinitely grateful to God, that He didn't let me lead such a life and kept real happiness in store for me 🙂 I am beginning to notice God's much longer plan, thanks to which, although I thought I was losing everything, in reality I was supposed to gain infinitely more... Awareness of that also helped me forgive to a great extent and it lifted a huge burden from my heart... And I myself have gained distance to all bigger and smaller failures.

It wasn't long before the Lord revealed to me that I should ask to be set free from the things that were taking up the most time and consuming the most of my energy, and that always drew me farthest away from Him. I didn't want them to lead me in the opposite direction again either, but some ambitions and activities I just couldn't let go of on their own. I felt powerless in the face of these empty worldly aspirations... I turned to Him, asking Him to simply discourage me in some way, to disgust me with them - whatever. To this day I can't get over how quickly He brought about such a change in me. Of course not. For so many long months, until that moment, I didn't even think that my lifestyle at the time would interfere in any way with my desire to build a relationship with God. I was convinced that I didn't need to change anything. Whenever I thought about it (and this topic kept coming back to my head like a boomerang) I kept looking for excuses that after all... God gave me this artistic talent, so surely He wants me to use it, to be successful, not to waste my precious days. I completely misunderstood what things really matter to the Lord, and not to my deeply rooted habits in the "world", which at first I could not, or did not fully want to get rid of. In my opinion, this quote from the book of Sirach about wisdom fits perfectly in this context:

"She's going to deal with him perversely at first:
fear and apprehension will bring upon him
and will torment him with her flogging
Until he trusts his soul.
She will try him with her injunctions.
Eventually, the straight path itself will come to him,
will delight him
and will impart its secrets to him.
But if he goes astray, he will leave him and deliver him to his fall."

It was because of this passage, "from the first reading," that I made the final decision and began writing my testimony.

I am learning the humility that has been so hard to come by in my life. I've learned to better control my emotions and if I occasionally lose my nerve, there's an instant painful stab of guilt in my heart and an improvement - I don't run away into total unreflectiveness like I used to. I have a new understanding of what my family went through because of me, and I try to make it up to them as best I can.

My homosexual inclinations, which for five years (since the beginning of middle school) had been hinting at them to a greater or lesser degree, disappeared. The Lord freed me from them, giving me a completely new perspective. I have been able to understand the real reason for them and, since the reason has been eliminated, I am no longer enslaved by these thoughts.

I wake up and go to sleep with such peace in my heart that cannot be compared to anything I have ever felt in my life. I see more beauty around me and have stopped chasing empty success and fame. I still paint, but only when I really have the desire and inspiration to do so, putting the kind of schedule Christ wants for me first. And this I can say with certainty: I have never felt more fulfilled in a life that has only now become more meaningful.

Since asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I have come to understand the Bible better and better, read it with pleasure, and find it so easy to relate the message of God's Word to my whole life....