Diary of a Healing Girl: Stage 3 – Salvation and Developing a Personal Faith in God

I was lonely again, this time because of a different reason. This is the healing chapter of the Heartbroken & Healing Girl Series. Read the previous post here: Diary of a Healing Girl: Stage 2 – Healing not Healed, A Brutal Awakening.

Disclaimer: This is written from my point of view. Every relationship has two people and every story has two sides. I am writing this hoping that one day a person going through what I went through will read and be encouraged and know that it gets better. It did for me (Sorry I gave away the ending😂).

In the aftermath of that outburst with my friends, and the brutal awakening that I may have been healing but I was still very clearly much further from being healed than I thought, I was back on my fateful couch, 4 walls staring back at me, alone, feeling like shit again.

That Monday took me back to weeks earlier when I used to feel like I was drowning. I felt so lonely on that day not only because I was physically alone, but because I had come to recognise that I was alone in all aspects.

That I could be surrounded by people and still be completely alone.

I had a pretty bad night that Monday. The following morning was no better. To top it all off, that evening the sadness came crashing down yet again. I started crying repeatedly, for the first time in a while. I had not felt like that in around 2 weeks or more. The loneliness was quite much.

As I went to bed that evening, I sighed for the millionth time. I was fully aware that I was totally alone and that felt really sad.

My bedtime routine was pretty simple, I would pull down the mosquito net, switch off the lights, get in bed and turn my phone torch on to read the Bible, say a quick prayer and sleep.

I had started reading the Bible nightly a couple of weeks before. From this little Pink-covered NIV Bible my sister and her husband had given me for my Master’s graduation as a present in June 2019. I had only started using it in Malindi nearly 2 years later and I would keep it on the bed.

That night as I picked my Bible, I remember saying out loud, “IT’S JUST YOU AND ME NOW”. I am not sure if I meant my Bible or God, but whatever it was, I really meant it from deep within. I had finally accepted that I was alone in this journey. That no human or material thing was capable of helping me, no matter the love or the abundance respectively.

The way I read the Bible is that I open any page and read whatever is on there. Up until that night, I had never thought of reading any particular part. Yet as I opened, I felt the need to open the New Testament, and so I opened the back part of the Bible.

I opened by chance and read 2nd Corinthians 6:3-10. The verse that stuck with me said “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”. I felt comforted. Like I should rejoice no matter how deep my sorrow inside was.

Paul’s Hardships
3 We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

I felt as though I had been guided by an unseen force to read that particular part. The comfort was enough. I thought maybe I would sleep okay that night.

Usually, I would just end my reading there and make a short prayer before sleeping. Yet that night I found myself looking at the verse before the paragraph: 2nd Corinthians 6:2

For he says,

“In the time of my favor I heard you,
    and in the day of salvation I helped you.”^[a]

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

2nd Corinthians 6:2

As an avid researcher and a sceptic, I went on google to check the meaning of that last part. But I knew what it meant. I knew what that verse required from me. I knew what I needed to do if I ever had hopes of getting through my journey in one piece and maybe better. Because 10 years ago, that was the thing I lost.

Brief Recap, Initial Faith.

I grew up in a Christian Family. Raised by a born again mother who made sure I went to church Sunday School every Sunday. There I learnt about Jesus and how he died for us on the cross.

I was always an active kid, which meant I was always very vocal and expressive everywhere I went. I participated in everything there was to participate in. From church dramas, singing, preaching at crusades at the age of 10-12, church camps, I did it all. At some point, I started identifying as a born again Christian. I confirmed it in church but I wasn’t even a teenager yet when it happened.

Eventually, I carried this vigour to high school where I actively participated in Christian Union from the word go. I held various positions of leadership throughout high school, which culminated in me being the Christian Union Chairlady when I was in my final year of High School.

Through it all, I was very much born again. However, my faith was still very much attached to my mother and my home church. I never got to develop my own relationship with God in the way I should have. I did what the church said I needed to do and felt bad for doing or wanting to do things that the church and my mother said were wrong.

One very specific case was wearing trousers. I was taught at a young age that it was a sin to wear trousers as a girl. According to Deuteronomy 22:5: “⁵ A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.”

So for the better part between ages 8-17, I spent wrestling the inner voice that said it wasn’t wrong and the external voice that was loud and said it was.

The other day, my mom reminded me that when I was around 10, I would beg her to buy me “trousers for girls”. Maybe because my tender brain interpreted it that if a trouser was specifically made with girls in mind, then it did not constitute men’s clothing, and hence not a sin to wear.

This example doesn’t mean to say that my church was wrong to teach me that or that anyone else who holds that belief is wrong. It shows that I did not have enough faith on my own to be able to interpret the Bible in my own way and to be able to judge for myself what was right or wrong.

Long story short, up until the time I was 17, my sense of right or wrong was attached to the faith of my church and my family and not my own.

When I was 17, something happened, something that I have never told anyone. It challenged the very core of my faith. I was a confused 17-year-old crying and thinking God hated me for something that was not my fault. Something that I would have known if I had any sort of personal relationship with Him. But unfortunately, I didn’t.

The next Sunday, I showered, dressed up and tried to go to church as I did every Sunday. Yet for the next two consecutive Sundays in early 2011, I wasn’t able to go to church because I thought God hated me. I gave up on the 3rd Sunday. In the end, I stopped going to church.

At first, I felt guilty but soon it became a normal thing. Soon after I turned 18 I would get a casino job in Malindi, meet a group of young people who loved to party and discover that I really enjoyed it. I started drinking then (only black ice, a beer of some sort. By the time I joined Campus in 2012, I naturally made friends who like to party. I learned how to drink Vodka and hard liquor and the rest is history.

The first year of campus, I went to church a few times but soon Sundays were spent resting after the weekend’s partying. Soon after, I would only go to church for occasions such as fundraising or as part of a mob mentality.

In those years between 17-27, there was a time in the middle where I doubted that God existed and I started to think of myself as an Agnostic. And maybe I was for a while. I lived a carefree life, holding moral and human values that had learned as I grew up, having as much fun as I could.

I do not REGRET a thing about those 10 years. Deep down, I believe it was necessary somehow. In fact, I had a lot of fun on Campus that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

End of Recap, New Faith

The purpose of this recap is to make the gravity of this next part as huge as it should be.

Back in May 2021, on that king-size bed of my 2-bedroom apartment, alone, surrounded by white walls, I read a word that I opened in very odd chances, a word that told me that it was time to come back home.

When I had lost everything within me, when I was broken and I did not know how to pick myself up, I was reminded of something I always had and didn’t realise.

Salvation.

Most people may interpret the term salvation in different ways.

For me, Salvation means accepting Jesus Christ as my personal saviour and living the rest of my life in obedience to His word. Ephesians 6:10-17 is a verse that guides me on how to conduct myself.

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephesians 6:10-17

That night I accepted Jesus into my heart, with tears of joy and one mission.

To develop a personal relationship with God so that I know him personally.

From the word go, I did not want Religion to be my guide. It was what I followed when I was a kid and that did not end well. This time I want to be spiritual. Learning daily what God needs from me as Phillis and asking him to forgive me, when I fall short. Which I do, because I am human.

So does this mean I changed? Yes and No.

Yes, because now my thinking process is different, I have to make a decision based on what is right or wrong according to my relationship with God and what I read in the Bible. I pray to God every day to strengthen my gut so I always discern what that really means.

No, because the moral and human values I have always followed are the same. While some of them are now stronger because of my faith, they are still the same.

I find that most of what I used to do, I still do because it wasn’t wrong then and it isn’t wrong now either.

From that day, my life was renewed. Through faith, the pieces that were broken started rebuilding one by one. A personal faith.

I was still healing and not healed but this time I was healing in the right direction.

My 28th birthday was fast approaching, which would prove to be a milestone in itself, making it the next stage of my healing journey and as you will find out, it wasn’t all as smooth sailing as I wanted. It was both scary and exciting. Yet another proof of how messy healing can be. Stay tuned. Birthday Blues and Birthday Blessings.

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