The Facial Journey

The past few months have been a test of my faith in ways that I honestly did not think I could handle. It will soon be 3 months since half my face went limp from Bell’s Palsy. No one can notice now but the emotional scars are still there and it is taking a long time of healing. At first, I leaned 100% on God. People were praying for me, laying hands of love and healing on me. I could see that in me God was giving the strength to handle this. But after a few weeks, I let my guard of leaning on God down and Satan’s schemes took hold. I replaced reliance on God with reliance on myself. I took the stance of being super-strong and not letting it get to me that I talked with a slur or that my left side did not move when I smiled. But that did not last because I was scared that this could be permanent. So my reliance then turned to fear, which is where Satan wanted me. I felt crippled, not physically as much as spiritually. This fear dug in deep and invited his friends of depression and self-pity to join him in my life. On the outside, I was keeping up appearances, but eventually my close friends started seeing things were not right but my pride was too strong to admit where I had dug myself. Oh there were times when I would reach out my hand to friend and pull myself up a little ways out of the mire but eventually, because I was not replacing the fear with hope, I would sink further than I was before. The past two-three weeks have been the roughest. God was calling me back to him, I could feel his calling but was fearful of the journey back. Satan is good at his job. He orchestrated work frustrations to increase and personal sins/struggles to consume my thoughts. So instead of leaning on God, I became more despondent that I was losing it. My thoughts were becoming more and more dark. My façade of everything is going ok was crumbling. I began to ask for prayers for my dark negative thoughts. I wanted for the despondency/depression to go away. My brothers/sisters were faithful, they prayed and it ceased but deep down still knew that there were deeper issues at hand. My dependency on God had ceased. I don’t know exactly when but it had. This was playing out in my heart and actions. Work was not even remotely fulfilling. I was tired of being depressed, especially around my friends. My fears of rejection and loneliness were increasing. It was a vicious loop. So this week a change occurred. I don’t know what it was but Tuesday morning I woke up decided that this had to stop. I can’t pinpoint what changed but I started realizing how stupid I had become. It is now Thursday and the actual circumstances have not changed but I am handling temptation better and my willingness to control is pretty low. I guess I finally awakened to the fact that God does a much better job than I do in trying to work out my life. I look back to when it first happened and still hold to the truth that I am glad this happened. I only wish I had given my fear to God instead of internalizing it.