I’m Sorry

Lately God has been bringing me through a lot of emotional realizations. The first realization was that I have been engaging in some pretty serious self-loathing throughout the years. At first I thought I only hated parts of myself. Specifically I hated how dependable I am because I often feel used by other people because of it. So I have been asking God the last few weeks what other parts of myself I have tried to separate from myself, and two weeks ago, he told me.

It was at team time one night. We were doing “private corporate worship.” This means that we all get out our iPhones/iPods and listen to worship music separately, together. I personally believe that God’s beauty can be found in any kind of beautiful music, so I often find myself worshipping to Bassnectar or Daft Punk, but that night I decided to stick with strictly “Christian” artists. That meant listening to Red, Skillet, Demon Hunter, and Grits. Old music that I got in high school. And as I listened to the old music, the music that my friend Carter and I cut our aural teeth on, memories from high school bubbled back up.

High school was a very dark time for me. I was very severely depressed from my sophomore year through senior year, and onward through college, though it was less severe. I will talk more about that in another post, but for now let’s stick to the present. So that night of worship I was listening to Skillet’s album “Comatose.” It is a great album and it helped me through a lot of hard times in my life. It has a lot of great songs, like “Comatose” which talks about how we need God to wake up from a coma of going through the motions. Or like “Whispers in the Dark” a song that is very dear to my heart. That song is about how God pursues us even when we lie to him about ourselves, and how He is just waiting for us to turn to Him so that He can comfort us. Then came the heavy hitter “Falling Inside the Black.” The title says it all. It talks about falling inside the black, falling back into the despair, falling back into the hopelessness. And the memories that came with that song brought tears to my eyes.

Recently when I have given my testimony I gloss over my depression. I recently went to a counselor and after we finished our set of sessions I felt pretty good. So I proclaimed myself cured and went on with my life. Forgetting the black. Forgetting the despair. Forgetting all the hundreds of night lying in my bed drowning in a pool of horrible hopelessness. Forgetting all the times I told myself no one loved me. Forgetting all the times I told myself I was worthless and only God could ever love me. All it took was a single song to bring it all flooding back. God answered my question. “What parts of myself do I hate, what parts of myself have I exiled.” He answered with, “Daniel….it’s not a question of what parts you hate, it’s what parts don’t you hate? Don’t you remember all the years you told yourself you were worthless? Don’t you remember all the tears and all the despair? You do not hate a part of yourself, you hate all of yourself.” That was a rough moment.

The moment that followed was quite strange. Next he said, “I want you to apologize to me.” I was flabbergasted. Apologize? For what? For hating myself? Why should I apologize for feelings I have about myself in the privacy of my head? John 3:16 is the answer. Jesus loved me so much that he died for me. If I say the man he died for is worthless, am I not defaming the sacrifice of Christ? I did not apologize that night. I was still sad and angry and confused and flustered. But I apologized the next morning and this is what I said.

I’m sorry. For my disbelief. For my lack of faith. For mocking. For defaming. For degrading. For insulting. For loathing. For hating. For lying. For pretending. For fighting. For attempting to murder. This man of God. I’m sorry for regretting. This man in the mirror. I’m sorry for restraining. This warrior of the Lord. I’m sorry for all the years. I’m sorry for all the tears. I’m sorry for exiling. Myself.

He accepted my apology, and then continued to wreck me about my depression and free me from a past I didn’t know I was enslaved to.