The Struggle: Faith, Hope, and Love

The last few months have been the hardest of my life.  That is not a secret.  I did things I never thought I would do.  The biggest one is I stopped talking to God.  Never in all my blessed life did I think think I would be capable of that.  Which is pretty prideful.  Thinking I was so spiritually untouchable that my faith could not be shaken.  Yet, here I sit.  The biggest sinners and failures I know.  But even still, God continues to love me.
As with everything, I have made my struggles public on this blog.  But it has been awhile since I wrote anything.  Not because I am hiding, but because I have been struggling so much and been so broken that I could not find the words to write.  All of my energy has gone into getting through the day without breaking down or causing someone else to feel worse pain.  Some days I made it, others I did not.
As I think about the last months it came to me why this struggle has been more real and harder than any other I have faced before.  Three things that I have done well most of my life are to have faith, hope, and love in my life.  This may sound preachy or arrogant.  It is not.  This is who God made me, and anyone who knows me just a little will attest to that.  If you don't, well that is not my problem.  There are other areas of spirituality where I struggle incredibly, but with these three attributes I have always held onto for dear life.  Until recently.  Devastatingly, I lost all of those things.
I believe this is the reason I fell so deeply in to this depression.  It is my belief that these three go hand in hand.  To work properly, they have to work together.  And they are needed to live a life fully for God.
I have always been a person with so much love to give.  And because of that, I also desire to be loved greatly.  Very often, I have not been able to share my love with people to the extent I feel it.  And I have learned to be okay with that.  I would hold onto hope that someday I would be able to use this gift and I had faith God would take care of me.  See how that works?  All together.  But some point last year, I started losing hope that everything would someday be better.  As more and more trouble piled on, it would steal my hope away.  I felt a fool trusting God when all it seems is that life was just getting worse.  So my faith started to diminish as well.  And it became a spiral.  As I fell deeper into this hole of darkness, I would lose more hope and faith that God would ever rescue me, especially since He could see how dark and painful it was for me and not do anything about it.  I would think "I thought He is supposed to rescue His children in time of need, yet He isn't, so what is the point?"  I would get angry.  And there is no love to be had in this state of mind.  So it just kept getting darker. To the point where there was nothing of my former self left.
It was not until recently, with the help of professionals and support of loved ones, that I can look back and see what happened.  Thankfully, I got the push to get help, even if I have hated every step of it.  And as I process and think, it has come to me that the three things needed to live a life of Joy in Christ were gone from my heart.  And this is the reason I struggle so much.
I am not saying I have reached the point I need to be.  I still do not have the faith, hope and love I had before.  I am still struggling.  It is still so very painful.  But little by little, the fog is lifting and I am climbing out of this hole towards the light.  As painful as it is, I am trying to love, hope and have faith again.  Because without them, I am not Lindsay, the child of God He intends me to be.