Defeat: Seeking Hope During the Mountains and Valleys of Life
I don’t know about you, but 2020 has not been my year.
Back when Corona was just a beer and not a history-making global pandemic, I was already struggling with my mental health. Truth be told, I have been battling waves of anxiety and depression for about two years now. Throw social distancing and a shelter-in-place order into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.
I realized I was really not doing well when I broke down crying over being killed for the millionth time playing my husband’s Star Wars Battlefront II video game. “Defeated” in big glowing letters shone brightly above me as I stomped up the stairs to get ready for bed. When my husband called after me to see what was wrong, I simply yelled back that I am just not good at anything anymore. Dramatic? Yes. Is that how I truly felt in the moment? Also yes.
You see, in that moment I realized “defeated” has become my new identity.
For those of you that did not catch my story the last time I wrote for Unapologetic, here are the cliff notes: I felt a call to children’s ministry and quit a stable job that I loved; I enrolled in divinity school as a full time student; I started working as a children’s minister at a church where I ended up encountering a great deal of hurt and disappointment; I dropped out of divinity school and left vocational ministry forever.
Following that experience, I have struggled immensely with my faith and have even questioned if God is real. My identity was so wrapped up in who I believed God and Jesus were to me that I crumbled when I was left with nothing but silence to countless prayers. I also lost the one thing I considered myself to be good at and which makes my heart sing: working with children. Thus began a long, fruitless journey of trying to find something to fill the empty void that I was left with. I have read hundreds of books, taken dance lessons, traveled, gone to therapy, and got a great job with an awesome company… .but none of those things have given me my joy back. Because deep down, I know my true identity and worth can only be found in Christ.
It seems the only prayer I have strength to mutter next is “where do I go from here”? How am I supposed to be motivated to attend a worship service every Sunday when church no longer feels like a safe place? How am I supposed to learn the stories of the faithful before me when scripture no longer comes alive for me? How am I supposed to believe that God loves the world when I and so many others feel abandoned by him? I am weighed down by my identity of defeat, and yet I still have hope.
I have hope that the God I remember on my mountain top is the same God I find myself searching for while wandering around in the desert. I have hope that God will grant me new passions or giftings that I can devote my life to. I have hope that the pain I have experienced in the past was not a waste, but a foundation for something greater to come.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. ”
But above all, I hope that my identity can once again be rooted in Christ -because through him all things bent and broken are made new.
-Love, Sarah Kroll
Instagram: @sarahkroll_