That Time God Totally Crashed My World (VIDEO)
Originally published in June 2018, this article was updated March 2019. This is a video I made in 2018 that explains my experience:
Falling into a spiritual abyss
Dear friends, sisters, brothers, my comrades on this journey,
My journey took a sudden and drastic turn while I was in Montenegro in July 2017. It was as if a veil lifted and I could see through the reality I lived in, into a spiritual reality. It’s not fully possible for me to put in words, but it was as though God pulled the plug on my universe and told me, “That’s enough. You cannot keep doing down this route, Anita. Turn back.”
During a period of 2-3 weeks, I experienced wave after wave of revelations. I came to understand that everything that I thought was right was wrong. Everything I thought was true, rendered itself false. Everything that I thought was false, rendered itself true. All of realizations built upon one another until my entire understanding of the world came crashing down on me.
You know that saying, “I lost my grip on reality”? During weeks, I lived it. I couldn’t tell whether I had been progressing or retracting all these years.
It was the strangest, most horrifying experience of my life.
I experienced a soul-shattering sense of hollowness, emptiness and despair that I would never wish on anyone. I tangibly understood that the saying, “they sold their soul to the devil” is completely possible because I got a taste of what it must be like to be soul-less. No matter what I did, the feeling would not go away.
It was as though I’d lost my capacity to experience joy and it was harrowing. I was e m p t y inside. No matter what I did to appease the sorrow in my spirit, I could not. I was trapped in a dark realm.
Seeing My Own Shadow
I saw the horrible wounds in my spirit that drove me to travel, to be an entrepreneur and to publish content online. As much as I always started this with good intentions, my own fear and ambition had grown alongside my good intentions. Like a weed, they made the garden of my heart impure. I was so ashamed of what I had done. I was embarrassed by everything that I had ever created online and I vowed to take it all down. I was filled with so much despair over what I had been doing with my life. How arrogant and prideful I’d been.
I guess you could say, I was crushed by the weight of my sin.
Rediscovering “God”
This abyss of the soul happened to me while I lived in a villa along the Adriatic Sea in an adorable town in the Balkans. There was literally no reason for me hit this kind of despair, because I was visibly “living the dream.” At that point, I had done everything in my power to make my life perfect: I was travelling. I was making the content I loved and getting more traction everyday. I had friends all around the world. I was building an empire it was getting bigger and bigger every day.
The fact that this was happening to me right now was no mistake. This was the act of something alive and something that knows me better than I know myself.
In a flash, I just knew: God is real.
God is real because something is taking over my life specially when I am the top of my game. His sovereignty over our universe and the spiritual realities is real.
This is act of God.
I’d read about “dark nights of the soul,” but this was worse. This must be what they call an “encounter with God.” I’d ignored God for so long that now he was getting my attention in a way I could not ignore.
I was terrified.
If I had to stay in that dark realm any longer, I was sure I’d implode or kill myself. My consciousness was plunging deeper and deeper into darkness with every passing day. I had to do something! At the time, the only thing I could possibly think of doing to appease the unbearable pain was to pray.
So I prayed and prayed and prayed.
I prayed with a desperation and surrender like never before. I asked for salvation. (Suddenly, salvation — another word that I’d rejected — made a lot of sense to me). I repented. I thought of everything that I’d prayed as a child and threw my whole being into those prayers.
Thankfully, God started to stir in my heart with instructions, guidance and messages. This is the reason I came back to Canada in August 2017.
As a result of my conversations with God, I knew I needed to go back “home" to Toronto. I knew I needed to find a church and plant myself into it. I knew I needed to learn how to love people. I knew that I needed to make amends with my parents. I knew I needed to change my ways. I had to stop chasing my ambitions once and for all. I had sinned.
So I came back and one of my first assignments was to put together Home Is Oceans Here, the book. Once that was done by January 2018, I was confronted again with God’s guidance. Left with nothing to do and no desire to run my business or produce new online content, I sought God.
Finding My Identity In God Again
I started reading the Bible again. I hadn’t picked up this ginormous book in nearly a decade. I simply started from page one. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Bit by bit, day by day, page by page, God revealed who he is to me.
I spent a lot of time in reflection and asked God hundreds of questions. To this day, I continue to ask and receive, digest and integrate. There is a lot more to share on this and I won’t purport to have the final say. To be completely honest, opening up “Christianity” has raised a whole new set of questions for me.
I didn’t blog or publish anything substantial throughout 2018 because I wasn’t sure where all of this was going.
I finally feel ready to share what I’ve learned and realized. This is a wild journey, but one that I’m very happy to be on.
If you ever find yourself in an experience similar to my “dark night of the soul”, I encourage you to pray. Seek God. Even if you have no idea how. The desire to seek spiritual aid is always heard by a Higher Power and help will come! I promise.
If you found this piece helpful, please feel free to share it with those you love.
We’re all in this together. I’d love to stay connected with you through the thick and thin of this wild journey! Subscribe to my monthly-ish personal email updates: bit.ly/AnitasUpdates
