I used to think that when major events happened, time would not only heal, but the events eventually faded and that person would move on. But then, I had to experience my own struggle with life, healing, and the feeling of paralyzation. And that changed not only my thinking, but my outlook on life.

When we met I was broken. I was crushed, confused, and was surviving a day at a time. I was living in a nightmare and the aftermath of a tragedy that I never thought was possible. My younger self wasn’t even recognizing who I had become. I distrusted everything and everyone, I felt like my identity, my worth, and my entire being was stripped away from me and I was handed back the pieces that I was trying to put together one piece by painful, bloody piece.

I didn’t know if my life would be whole again and I would heal.

I didn’t want to heal.

No, not want. I couldn’t. The pain was too great.

I wanted to heal in my own time and that was basically never. Why? Because I had to go back to that event and I didn’t know if I could. I couldn’t face the fear, anxiety, the hurt. I just thought that the longer I ignored the tragedy, the fact that it happened and the impact it had on me, no matter the time difference and the length of time I was coming away from that event, I would eventually forget about it. I was basically blocking it from memory.

But it wasn’t true. A few months ago, I had stumbled across a video by none other than Sadie Robertson, discussing the topic of life, the Christian walk, and fear. Something I didn’t know if I was ready for. But I listened as she explained to the thousands of college students on how to not have fear and be bold for Christ when they walked on their campus, she also explained that she didn’t want to the exact same thing that I was running from.

She didn’t want to go back to what caused her pain. And I wholeheartedly agreed because I was running as fast as I could from not only the tragedy that changed my life, but from the very person who caused it. I was trying to achieve the impossible and I was utterly failing. It took a few weeks after initially watching that video to “go back there” for me, and that took a lot of friends, my phone, a store, and a lot of prayer.

That moment, my dearest friend is what it took for me to realize that I hadn’t fully surrendered that situation in my life over to God. I couldn’t feel free or at peace until I had walked into the store where the cause of my pain and anxiety was staring me in the face, and stayed there. In doing so, and as I was frantically texting some friends about the situation, one of my best and closest friends replied with:

“Have you taken this to God?”

Ouch.