“Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid”

Those were the words I would repeat to myself, again and again, on nights that I thought I would not survive. I was alone in a dirty bare room and it was 3am. I’d been trying to steer clear of drugs for a couple of months now. I had decided, on the night that blood started gushing out of my nose, that I would eventually crash, burn and die if I didn’t do something, anything, to stop the wild, horrendous life I was living. Every day was one long cluttered haze. Every moment was unbearable. I was on drugs, overweight, sick and going nowhere. My life had the reject stamp on it.

And the worst part of it was, I was terribly, horribly alone. I felt like a living corpse. I lived like a zombie.

 

Without any kind of alcohol or drugs to ease the powerful, raw, restless pain inside of me, I was a mess. So I did the only thing I thought I could do. I locked myself in the bare, smelly apartment that was my living quarters, and I sat and waited for something to happen, something to change. I knew that if I let myself out of the house that I would be found in a gutter somewhere, dead. So, night after night, I sat straight up on my old bed, in clothes that I hadn’t washed for months, and repeated this phrase, crying out to an invisible God, in the wild hope that maybe fear would leave me, that maybe death would stop chasing me, and that maybe, one day, peace would find me.

It is years later now, and I look back upon those days with a deep sense of relief that that life has been saved and rescued by God. My soul is healed, my heart is whole, and there is a sweetness to my life now that is truly profound. I am a different woman and I wake up every day with a rising hope in my heart. Life is filled with colour, vibrancy, passion, and energy. I surprise myself every day with who I’ve become. And all because, one day, the Creator of the Universe came to my tiny little room, where I thought the world had chewed on me and spat me out, and gave my dying heart a breath of life.

Journeying through this path has not been easy, and there are days where, like anyone, my human heart wrestles with hurts and issues beyond my control. But I am not alone now. I have the presence of an incredible God who is there to offer life, love, comfort and counsel. Yet, in the quiet moments of our time together, I wonder about the other ones just like me. The ones who have been left behind, who sit in their room, alone and hurting, unable to go back to where they came from but completely incapable of moving forward. The ones who are stuck like glue, motionless and gathering dust like old forgotten toys.

Inner fear is a monster that grows inside of us. Sometimes it is inflicted upon us from birth, sometimes the lives we live let terrible things happen to us that are beyond our control. Our newspapers splash out headlines of death and tragedy every single day. But what about the tragedies that aren’t seen from a newspaper headline? What about the deaths of people who look like just another member of the human race, who live a “normal” life on the outside, but are in complete and utter agony on the inside? The world that we live in is, most times, a cruel and unsafe place for the broken and hurting. Hearts that were full of dreams die a slow death. Nevertheless, there are some people who are able to carry on until the day they leave this earth. The rest, however, get caught up in a downward spiral that leads to a total destruction of body and soul.

How terribly sad it would be if those ones truly died before they truly lived!

 

And so I say this. To the ones who get through the day but actually lie about in the shadows, there is hope for the soul. To the ones who only know and understand constant, and ongoing anguish, know that there is a different knowledge, a different way. There is absolutely nothing that can mend a bloody and bruised heart, there is no pleasure that can take away the pain, except for the One who formed your very bones, the One who created your existence. When the world around you seeks to tear you down, He seeks to build you up. He can make what is unclean clean. He can take the ugly, the diseased, the terrible things we cannot face ourselves, and clean it up. He will never leave, never give up, never fail and never die. He can show you a love that will calm you and bring peace to the storm of your life. He is always there. We cannot look for Him in any building or place. He is right there, right next to you, waiting for you to ask Him to come inside of your secret place. And, if this sounds scary, if it’s frightening to let go of the old and ask for the new, let me repeat to you the words that came to me all those years ago, words that I now see are from an Unseen God who sees everything and can do anything, even wipe away fearfulness if we just ask:

“Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid”

Author: Bianca Simone Mannie