The old me had to die so I could keep finding God. It wasn't a dramatic, television-drama kind of death, no gasping for breath on a cold hospital bed. It was a slow, agonizing fade, a shedding of skin that felt like it was tearing away at my very soul.
For years, I’d been a collector of things. Possessions that promised comfort, accolades that whispered of worth, relationships that served as mirrors reflecting a carefully curated image. I chased the divine with a tightly clenched fist, demanding proof, seeking a God who would fit neatly into the boxes I’d constructed, a God who would bless my efforts and validate my desires. But God, I was discovering, was not a trophy to be won or a secret to be unlocked with a clever key.
The "death" began with the crumbling of aspirations I had clung to like life rafts. The career path I’d meticulously plotted, the personal achievements I’d equated with purpose – they started to feel hollow, their sheen dulled by a gnawing emptiness. It was like watching a beloved building I’d constructed with my own hands begin to sag, its foundations proving less stable than I’d ever imagined. Each crack, each tremor of doubt, was a tiny death, a relinquishing of the certainty that had been my anchor.
Then came the confrontation with fear. The fear of insignificance, the fear of failure, the terrifying prospect of being truly seen and found wanting. This was the bedrock of my old self, the protective shell I’d never dared to crack. To truly seek God meant to strip away these defenses, to stand naked in the face of my own vulnerabilities. It was a process that demanded a surrender of my will, a quiet acknowledgment that my meticulously crafted plans were often mere distractions from a grander unfolding. I had to let go of the reins, to trust that the One I sought would guide me, even when the path was obscured by fog.
Sacrifice became the daily bread. It wasn't always grand gestures, but the persistent, quiet act of choosing the divine over the familiar. It meant letting go of comfort when it numbed me to the whisper of intuition. It meant releasing the need for validation when it trapped me in performance. It meant disentangling my worth from the accumulation of external markers and finding it in the quiet stillness within. Each surrender, however small, felt like a step further away from who I thought I was, and a tentative step closer to the truth that was waiting to be discovered.
And that's the paradox. In the dying, in the letting go, in the painful dismantling of the ego, I began to find. Not a God I could define or control, but a presence that permeated everything. The "death" was not an end, but a profound re-birthing. It was the clearing of the land, the tilling of the soil, so that something new, something richer, could finally take root. I had spent so long searching for God out there, in the grand pronouncements and the shiny promises. But it was only when I died to myself, to my own limited understanding, that I began to find God within, not as a distant deity, but as the very breath of my being, the infinite love that had been there all along, waiting for the old me to finally make room. And in that space, the journey of finding God, not as a destination, but as an ever-unfolding, sacred becoming, truly began.
