The past few months have been hard for me to be honest. I haven’t felt so dry in the longest time, and I thought, being in the Community long enough, I’d know better than to let the dryness get the better of me. But it did. This post isn’t really meant to inspire or provide any deep insight, but as a fellow Catholic and most important brother in Christ, I owe it to everyone who prayed and cared for me an explanation.
After finishing school with a diploma in December, I thought that finding work and being able to finally start growing up would all just come right after. I finished with a counselling diploma, but I knew I wasn’t quite ready to jump right into the counsellor’s seat, so I thought my credentials could at least provide me with some sort of introductory career in the field of mental health.
It was really discouraging for the first couple of months, but I had the support of my loved ones and especially my CFC-Youth family to help keep my spirits up. But it was just rejection after rejection, less and less call backs, and more reasons to not believe in myself and want to push through. My prayer life definitely suffered, all my hard work in fighting lust and plans of becoming a better man of God went down the drain.
But I kept keeping up appearances, as if that all of a sudden made things better for myself and those around me. But all I did was lie, hide, and avoid.
It wasn’t until East Cluster’s Discovery Camp which literally just happened this past weekend that the Lord decided to show me how my suffering meant anything. How it finally made sense why I felt the way I felt.
One of my best friend’s was giving the last talk of DC, and all I kept thinking was, “Wow”. Knowing her from before and seeing her growth and seeing her push through her struggles and everything just finally came together for her at this moment to give one of the most moving talks I’ve ever heard. Maybe it was because of how close I was to her, maybe it was how she spoke with realness and understanding. But I knew from that point on I wanted to be like that. I was sick and tired of the dryness and at that moment, I completely and fully surrendered myself to the Lord at that point in time. I confidently gave him my hurts, pains, doubts, agony, and sadness because I wanted to so badly be with Him.
After her talk, I couldn’t even affirm her properly because so much was going on in my head. All my anguish and sorrow was meant for the Lord to take at that time. I’m still hoping and praying for my career to get underway, but I know if I ever feel dry again, I don’t want to wait around for another DC, I don’t want to wait around for some event and hope that it has that same effect on me. I want to lift everything up I have to Him NOW. Not at WNAC, not at the next CA or cluster event, but Right. Gosh Darn. Now.
