It has been quite the year.

With so many downs turning into better circumstances, I am going to write this blog post with deep reflection on my hardest trials in 2024 and early 2025. My intention is that it would lead you closer to the heart and love of Christ.

In spring of 2024, I was laid off of my first full time corporate job. I never once walked into work ungrateful for that job. In fact, even though I experienced some hard times at this job (specifically helping take care of my mom with her third cancer diagnosis), I generally thought of this period of my life as “good.” I had built some wonderful friendships in this season and I was continually able to hone my social media marketing skills. With video editing, talking on camera, and various graphic design experience, I knew I was there to learn and grow my professional skills.

For those of you who have followed along on my faith journey on YouTube, you know I started Create Compassion Christian Collective back in 2021. I was fresh in my relationship with Jesus and was super excited to follow His calling to post about my journey. I was terrified of posting about mental health at this period of my life – so many people told me I would never get hired if people knew what I battled on a daily basis. I was told I’d never find a husband and all of my friends would leave me, that I was an embarrassment to those who loved me.

When I was growing up and battling things like deep depression, severe anxiety, and bipolar mania, my family told me to keep quiet. While they thought my life would be harder if I told others about my struggles, it was not telling people that made school and friendships so difficult. I was ashamed of who I was. When you are made to feel you can never truly talk about your problems because of how it bothers other people, it makes you feel so unloved and unwanted. As many with bipolar disorder can attest to as well, I battled insomnia and the deep need for sleep. My peers gossiped that I was “fake nice” amongst themselves simply because I was masking depression. While I made it a goal of mine to always care about others and show kindness (because you never know what someone is going through), I think many people mistook my fake happiness for fake kindness.

Perhaps you’ve read or heard me talk about my past life experiences before. The reason I wanted to touch on them was because I wanted to contrast not sharing vs. sharing my most vulnerable, hidden battles. God wanted me to share what I was going through – what I had gone through my whole life – while others wanted me to keep quiet. The call of the Holy Spirit has been my guide as I create content specifically for people like me. We’ve been told to hide, pretend, and play our part in making life easier for others (because expressing our emotions is a “burden”). Sharing my testimony not only has helped so many of you and your beautiful souls, but it gave me a sense of purpose. Suddenly, my darkness was someone else’s guiding light.

My vulnerability was how the Father was going to use me to reach His perhaps most forlorn children. The Bible says that everything hidden in the darkness will eventually come into the light – it is freeing to be in that light. For the first time in my life, I not only was told I was loved, but I KNEW I was loved. By reading Scripture, I have learned so much wisdom that I’ve been able to apply to my life experiences. I am so grateful for all of the people Jesus can reach through me. My mission is to join Jesus and share His gospel of love, kindness, and gentleness (all of which are in God’s character!).

What I learned from fall of 2024

At some point in late fall of 2024, I decided that I was going to mentally “give up” my desires for three big things the Lord promised me years ago. I realized that the hope for these promises had become a burden. I was basing God’s love for me on His fulfillment of these promises and often felt betrayed, lost, confused, and distant from God. This was so difficult for me because in every possible way I thought I had surrendered to Him. Then, I realized that my deepest desire was to be LOVED by Jesus. That, at the end of the day, I didn’t want to yearn and hope for anything that wasn’t purely Jesus Himself. So I told myself, “the promises aren’t coming. It’s just me and Jesus.” With this full surrender to the fact that God had not delivered yet and a yield to His timing (which I choose not to think about as the hope I carried was overwhelming), I felt this inexplicable peace. Even now, as God has communicated literally SO MUCH about these beautiful gifts I’ve been waiting on, I continually tell myself “the gifts aren’t coming. They will never come.” It is the only way I’ve been able to disconnect from these promises and fully focus on being present in my day to day life. The yearning and hoping made my life feel incomplete – like I was perpetually missing things that I never had to begin with. I know God will deliver on His word but I cannot think about it anymore without picking back up that burden of hope. Yes, hope can become burdensome.

This entire mental shift helped me look at my life differently – all I need each day is my daily bread! In Scripture, food is often compared to purpose and the Father’s good, perfect, and pleasing will. Eating our bits of bread in church is a symbol of our commitment to following Jesus, while the little cups of “wine” symbolize our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. One is for obedience and the other is for relationship. And, in every season of my life, each of these two parts of my faith journey have shifted and evolved. In every season, God wants us to focus on things we’ve learned from past seasons in a way that shows us Who He is and what He wants to do in our lives, our “purpose,” if you will. Every season leads into another one. Time and change are always inevitable.

In past seasons, I suffered. The whole point of these seasons was to endure and exercise the deep well of strength the Lord had gifted me over years through emotional and mental anguish. In other seasons, I had to learn about being a good friend and build relationships with people who cared about me like I cared about them. In others, my creative skills flourished. All of these seasons led to me coming to Jesus in an intricate and personal way. Once He had my attention and heart, I learned about love and forgiveness. Then, I spent some seasons repenting and being pruned. I learned how to be obedient to God not out of fear but because He had a plan for my life and it was good. It IS good. And whether I go through seasons that are “good” or REALLY FREAKING GOOD, I am able to understand which season I’m in through prayer and deep, deep analyzation of my life. My hyper-awareness of everything around me (feelings, people, events, situations, etc), which used to be a root of anxiety, is now just me trying to understand my life with the guidance of the Spirit. In fact, I often mentally pretend I’m on a talkshow (welcome to my deep shower thoughts TM) just to process everything I’m learning and growing toward.

For example, in the season I am in right now, there has been a focus on readjusting to a new full time job and balancing it gently with rest. I just had a wisdom tooth removed and working while under some extra-strength Motrin really forced me to be gentle with myself while also maintaining my standard of work (I am extremely quality-focused, an “always do my best” kind of gal). I think everyone balances rest with work differently based on our skills and mental capacity for processing information. This is something God teaches us a bit later in our spiritual journeys (and that’s a conclusion I made from having this conversation with many other Christians in a similar season). And, while I learn to balance full time work again, I am also learning about the joyous nature of God. For such a long, long time, I got used to never feeling joy. I even made a video on it that explained that our purpose in life is not to be happy but to love God, ourselves, and others as unconditionally as possible. Jesus wasn’t always happy and if His life is our example on how to lead ours, then we will go through seasons devoid of happiness all the same. Yet, this season I’m living through in the present has little tidbits of joy I am not used to yet at all.

Learning the full extent of God’s love and the enemy’s hatred

I had a severe and traumatizing car accident a month before Christmas of last year. I was coming home from visiting a Christmas market with some friends and was sitting at a stop sign. After waiting for many cars to pass, I saw a clear opening to make my turn. Alas, there was another car that I didn’t see coming – one that I never remember seeing headlights for – and before I could make my turn, my car was spinning over and over again on the dark road. My first reaction was of pure shock, “Lord, how could you allow this? Why is this happening? Is this real life? Is this actually happening?”

This was my first real car accident (I personally don’t count hitting the mailbox when I was 17 as an “accident,” albeit it was accidental). My car was a little over one year old – I had saved for it and only purchased it out of need as my 20-year-old two-door coup wasn’t working as it should anymore. I drove Lola until I could not drive her anymore! Luckily, owning a newer car meant I had to have collision insurance added to my policy. Had I been driving little Lola on that dark road that night, I can only assume I’d either be dead or severely injured. My new car’s seatbelt held fast and as I spun and spun around, and I did not hit my head.

Shocked, wanting to cry but unable to do so, I sat in my car and waited. I didn’t have the mental capacity to get out and try to find help. Yet, it seemed help had found me as a bystander knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, they asked me if I could get out of the car. I said, “I don’t know.” Something (Jesus!!!) was keeping me in my seat with my seatbelt on, car door locked and shut tight. After a moment had passed, an enraged woman ran up to my car yelling, “I have KIDS!” Seeing that my window had been rolled down, she punched me twice in the throat. The bystander did his best to help her distance herself from my car as she egged me on. Terrified, and with no intention of fighting back (I am a gentle spirit), I rolled my window back up. I did not press charges at first because I was scared that perhaps this woman’s children had been injured in the accident. Even in the chaos of being checked out by paramedics and interviewed by the police, I put the woman who attacked me before my own peace of mind and safety. My family and I decided to make it a case and it was dropped by the police as the witnesses who stayed to talk to the police did not report the attack. I am not angry. I did feel wildly unsafe for weeks in my own home and in my own skin, but I do forgive this woman and see that it was God’s will to grant her grace from this display of violence.

The night of the accident included the accident itself, a dropped battery charge, and being treated like a piece of poop by the ER of the hospital to where the ambulance took me. I wanted my neck to be examined because it felt weird. And honestly, that’s the best description I had for what I was feeling – weirdness. It felt like my throat was closing up but also everything that happened that night felt like a dream while I was going through it.

My family, after being treated poorly by the nurses at the ER (which was packed tight, although I’ve learned you can be stressed out and kind if you simply choose to be kind) went to a different ER. And, it was in that moment that the season I’d been in, all the heartache I’d accumulated from waiting endlessly on the Lord, after being unable to secure a new job for months finally just… switched. It was like leaving hell and entering somewhere with a gentleness that was so foreign to me. It was like meeting Jesus for the first time for real. Our emotions can be so hard to deal with, painful even, while we battle hell on earth. And yet, once I was treated with kindness, given a neck brace at the new ER (which apparently is typical car accident protocol according to my nurse friends), and shown that I don’t have to bear it all on my own – that THEY CARED – it was like I transformed. The shock and disbelief turned into a sad realization that this night was, in fact, very real. However, I had family with me and a medical team that didn’t make me feel like they’d rather I’d have just died in the accident. I felt loved – and let me tell you, feeling loved is what transforms you. I was in the ER at the “kinder” hospital for hours, and within those hours the heaviness in my soul lifted. I wasn’t injured, just a little abrased from the battery. I had adrenaline racing through my muscles yet my bones weren’t fractured. I was going to be okay. I didn’t die. I DIDN’T DIE.

Whenever we think we’re hopeless, Love can transform us in an instant. It can move us from a place of fear and shock to peace and certainty that in the Lord’s will, all will work out for our good if we choose to love Him back.

All I can say now is: the enemy must be very afraid of what God is doing in my life to create such a severe attack. It was a three-part attack: the accident, the battery, and the lack of care in an ER filled with very sick people. But, in the middle of that dreaded and dark ER waiting room, I prayed for everyone with me to be healed, for their souls to be healed, and that they’d have mercy on me for sobbing so loud and having mascara running down my face. In that ER waiting room, I heard someone yell, “Jesus! JESUS! Jesus!”

He was with me in the drenches of the fire of hell and He came to me afterwards like He promises to come again one day: in a soft cloud, surrounded by light, displaying His love to us all.