I Got Saved

“I Got Saved” by Corey Voss

There is a river of gladness That pours from Emmanuel's veins This sinner was plunged beneath the flood And got saved Since then I walk in forgiveness All of my guilt was erased The chains of the past are broken at last I got saved, oh, I got saved! I'm undone by the mercy of Jesus I'm undone by the goodness of the Lord I'm restored and made right, He got a hold of my life I've got Jesus, how could I want more? I've received nothing but goodness I've tested and tasted Your grace I was so lost till I fell at the cross And got saved, oh, I got saved! I'm undone by the mercy of Jesus I'm undone by the goodness of the Lord I'm restored and made right, He got a hold of my life I've got Jesus, how could I want more? The love of God gave me His pardon The love of God won't let me stay the same The love of God calls me up higher His will is stronger, that's why I got saved! I'm undone by the mercy of Jesus I'm undone by the goodness of the Lord I'm restored and made right, He got a hold of my life I've got Jesus, how could I want more? I'm undone by the mercy of Jesus I'm undone by the goodness of the Lord I'm restored and made right, He got a hold of my life I've got Jesus, how could I want more?... I've got Jesus, how could I want more? I've got Jesus, how could I want more?!

I am currently going through the Songs of Heaven & Earth devotional by Corey Voss. Today’s was based on the song “I Got Saved”.

I’ve listened to this song so many times within the past few months, and as I did the devotional I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever officially shared that process.

The summer before my junior year in high school, my mom forced me to go to a youth group in my area. I was at a point in my life where I was still struggling with depression and anxiety and I wanted to feel loved. As much as I wanted to feel loved, I was convinced that I was not going to date a man who didn’t believe in God. I wanted a Christian guy.

It didn’t take long for me to start talking to one of the guys at the youth group. And, after being at the youth group for two months, I entered a relationship. The first year of our relationship went really well- we didn’t fight or argue, he was good to me. But, it wasn’t a relationship focused on Christ. As a girl who was still struggling with mental health, I was depending on him to be my happiness. And, if you enter a relationship because you want to be happy, the relationship is going to disappoint.

After the first year, things started to get rocky. I was noticing that nothing was improving my mental health, in fact, it was getting worse. I was having panic attacks daily, and from the moment I woke up to the moment that I finally fell asleep I was anxious.

I knew that my boyfriend at the time was not going to fix me. But everything that I had tried hadn’t helped me. I was lost and confused.

There was one point where he and I got into a disagreement- which didn’t really seem all that major to me, because I was starting to realize that healthy relationships don’t come without disagreements.

But this disagreement was very different in his eyes. He texted me something that caused me to sit on my bathroom floor for over an hour filled with absolute fear and anxiety thinking that he was about to break up with me.

He can’t break up with me. What am I supposed to do? I can’t live without him.

That set off so many red flags in my mind. That’s not love. That’s not healthy, thinking that I can’t possibly survive without this person in my life. That was the moment where I closed my eyes and thought to myself- maybe God has something different planned for me.

But we were dating for over a year and I didn’t want to give up on him.

I was starting to realize that I maybe God was what I needed, and I was really considering getting baptized again. As I sat in youth group one week, my youth pastor mentioned baptism. A sign to me that God was calling me to a new life with Him.

I mentioned it to my boyfriend after youth group.

“Would you do it with me?” “I don’t know…”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Do you still believe in Jesus?”

He gave me a look and then replied, “Yes. Why? Would you dump me if I didn’t?”

I muttered a “no”, and was suddenly filled with anxiety. What was I going to do?

Not long after, my youth pastor started talking about relationships.

“If you’re in a relationship where you aren’t running at the same pace towards Jesus, then you shouldn’t be in that relationship. If you’re a single person you shouldn’t be looking for a relationship, you should be running towards God and if someone comes along and starts running at the same pace as you, then introduce yourself.”

I looked over at my boyfriend, hoping that this message was changing his heart so that things would work out between us. I didn’t want to give up.

But my anxiety got even worse, and it seemed as if there was a lot of distance in between us. I blamed it on my anxiety.

I remember praying that God would just be with him, that my boyfriend would start to love God more. I prayed that God would be with our relationship. Nothing was changing. Then:

“Lord, please be with him and his heart. You know that I’m going through a lot of anxiety; you know that it often makes me feel unloved. Lord, if that feeling is just anxiety then I pray you’d be with it.” I took a deep breath and continued. “But, Lord, if it is not my anxiety that is making me feel this way, then I pray that you would be with his heart, and that he would break up with me. I don’t want to hurt him, I want things to work out, but if that is not your plan then use him to show me that you have different plans for the both of us.”

A few days later, my boyfriend came to my house. He acted strange the whole time, but wouldn’t talk to me about anything when I asked him. As he walked out the door, I could tell that God was answering that prayer. Normally when he would leave the house, he would tell me that he loved me before he walked out the door. This time he made it onto the porch when I yelled an “I love you” to him. He couldn’t even look at me as he mumbled an “I love you” back to me.

I waited until he got home to talk to him about what I was feeling. I told him that I wasn’t sure if it was just my anxiety or what, but I felt as though he didn’t love me anymore. I felt as though we were going in completely different directions.

He confessed that he hadn’t felt like he loved me for a while. There was still something inside me that wanted to make it work. This person had been my best friend for over a year. I asked him if he just wanted to take a break or if he wanted to break up for good. His response broke my heart.

I went into my mom’s room and woke her up, telling her that my boyfriend and I had broken up. She was shocked, but she listened to me as I told her that I knew it was because God had different plans.

And after we got done talking, I went back to my room and curled up on my bed as I cried, my heart physically aching. And in that moment of absolute heartache, I moved my head to look up to my ceiling.

“Lord, thank you for continuously reaching out to me through this process. Thank you for never giving up on me. I give my life to you. I know that you are all I need. I want more of you, God. I want you to be the one that I chase and rely on. Be with my aching heart, I know that you have better plans for me. I thank you for that, Lord. Be with him and his heart; help him to know who you are.”

Did this hurt? Yes, absolutely. But it would have hurt me more to stay. That relationship was holding me back from the greatest relationship I’ve ever experienced- a relationship with the Lord.

Shortly after the break up, I started my Jesus journal- the inspiration behind my blog’s name. I went to a craft store and bought a little purple journal to write in for the first 100 days of my spiritual journey.

In as little as 100 days, God was already starting to change my life so much.

The biggest of these things was my anxiety. I’ve told y’all about my anxiety many times. It started after the loss of my uncle, and I struggled with it until my senior year in high school. When I started this journal, my anxiety was at the worst it had ever been. I was terrified to drive, sing, go anywhere alone (or even with people), and so much more. It absolutely controlled my life. But, when I gave my life to Jesus, I saw that change. Like I just mentioned, I hated going places, and if I went places with people I was comfortable with, I couldn’t be without them. I couldn’t go off by myself. After some counseling and many days with dedicated Jesus time (including the journal), there was a day I went to Walmart with my mom and my sister. I wanted to look at something in a different section, and so I told them where I was going and walked away. I had absolutely no fear. I didn’t care about if people would possibly look at me. I walked in total confidence to the aisle that had what I wanted and didn’t even think twice about it. I didn’t even realize what I had done until I met back up with my mom later on. I went from crippling daily panic attacks and anxiety from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep, to walking around a store completely by myself. Wow. The anxiety that I had dealt with for 12 years and had never thought I would be without was suddenly gone.

But God didn’t just work through my anxiety; He worked through my life in many other ways. One of these other things was my self-image. I know I’ve shared self-confidence issues with y’all. There were some days where I hated what I saw in the mirror. There were some periods of time where I didn’t feel confident in my appearance- but this journal marks the start of that change. When I was in high school I started to wear makeup in hopes that people would think I was prettier, and maybe I would get the attention that I craved. But, within the time that I had started this journal, I had slowly started to back away from different makeup products. The first of which was my eyebrows. I was that girl who overly plucked my eyebrows in my early high school days, and so they took forever to grow back. I had started with eyebrow pencils and then moved on to powder once they started to grow in a little more. On the day of my baptism, March 19, 2016 (14 days into this faith journal), I was freaking out because I didn’t know what to do about my eyebrows since I would be going underwater. I didn’t want the powder to run down my face. I didn’t know what to do, until my sister suggested that I just didn’t fill them in. I hated that idea. But, after fighting with myself for at least a half hour, I decided to just leave them natural. I haven’t filled them in since. The next step was my eyeliner, which I made myself take a break from shortly after I finished this journal. I realized how, like my eyebrows, my confidence was built on what makeup could do for me, instead of what God said of me. I haven’t worn eyeliner since. And the last step was my mascara, which I stopped wearing a couple months ago when ultimately I realized it didn’t really make much of a difference (even though I once thought it had), and I hated taking it off. These all may seem silly, but the thing is that by forcing myself to take breaks from these things that I let control me, my eyes were opened to what God had placed beneath the products. When we stop focusing on the worldly things that provide us confidence, we can focus on the true provider of confidence-God. He wanted me to have a dimple on one cheek, brown eyes, a nose that points up at the end, bigger teeth, etc. etc. I am His masterpiece.

Another big topic in my journal was for my future someone. I started it off and basically finished it by praying for a man that would make God #1. I prayed that God would prepare my heart and his heart for us to come together. I prayed for GODLY man. It’s awesome to think that, around the time I started this journal, that man was in the process of some big realizations and changes. And then almost a year later I met him. I didn’t need a man that was going to put me first or last, I needed God to be first, and God needed to be first in his life as well.

This next entry was the one that made me cry first. Loss. A lot of the stuff in this journal is stuff that y’all have some knowledge on already, so y’all know about the tragedy that my family went through in losing my Uncle Rod. I was really young when I lost him, but as a young kid, I didn’t know how to handle it. It became something that I carried around for YEARS. When you deal with loss you need to give yourself time to grieve, but you can’t spend the rest of your life dwelling on what you lost. My entry for that day said this:

“I have tragedy that I carry around with me constantly…I have good days, I have bad days, but every day that tragedy is in my mind. Why was my family placed with this tragedy? Well, for one, I know that if we hadn’t lost Uncle Rod then we wouldn’t do LEU, or cards for cops…We have to find the good in the bad…we have to trust that God has other plans for us.”

This entry was a turning point for me. I had to stop dwelling and focusing on the bad. That there are still really hard days, but in order to not be crushed by the enemy’s actions, I have to keep my focus on what God does with what the enemy has done! God changed my broken heart to one that wants to pour out encouragement to other officers. And He placed people in my life that know that pain that can encourage me on the bad days.

Another reoccurring entry was about my depression. Yes, sometimes it reappears, like some of the other things mentioned in this journal, but that doesn’t mean that God is not good. He took my broken and aching heart and turned into one filled with joy. Even on the days where things just don’t seem to be going right, even in the periods of time where depression fills my mind, I can still remember that God got me through it before and He’s gonna do it again and again and again. When I was struggling with depression years ago I pushed people away. I didn’t have relationships with other people, I isolated myself. But I’ve surrounded myself with people that I know care about me and love me and are praying for me!

One last thing that I wanted to include in this is the way that God changed my heart when it comes to prayer. I used to pray a lot of selfish prayers. An example from my journal was how I used to pray for my Penguins hockey teams to win (this kinda makes me laugh). As the season continued, I realized that life isn’t always about wins. It’s not about always getting what you want, it’s about getting the answer that is going to help you grow the most, whether that’s through winning certain things in life or losing in others. I stopped praying for my Penguins to win, and started praying for the players to stay safe. And, if a player from the other team got injured, I found myself praying for them as well, that they would be healed and be able to return to the game. I found my relationship with God begin to grow as I learned this lesson. Instead of being upset when God didn’t answer my selfish prayers, I found myself more at peace knowing that whatever His answer was, that it was in my best interest. I found a peace knowing that He is the God over ALL, He can do ANYTHING. He can answer the prayers that may seem a little crazy, that is evident in this journal, because each of these things were answers to really big prayers.

But this was all just the beginning. God continues to work in my life and in my heart as I draw closer to Him.

The love of God didn’t let me stay the same. I was not powerful enough to ruin the plans He has for me, His will is stronger and bigger than what I ever imagined for my life and that’s WHY I got saved. I am restored and made right because God got a hold of my life. He was with me through it all; He was just waiting for me to open my heart to Him.