Faith
By: Sarah Stephenson
Today we have the honor of sharing Sarah’s story. Sarah is a dear friend and someone we know God is doing big things through. She’s a great friend to all, loves her family so well, and is seeking to live a life to help serve others. We’re so excited for you to read her guest blog…
“Faith. Faith in myself and faith in God that I am stronger than what I was before and that He is bigger than anything I will ever come across.
High school was not the greatest four years of my life. In fact, they were probably some of the worst. I suffered significantly with depression, anxiety, an addiction to self-harm, and a low sense of self-worth. Up until recently I have continued to wrestle with what it looks like to be a daughter of the living God and still accept the fact that I have been given a gift of depression and anxiety. That I had to break through an addiction of seeing myself as worthy of pain to get to where I am now. While it is not the wholeness that God intended me to live in, I am learning how He can turn it all for the good and how I am now able to empathize with those in similar situations since I am now in the beginning stages of pursuing a degree in counseling.
Faith is what has brought me this far. It is what will keep me going. Because in all honesty, there are days when I don’t want to believe that I was put through my past for something good to come out of it. I want to play the victim. However, I have come to love myself more than I ever have before. Through being able to love myself I am able to love others. And with the ability to love others comes a selfless desire to put away whatever victim circumstance I may be in to help others into a destiny of loving themselves where they are in that very moment.
The thing with self-love is that it is the most difficult love to give. For me, it’s been a process that I began just a few months ago and a process that will most likely continue for the entirety of my life simply because I am a human and I mess up sometimes. Loving one’s self is a journey that is unique to every individual. To be able to love yourself you see areas in which you need to improve but you see how far you have come thus far.
Personally, loving myself looks like being healthy, eating well, working out, spending time with friends and learning how to enjoy time alone. It is journaling, painting, processing with a great friend. It is simply knowing my needs and not being afraid to express them in situations that I am not comfortable with.
If there was only one thing that I would wish to say to every person that I come in contact with, it would be that you are exactly where you are for a purpose that is much greater than you may ever comprehend. But don’t be intimidated by that. Embrace it and do what you know how to do best because that is why God put you there.
Simply put: you do you. And God will show up if you welcome Him in. Just have faith in Him and faith that you will know what to do.”
Sarah.
