Josey Bozzo’s Thin Place: An Unknown Thin Place

Feb 10, 2011Archive

Josey lives in Virginia with her husband and two kids.  She shares bits of her life on her blog:  Amazing God, Ordinary Life. (If you’d like to share your Thin Place story, you can do so here.)

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A bottle of alcohol. A handful of pills. A deadly combination.

God came near during a time in my life when I needed him most, even though I didn’t know it at the time. It was my unknown Thin Place.

When I was 15 years old my “first love” broke up with me. He told me he “just didn’t love me anymore.” I was devastated, heartbroken and miserable. I spent many days and nights alone in my room crying. I felt unloved and just wanted the horrible pain to go away. I tried to stop it using alcohol and other boys, but none of that helped.

Nothing I was doing made a difference, so I took drastic measures.

One night before heading out to a friend’s house, I stole a handful of my mother’s “nerve pills” from the medicine cabinet. I washed them down with that night’s bottle of choice. Later, I passed out on the floor of my friend’s house not knowing whether I would wake up.

And I honestly, I didn’t care. I was desperate to stop the pain and I saw no way other way out.

Though I didn’t know it, didn’t know Him, God was there. He knew me. He knew the pain I was feeling. He saw what I had done. And He loved me anyway. In fact, God loved me so much that He wouldn’t let me destroy my life, no matter how many times I tried.

That night He reached down to me on the floor of that room and woke me, when I shouldn’t have. Then, He held my hand in place, hovering over my wrist with a razor blade, when I wanted to slice to the vein. And still another time, He caused my body to reject and vomit when I swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol.

I was His. He had plans for me. Plans I knew nothing about at the time. Nothing I did was going to change that. He wouldn’t let go of me, even as I squirmed, fought, and tried to push Him away. He held on to me. Kept me close to Him, alive and safe until years later when I finally gave Him the control of my life He deserved.

I used to think that if I could go back and relive those days, I would change everything. I’d make different choices. Over the years I’ve come to realize that I wouldn’t change it at all. Without this experience I don’t think I would have known the true height and depth of His love.

I look back on it and know that God’s love was wrapped around me even when I felt unloved. And I still rest in that love today. I don’t know if there has ever been a time in my life when God was as close to me as He was then.

It was the thinnest place I could ever be in.

And I didn’t even know it.

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