Resurrection Power
My favorite holiday used to be Christmas, for pretty much my whole life. I enjoyed how it fell directly eight days after my birthday and I felt special knowing I shared a birthday month with Jesus. 2015 I was proposed to on Christmas Eve and, spoiler alert: that didn’t end well. The following year I made my suicide attempt. I thought I would hate Christmas forever, but have since found that while this is not the case, I now find so much more meaning and connection to Christ’s resurrection. I wrote a poem specifically about this feeling of dying and coming back to life as it relates to my constantly revolving state of mind. It’s on the page titled poetry, if you’d like to read it. Easter last year was pivotal for me, because I felt like I had come back to life, following the hardships of March 2019 (which is also a blog post on here if you wanna check that out.) I was in Georgia and got to celebrate with a lot of family that was in town for my uncle’s funeral. This year, despite the fact that Easter weekend for my family did NOT contain a funeral of a family member, my mood was a lot more somber.
Captured by: Juliana Ukiomogbe
Here is where I say that I have been having a hard time in this quarantine, specifically last week. I was hoping to enjoy Holy Week getting closer to Jesus all week long, spending a lot of time in prayer etc. Instead I was having meltdowns over people eating my leftover chili, and using my headphones. It was a very hard week for me, emotionally. I wasn’t able to do much of anything and I stayed in my room rolled up tight in layers of blankets for at least two days. You see, the current state of the world has gotten me down and I was feeling powerless against it all. I mean, I am powerless against it all. Everybody is having a hard time right now and on the one hand, I take immense comfort in knowing that we are all in this together and not alone in our pain. Whether we are just adjusting to spending all our time with our family, or spending all our time alone. Whether we are grappling with the loss of sources of income, our plans being altered or struggling with sickness/ loss. On the other hand, I am so very aware of all the sadness and pain that people are feeling, and it hurts to know that everybody is at the least disappointed and at the most, devastated. At times the weight of it all seems like it is crushing my chest and multiplying my own feelings by a thousand.
Captured by: Juliana Ukiomogbe
However, in my desire to be inspirational, uplifting and encouraging during this time, I didn’t even notice it was getting harder and harder to look on the bright side of things for myself. But there have been a lot of bright sides for me: my family is safe and healthy, the people that I know who were sick with Covid-19 have been recuperating. And people have been so generous to help me out when I was in a tight pinch a couple weeks ago with getting a bill paid. I am still making some amount of money from Starbucks, despite the fact that I’m not working. I have been more connected than ever to my church via online church services and zoom connect groups. My therapist has moved to telehealth so I’ve been able to talk to her weekly instead of monthly. Not to mention in general I’ve been in a much better mental state since November, and have gotten better at . The good and the bad exist simultaneously, and in copious amounts of both. It’s hard to keep up with and feels like a constant game of tug-of-war in my brain. I am trying to not dismiss the negative, while magnifying the positive, to maintain focus through a lens of gratitude.
Captured by: Juliana Ukiomogbe
I had a realization one day, when this worship song by Bethel Music titled Spirit Move came on my Spotify shuffle. I had always liked the intro of this song because it starts with: “I feel it in my bones, You’re about to move/ I feel it in the wind, you’re about to ride in” and as surely as I sang that verse God reminded me that He knows what He’s doing and He has a plan of action. Isaiah 43:19 says “Behold, 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.” I am choosing to believe in faith that through the grief and heartache, good will still come of this season. Indeed there has already been some good. Where I am powerless to change so many things, I was reminded by the bridge of this song that when God moves He can change everything and I have to have complete faith that He is the only one that can change everything.
I've been learning how to play worship songs in quarantine and I'm starting with ones that I think are especially necessary to sing and declare during this time.
God is the author and finisher of everything. Only He can fix this situation, and because I believe in His sovereign power, I can come to Him with prayers of hope instead of cries of worry. Instead of being worried for my friends in the healthcare field that don’t have adequate personal protection equipment, I can pray that they’re covered by the blood of Jesus. I remembered that I know the one who has complete power and I can be an agent of change by speaking the name of Jesus over all situations and interceding on behalf of our nation, and our world. At my church we have a saying: prayer is not a last resort, it is our first response. So if you have been struggling with your faith in this season, I urge you to remember that our God literally rose from the dead some 2000 plus years ago. There is nothing He cannot do. With that in mind, I am praying for miraculous healing, for a revamped economy, for divine comfort and peace for all who are mourning and for all of you. My prayer is that wherever you are you are safe and healthy, not just physically but mentally as well. And that your stimulus checks come in a timely fashion. And all God’s people said?!
Amen!
Special thanks to Korin Blake-Chung for editing.
(Here’s a little playlist I made of worship songs that remind me of the power of God and the power of prayer, if you want something to listen to.)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ubKvYjkCGXKB7RX1ijyqo
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