Out of Egypt I Called My Son

I had my moments in life. There are stories about myself that I cannot explain. I believe God gave me my dark experiences for only me to understand. I cannot explain them, I can only learn from them.

I needed grounding. I needed to make sense of the spiritual whirlwind I was in. That was the time when I did not know God and during those days I was completely lost. I was dying because I did not know how to take care of myself. I didn’t know how to love myself. That may seem unusual to you, but for me, I only knew how to hate myself.

I was oppressed by the negative energy in my mind. It enslaved me by keeping me paralyzed from ever truly knowing myself; thereby, not having the ability to function normally. I was bound to always be in a state of hopeless confusion and insecurity. I wanted normalcy in my life, but I didn’t know what that was. I was a failure in my mind. I convinced myself that I was useless and had no purpose.

That is when I was hospitalized for being suicidal. I hadn’t a single shred of desire to live. My spirit had completely died to the idea that there was a reason to go on. I was killing my physical body because I could take no satisfaction in caring for myself. I was dying by my own hand.

I am telling you this because my story is now encouraging. I have experienced darkness on an extreme level, and I survived. There is power in being a survivor. I realize that most people have not lost themselves in such a way, but we can all relate to depression in some way. It is a type of oppression that steals our self away by lying to it. Out of my turmoil I have learned. I learned what darkness is and that it is nothing more than a lie. Once you know the lie it does not have a hold on you anymore. There is strength in truth.

We all have experienced oppression on some level. Oppression is a place that cheats. It somehow has the ability to suffocate, convince, and steal away any hope one has for being the person they are truly suppose to be. Oppression is darkness. It is the lie that is in the world that even comes to you from the most intimate places — a parent, spouse, child or place of employment.

You might ask, “Why does God allow bad things to happen?” Darkness is there because it can be good. “How can bad be good?”, you might ask. Bad can be good when we understand the reason it is there. When we are captured by darkness, we cannot see why, but if we persevere because we believe in good we will learn a deeper truth about goodness, ourselves and God. When life challenges us, oddly enough, we should actually be thankful, since overcoming a challenge reveals a deep-rooted truth just waiting to be discovered.

Darkness is like Egypt or any other place that does not allow a person to be or see. Darkness wants you. It desires to control you so that it can use you and burn up every ounce of energy you have until you are so tired you just completely cater to it, loosing yourself in the process. Eventually, you are enslaved by it and believe what it tells you about yourself, so then you do what it tells you to do. You are not happy, but you don’t know how to be — You are in Egypt.

My message for you is that oppression is suppose to happen to you. It happens to all of us on some level. God puts oppressive, challenging situations all around us because He wants to push us to identify to who we truly are. Do we believe there is more to our identity or do we believe that we are slaves to some other identity? The story of Egypt is there to tell us to believe.

Know that you are good — God wants you to know that you are part of Him. He wants to show you who you truly are. Never give-up believing that God is good and that He has good things in store for you.

~ Just never give up!