A pause. A break. A start.

We all need a Saviour

God was the interruption. He was the much needed break in the pattern. The shift. The difference. He was, as He’s popularly known as—the Saviour.

I needed a pause. A break. A start. Not so much a second chance. I did not want to have to do it all over again. I had no intentions of doing things better. I did not want a mend,a sewing or a repair. I was only interested newness. I needed to be renewed.

I wanted the past gone. I wanted the harms undone. I wanted the mistakes blotted out. I wanted a new life. A new me. And I would take anything.

In life’s ebbs and flows, at times growth comes to a stop. It is easy to mistake this stagnancy for a state preceding death and not one preceding a new birth. I was in such a state. No growth. Or it happened very slowly. I could feel my spirit shrinking within me. I was turning into a shadow of my former self. It was a flopping, a wilting, even an impending breaking of the spirit perhaps.

I could not describe it then. I had no language for it. But I knew I could not remain the same. Neither could I keep walking down the same path I had been on. Something was gravely wrong. I did not know. What was clear was something had to change.

Dormancy could be a rest. A much needed discontinuation to reflect. To take it all in and decide what must be uprooted. What must be pruned. What must be replanted. What requires regrowth. What rhythms and cadences in our lives need adjustment to create room for what coming, for what is strange, for what is unfamiliar—and for what is new.

Then Yah came in. He interrupted. He interceded.

It is very much like Him to wait until we reach the end of ourselves, until we are worn down by our own effort and have no more strength left. Then His strength is perfected [reaches its fullness] in our weakness. Then He saves.

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for [My] power is perfected in weakness… 2nd Corinthians 12:9 NASB 1995

It is not uncommon for us to long for a calling, for a moment, for a hitch in time that would make all the difference; an unfolding of our destinies, a sense of new possibilities placing us on a new path, a different bearing from our present, banal one.

This longing is our innate urge for a Saviour. For we all need saving. We all need a Saviour.

When we do not look to Christ we look to anything else—relationships, drugs, careers, lust, human validation. Anything. And none of them satisfy, nor will they ever. If anything, they lead to our destruction.

Jesus answered and said to her, “Anyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4: 13-14 NASB 1995

In my state of dormancy I would look with envy upon those who said something happened in time and it all changed for them. I did not think I was worth redeeming. I hardly believed in fate, but I coaxed the belief within nonetheless, hoping someday it would be my turn. I waited, even though I was not sure exactly what I was waiting on.

I remember the moment Jesus cured me of my depression—something I had struggled with since I was 17 and was now (then) 25. It was the first time I heard His voice distinctly and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The feeling was that of a person snapping His fingers and then came The Voice asking, “How do you feel?”

How do I feel? I do not know how I feel. I was too terrified. I had no answer. I could have sworn I was losing my mind.

Immediately, in the same moment, came another feeling, a lifting from my spirit to above my head, a light-headedness and a descending of something different, something new. A peace. A certainty. A stability felt like never before. I would later learn that what doctors call depression, Scriptures call a spirit of heaviness. This spirit of heaviness was what was lifted off me upon Jesus’ visitation.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2nd Corinthians 5:17 NASB 1995

I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So do not be troubled or afraid. John 14: 27 NLT

Weeks later, those around me would ask, “What’s different about you? You laugh more, you talk more, you are no longer isolating yourself from us, you are no longer easily agitated, you’re different, you’re just—happy.”