I have found that not confessing my sins makes me feel distant from God.
For six years, I felt that I had done everything right, up until the day my dad went into the emergency room at Sampson Regional Medical Center in January 2023 with breathing complications fluid on his lungs and pneumonia. Not being able to do anything for him there, they decided to move him up to the ICU floor where he made the decision to be put on the ventilator.
This is where my faith would be tested and where, in the areas I should have been strong, I had fallen weak.
After a few days of our dad being at Sampson Regional, there just wasn’t much more they could do for him because of his size (weight) for one, and because of his other severe health issues and concerns. Me and my sister had expressed that we would like for our dad to be transferred to Chapel Hill to Wake Med, but Wake Med had said they were full, so instead, he ended up at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville.
Our dad fought a brave battle, but on Jan. 27, me and my sister had made one of the toughest and most difficult decisions of our lives, and that was to pull the plug on our dad because he wasn’t getting any better, his health was declining even more, and his kidneys had completely shut down.
We stood by his bedside and prayed, as the doctors and nurses administered medicine that would help ease his pain as he began taking his last breaths. We held his hands, we sang his favorite gospel songs, we cried, we comforted him into his transcendence to be with the Lord and encouraged him that he could let go and that we’d be OK, and we let him know how much we loved and appreciated him. Then we said our good-byes.
When he took his last breath, I remember that I had told myself before everything took place, I’d be strong for my baby sister, but after the events unfolded, she ended up being the stronger one for the both of us. I had a hard time with leaving our dad behind, with just walking away. I kept telling myself that he was going to be all alone on a cold slab in a cold room without us. Seeing that image repetitively in my head broke me. Once my sister got me calmed down and able to finally leave, I called home to my children for someone to go and get me a bottle of wine. And here is where my downward spiral started.
Once home, I remember drinking that whole bottle. After this, I poured my pain, anger, and hurt into drinking. I was also confused; I was having an identity crisis. I was still trying to hold on to the Christian I was, to walking, talking, and acting like the Godly woman Jesus had cleaned me up to be, but then there was the other side of me, the emotional side, that chose to let go and not care what the consequences would be since I was in so much pain.
Wine turned into beer, beer turned into gin, and gin turned into whatever got me drunk, put me to sleep, and helped me to forget. Throughout it all, I was neglecting church, I was no longer reading my Bible, I stopped praying, and I turned from God.
I wasn’t writing any longer and this was my passion. I found that I couldn’t. I was devastated. I was truly missing my dad. I was numb. Everything around me, I started to let back in, like the cursing, listening to worldly music (that I usually wouldn’t listen to), and becoming sexually active again (after being celibate for six years). I was feeling that for a time, all of it was what I wanted, what I needed, but fast forward a month later, I started feeling like my life was hopeless all over again and that God had abandoned me.
“Where are you, Lord?” I had asked. I wasn’t feeling that intimacy with God that I used to feel before my downward spiral of falling back into some familiar and old habits. But I was also feeling guilty about my actions, and I knew that something had to be done. I know God was not pleased with me as of late. So, what to do? What steps to take?
I knew what needed to be done to lift this weight off me because it was the one and most important thing concerning the Holy Spirit, and that was to confess and repent of my sins.
Unconfessed sin can damage your soul. When it is unconfessed, it wraps its tentacles around every part of our being and becomes a subtle growth until we are paralyzed. A wall goes up between us and God when sin is left unconfessed. And even though my sinning had stopped, I knew that if I didn’t confess it before the Lord, it could still weigh me down and try to drag me back towards the past I left behind and keep me from possibly moving into the future that God has planned for me.
The Bible says, “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” (Acts 3:19). Repentance must go along with confession for it to work. I know. My guilt and failures were so heavy on me that I could barely move. I didn’t realize how spiritually drained and bent over I had become, but once I confessed and repented of my sins, I felt the weight start lifting and this is when I knew that God never turned His back on me, it was my own actions, truthfully speaking, that separated me from Him.
This is what unconfessed sin does. God longs for restored fellowship even more than we do. In the ESV Bible, Isaiah 65:2 says, “I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices;”
I fell short of God’s glory because I couldn’t handle or deal with the death of my dad. I have heard that people grieve differently. I’m not lost to the fact that death is a part of life and instead of my being angry, I should have properly mourned and then rejoiced as the Word tells us, which says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5 KJV) because before our dad made the decision to go under, he,too, said that he was at peace with the Lord. He said that he was tired of hurting and being in pain every day. He was ready to go home. I was the one who selfishly wasn’t ready to let go.
I must stay on the right path with God because not only do I want to make it to heaven, but I also hope to make it to heaven and one day see my dad again. Scripture is clear that those who know God do not continue a lifestyle of unrepentant sin. 1 John 2:3-6 of the NIV says, “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”
So, to know God is to love Him. I hope that my honesty in this article can and will help someone. No matter how many times you sin, even if it’s the same sin, still confess and repent because confession is for you to be made whole, to find mercy, and to find God’s unlimited power. Until next time folks!!
