The Life Preserver

 My first introduction to God came just before I entered recovery.

I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening.

I won’t even try to explain it.

Words could never do it justice.

What I received was something I had searched for my entire life without knowing it.

Faith.

For the first time, I experienced a love and a presence that reached places inside me no person ever had.

It felt as though God had thrown me a life preserver at the exact moment I was drowning.

And I held on with everything I had.

Because I was drowning.

I was drowning in pain.

In shame.

In guilt.

In self-hatred.

God became my closest companion.

I talked with Him every day as though we were dear friends walking through life together.

I trusted Him.

That trust carried me through some of the darkest chapters of my life.

Even after I entered recovery, there were devastating losses.

My daughter’s death.

The many griefs that followed.

Yet through it all, I felt God’s presence beside me.

I never felt abandoned.

It was as though He held me up whenever I no longer had the strength to stand.

Looking back, I realize that my relationship with God became the safest relationship I had ever known.

He didn’t shame me.

He didn’t punish me.

He didn’t ask me to earn His love.

He simply met me where I was.

For a woman who had spent so much of her life searching for safety, it was the greatest gift I had ever received.