Over the past year, my life changed in ways I don’t even fully know how to explain yet. And for a long time, the easiest thing to say was: I lost my way.
That was the sentence I kept repeating to myself.
I lost my way.
I lost myself.
I stopped being who I was.
But the more I sit with it, the more I realize that isn’t actually true.
I don’t think I lost my way.
I think I got hurt—and then I drifted.
And I think there are a lot of people who understand exactly what I mean by that.
Because sometimes life doesn’t just “happen.” Sometimes genuinely bad things happen. Things that change how you see yourself, how you see the world, how you see God. The kind of pain that doesn’t just make you sad—it changes your entire relationship with hope.
And nobody really talks honestly about what that does to your faith.
People love talking about God when everything is beautiful. When prayers are being answered. When healing is happening. When the testimony sounds clean and inspiring and easy to repost online.
But what about when you’re angry?
What about when you’re exhausted?
What about when your life starts feeling so heavy that even speaking to God feels distant?
What about when you still believe in Him, but you don’t understand Him anymore?
That’s where I was.
I turned my back on God because I was angry.
I turned my back on myself because I didn’t think I was worthy anymore.
And the hardest part is that I knew better. Faith wasn’t just some small part of my life before this—it was me. Everybody around me knew that. Everything I did, every decision I made, every step I took, I brought to God first. I prayed constantly. I moved with intention. I genuinely felt aligned.
And despite everything I was going through back then, I was happy.
Not because life was perfect, but because I felt rooted. I felt held together by something bigger than myself.
Then everything started collapsing.
And slowly, I stopped being that person.
Not overnight. Never overnight.
It happened little by little.
I stopped praying with intention.
I stopped checking in with God throughout my day.
I stopped pausing before decisions.
I stopped expecting peace.
I stopped seeing a future for myself.
Because truthfully, I had convinced myself I was dying in some way. Maybe not physically, maybe not literally, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally—I felt like I was disappearing. And when you feel like that for long enough, you stop investing in your future. You stop nurturing yourself. You stop protecting your spirit because part of you starts believing there’s nothing left worth protecting.
And that mindset changed me.
The things that once felt safe started feeling empty.
The things that once grounded me started feeling distant.
And I adapted to that distance instead of fighting for closeness.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you:
Walking away from God doesn’t actually make the pain lighter.
At least it didn’t for me.
It just made me feel more disconnected from myself.
Because eventually I realized something that hit me so deeply I couldn’t ignore it anymore:
My relationship with God wasn’t gone.
It was interrupted.
That’s it.
Interrupted by grief.
Interrupted by fear.
Interrupted by anger.
Interrupted by disappointment.
Interrupted by survival mode.
But not gone.
And I think a lot of people need to hear that.
Because so many people think that if they drift, if they question, if they stop praying for a while, if they get angry at God, that somehow means they’ve ruined the relationship forever.
But real relationships don’t disappear the second things get difficult.
If anything, I think my anger proved my relationship with God was real. I cared enough to feel hurt. I cared enough to wrestle with it. Indifference is easy. Anger usually comes from closeness.
And now I’m at this strange but beautiful point in my life where I’m realizing something else too:
Coming back to God does not mean becoming who I used to be.
I’m not here to perfectly recreate the version of me from last year. That girl existed before certain heartbreaks, certain fears, certain realizations. I can honor her without trying to become her again.
I’m still me.
I just look different now.
I feel different now.
I understand life differently now.
This isn’t me “going backwards.”
This is me rebuilding.
And honestly? I think that’s more real anyway.
Because I don’t want a faith that only exists when life feels good. I don’t want a relationship with God that collapses the second things get painful. I want something deeper than that. Something honest. Something that can survive hard questions and ugly emotions and uncertainty.
I want a faith that can hold grief too.
So now, instead of trying to force myself into becoming “perfect” again, I’m starting smaller.
One honest prayer.
One intentional pause.
One decision that aligns with the woman I actually want to become.
One moment of turning back instead of running further away.
Quiet consistency.
That’s what rebuilding looks like for me right now.
And maybe that’s what healing actually is—not becoming untouched again, but becoming honest again.
So if you’re reading this and you feel like you’ve lost your way, maybe ask yourself this first:
Did you actually lose yourself?
Or did you just get hurt badly enough that you stopped recognizing who you were?
Because there is a difference.
And maybe coming back to God isn’t about earning His presence again. Maybe it’s about realizing He never actually left in the first place.
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