Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.

Shoutout to my Game of Thrones fans. We don’t need to talk about season 8 but we have to appreciate how legendary the show was. Shoutout to GRMM, Dan, Dave, and their minds.

I have always been really good with my titles. Whenever I wrote something like an essay or a journal entry, I always managed to find the perfect title that encapsulated my point, my mood, and my writing. I got the title for this blog post about 2 months ago. It literally just flashed in my head, and I filed it under “future blogposts” and kept it pushing. But as I dealt with life for the past few months, or rather as life dealt with me in the past few months, this title kept flashing in my head.

Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken.

I wasn’t sure that I should be writing about this topic because what exactly does that mean? In what way am I any of those words? I am neither unbowed nor unbent nor unbroken. In fact, it would be fairly easy to conclude that I am bowed, bent, and broken. So what is this message, and why did it keep tugging at me? Why did I feel that I have to write about this? The answer was simple — HIM. The reason I had to try so hard to align myself with this statement was that I simply did not possess the characteristics to inhabit the personality I was describing. There is only one being who completely personifies these words.

God.

God is unbowed, unbent, and unbroken.

Now I am getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind. In September, I experienced the longest spiritual high of my life so far. Transformation Conference completely set me on fire, I felt like I was on another level with God. I felt Him on a whole different level that was almost too good to be true. I remember sitting in my room around 2 am the following week and feeling so awestruck about the difference in the air around me. I got sad because I realized that with every high comes a low. Therefore, the higher you are, the lower you can go. I quickly opened my notes and started spilling my feelings out through my words. I remember writing about the mountaintop, I wrote about how vERSION 1 felt like a mountaintop that I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back to the valley. I knew that the mountaintop is not a sustainable habitat, but I did not want to return to the valley at all, I wanted to stay at the top. I wanted to stay where God was. But the truth is God is everywhere, and He is always with us. Even in the valley. “Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for thou art with me.” Psalms 23. (KJV)

God allows us to have mountain moments so we can be inspired to continue the work in the valley. These moments are designed to re-fire us and motivate us as we continue the fight.

By the end of November, I felt like I was going through the motions, I felt like everything I was confident about was taken away from me. I felt like my foundation had crumbled. I struggled to capture the same feeling I had in September, but no matter what I did, I could never find it again. I had little bursts here and there, but they were all very fleeting. It seemed like no matter what I did, I could not retain the same zeal I had a few months prior.

It is amazing that as I write this and as I go back to read the words I wrote that morning around 2 am, I realize the Word that I needed to sustain me during those silent months where hidden in plain sight, coated in my own words.

I eventually hit rock bottom spiritually. I was numb, bland, and disconnected from the most important aspect of my being. During this time, the same verse kept echoing in my spirit every time I prayed. Matthew 6:33: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added on to you. Seek God, and you will find Him. Jeremiah 29:13. Provers 8:17. Acts 17:27. I kept seeking God and searching for Him as often as I could. Yet, I did not feel Him as intensely as I did in the past so I felt like He left me all alone. Determined, I kept seeking, I kept searching, I kept praying. And slowly, I started to feel revived. It was almost like I was getting to know Him all over again. On a whole new level…

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.

Back to the title, I wrestled with this title for about a month because I knew it wasn’t describing my person. I knew through the test of this past few months, I had been bowed, bent, and definitely broken just so God could bring me back together, so what was this title? It wasn’t until I watched “The Value of Vision” that I realized that God was the only part of me that remains Unbowed, Unbent, and Unbroken. God tested my foundation to show me that it wasn’t strong enough. He wants me to set my foundation on Him and He wants to help me to become stronger so I can withstand the storms ahead without sinking.

The past few months rocked my foundation. It broke down things that I had subconsciously placed my trust in. It uncovered areas of my life that needed to be exposed for them to be healed by God. It forced me to focus on God as the Sovereign authority in my life. It re-affirmed my belief that if God isn’t Lord of all in my life, then He isn’t Lord at all. It reinforced the fact that blessings are just resources used by God - the source - to deepen my dependence on Him. It taught me that apart from Him, I am nothing, and with Him, there is everything. My foundation and confidence in my own abilities were stripped away, and a new foundation was laid, a foundation that will always be unbowed, unbent, and unbroken.