Arrested Development

Arrested Development is the name of the greatest show of all time.

But even more than that, it is a description of something that happens usually when someone has a traumatic experience. In a nutshell, the person has a traumatic experience, and their development in a certain area stops. Often, their lives will look completely normal until they have an experience that triggers the area of the arrested development, in which case they will revert back to the way they would have acted in the first place. In other words, they stop growing.

Note: this is actually a very personal blog post. I told myself I would hold very little back, and I felt I needed to write this, since this is basically my personal journal right now... Also, I don't think anybody actually reads this. Which is fine.

I recently realized that I had arrested development in a certain area. Six years ago, I was very open to spiritual things. I loved trying to hear from God, I loved prophecy, I loved God speaking to me and I loved listening and soaking in His presence. This was an area of my life in which I was growing every day. Then, I experienced arrested development of this area.

When my closest friend at college, April Nettles, died, I was devastated; I even fell into depression. God soon delivered me from the depression, but since then I have viewed my Christianity as a much more practical enterprise. This hasn't been all bad; there are certainly great Christian principles that are regulated simply to practical dogmatic life. However, what I didn't realize was that my spiritual hunger was slowly evaporating. I didn't realize it, that is, until two days ago.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Halsey Preston invited me to a prayer meeting in which people worshiped, prayed for each other, and prophesied over each other. I accepted for a number of different reasons: I have very little friends in the area, I was curious as to what that would look like, and I hadn't been to anything like that in years. So, I went. The first week was a little weird for me, a little out of my comfort zone. But the second week, I started realizing the full effects of the traumatic experience, the arrested development, I had 6 years ago.

At one point in the meeting two days ago, I realized that I have been purposefully ignoring God. I have grown attached to theology and stayed away from any kind of experience with God, even to the point of doubting whether these experiences were from God at all. Since April's death, I've started to ignore anything supernatural.

Subconsciously, I attached spiritual growth to April, and a little while after she died, I subconsciously tried to steer clear of anything that reminded me of her. So whenever I was faced with the choice to worship God, or to experience God in some way, I stayed away from it.

I'll be honest, for the most part I hate Christian music, and even further I hate the epitome of Christian music: Michael W. Smith. But I remember a song of his from many years ago that talks of a child who loved God with all his heart, and then there's a line that says, "I've been searching for that missing person." I feel like that. I feel like I've lost a big part of who I am, of who God has been calling me to be. I can only pray that He has mercy on me for my actions, and that He will grant me the grace to grow once again.

But the good news is that now I can grow again, thanks to the mercy of Christ.