Stripped of Self
This post contains reflections on illness, loss of stability, dependence, and emotional distress. Please read at your own pace. You are not required to carry this story all at once.
Everything had to go!
Have you ever had to move to a new home, start a new job, relocate to a new country, or change schools?
Those kinds of changes often come with a grieving process; sometimes sadness, most times resistance, especially when the change is sudden. Even when the change is necessary, it can still feel like loss.
There are moments when we resist acclimating to anything new because we were comfortable where we were. Even if that comfort wasn’t perfect, it felt stable, familiar and predictable; and moving away from what feels like stability, especially without answers can be overwhelming.
Now imagine moving on from… everything.
I have mentioned in previous posts that YAH met me in illness and turmoil. I wasn’t able to be myself for weeks that slowly turned into months. Someone had to remain nearby at all times, just in case I needed to be rushed to the hospital. I was in and out of hospitals more than I was eating or sleeping. There were days—sometimes weeks—when I couldn’t show up for work. My days blurred together and my nights became restless. I felt like I was losing my mind, and even more frightening than that…losing myself.
I lost interest in everything that once brought me joy.
I no longer trusted the people or environments I had once surrounded myself with.
I lost the muscle I had worked so hard to build in the gym.
I had to force myself to eat.
At the time, I did not have the language to explain what was happening to me. I only knew that everything familiar felt like it was slipping away. The version of me I recognized seemed to be dissolving in front of my own eyes.
But now, looking back, I can see it more clearly.
I was shedding.
Physically, spiritually, emotionally; YAH was stripping away layers I once thought I needed to survive. Some things fell away painfully: false strength, misplaced dependence, unhealthy attachments, environments that looked safe but were quietly draining me. Other things simply could not follow me into the version of myself He was calling forth.
Shedding is uncomfortable because it rarely feels like growth while you are inside of it. It feels like loss; like confusion; like grief.
But sometimes YAH allows certain parts of your life to become unbearable because staying the same would cost you more than changing ever could.
And though I did not understand it then, what felt like destruction was more so separation; separation from what was no longer aligned. Separation from identities I had built outside of Him. Separation from patterns that kept me emotionally dependent, spiritually distracted, and internally exhausted.
As my body weakened, so did every identity I had built on strength, discipline, and control (Read Control Dismantled). I was being reduced to my most fragile state, and with that fragility came fear. There were nights when I mentally prepared myself to sleep in my car because, deep in my spirit, I felt I could not return to my apartment. What had once been home no longer represented peace, safety, or rest; it had become a place of torment.
Eventually, I gave up the apartment altogether and found myself drifting between the homes of friends; staying wherever I felt safe enough to breathe, safe enough to rest, safe enough to quiet the fear for a moment. It was disorienting not having a place that felt anchored, but at the same time, YAH was revealing something deeper to me: sometimes He allows us to be uprooted from familiar spaces because those spaces can no longer hold who we are becoming.
Before I ever moved from one friend’s home to another, there were months when I couldn’t drive at all. My car sat parked and untouched. I watched myself grow dependent on others; for food, for transportation, for encouragement, for reassurance, and even for decisions I once made with ease. From the outside looking in—and without spiritual discernment, it would have been easy to label that season as depression, instability, or mood swings. Nothing was making sense to me or the persons who stuck around, especially since I was also battling serious illness that no doctor could clearly diagnose. And truthfully, it was brutal and even humiliating at times. It was lonely in ways I had never known.
Clothed in Humility
As I submitted in obedience, I grieved, yes. I mourned the version of myself I thought I was losing but I also began to understand that where YAH was leading me required humility. And humility cannot grow where accomplishment is still being clung to.
As humility took root, obedience followed.
I began to sense clear instructions; sometimes uncomfortable ones. To go somewhere, or not to go. To stop wearing certain things. To throw things away. To speak, or to remain silent. Even in moments when I felt embarrassed, misunderstood, or disrespected, I would hear that still, steady instruction:
Say nothing.
And slowly, Scripture began to give language to what God was doing in me:
“doing none at all through selfishness or self-conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.”
I had to lose my dependence on self-discipline, self-love, self-esteem, and self-made strength. Not because those things are evil, but because I had made self the source.
There was a time when I stayed with a friend for nearly three months; my clothes still in my car, my future uncertain. She carried me in ways I will forever be grateful for. But my condition was heavy, and it was hard. I remember overhearing her one day, quietly asking another friend for help…because she needed space, rest, and relief. I heard the strain in her voice on other occasions as she tried to balance caring for me while tending to her own life.
It felt, in many ways, like a stork had left someone else’s baby on her porch.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am deeply grateful for the friends who sat with me in hospitals, opened their homes, prayed for me, and showed up when they didn’t have to. But that season revealed something sacred to me.
True servitude does not come from abundance, it comes from surrender. I had to be stripped down so I could recognize it; so I could receive it and so that one day, I could offer it to others with the same humility Elohim taught my friends to extend to me.
I had to die to ego.
Die to pride.
Die to the illusion that I was ever self-sustaining.
Because the truth is I am nothing without YAH and I have nothing without Him.
“Because without Me you are able to do naught!”
Have you ever experienced a season where familiar stability was removed—physically, emotionally, or spiritually? What did that feel like for you?
What parts of yourself have you had to release in order to survive or grow?
Is there an area of your life where dependence feels uncomfortable—or even frightening?
