My Confession

I am proud.

Because of that horrible fact, I have decided to confess to the world what I really am.

This will be a very lengthy confession. So I suggest you fix yourself a very large bowl of popcorn, and pour yourself a great big glass of sweet tea. Make yourself comfortable, it’s going to be a little while.

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I created a very safe and beautiful world for myself. My future was planned, and my religion was very organized.

According to my planning I was to go to a summer camp in Canada as a craft teacher for 6 weeks. It ended up being quite a different 6 weeks than my plans portrayed. It was the beginning of the destruction of my safe and beautiful world.

The first week was a very intense week of training. There was lots of class time, lots of work done around the camp, and these horrible things called TDA’s. TDA’s are Team Development Activities. Basically a TDA is 2 directors placing a group of 20-30 individuals in a next to impossible situation so that the group of individuals becomes a unified team. An example: A rope is stretched fairly high between two trees, a blanket is draped over the rope. All the people are gather on one side in hopes of getting to the other side. Rules: You must not touch the blanket or rope in any way, if you do everyone must start over. You must hold hands, if you in any way let go of the two hands you are supposed to be holding the whole group must start over. You may not go around the trees, you must go over the rope and blanket. You may not talk. I wanted to give up before we even started. TDA’s are terrible, but they are also beautiful. One cannot go through a TDA and not learn something about themselves. We had 4 that week. I discovered a lot. The last TDA (the one described above) left me unable to walk. People had to carry and drive me back to the dining hall. That TDA showed me how very little I trusted people. I had the hardest time trusting my team mates to help me get over that rope/blanket deal. Then I hyperventilated and I had to trust my team mates. I ended up laying in one girls lap, my legs in several other girls and a girl dripping water on my face. Then of course I couldn’t stand up so they had to carry me to a four-wheeler and drive me to the dining hall and then carry me inside. We then had solo time. So I had a while to think things over. I thought I just didn’t trust these people, end of story well it wasn’t. Two mornings later I was in the directors office. I told him I was having a really hard time feeling accepted by the team and I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with my team, it had to do with me. So he asked me several questions, then he gave me several assignments. The assignments were things like, what do you dislike about yourself, why do you dislike those things, etc. We met later on that day, this time we also met with my Discipleship Director. The Camp Director basically handed me over to the Discipleship Director. The next 5 weeks were spent dealing with the lies I believed about myself, the lies I believed about God, and the hurts of my past. My Discipleship Director was and is a wonderful lady. She listened, she encouraged, she prayed, she shared wisdom, and she challenged me. The main things I discovered about myself in those 6 weeks were as follows, I disliked myself incredibly much, I believed God disliked me that much to, I believed that people disliked me as well. Because of those beliefs, I was working for my salvation, I felt like I needed to prove to God that I was worth saving. I also thought I had to prove myself to the people I met. It didn’t matter how sweet they were to me, how trustworthy they really were, I rarely trusted people. That summer was one of the most beautiful and the most horrible summers of my life. I discovered the liberty in a relationship with God, I met God’s grace like I had never met it before. I was free to love and free to trust like I had never been before. I also discovered God’s love in new ways. But the ways I had to get to those discoveries were not always fun, and they included me sharing all my ugliness with someone.

I came home from Camp a very different person. But the place I came home to was very different as well.

While I was gone something not so cool happened. Someone inadvertently rejected me. Now I didn’t trust very many people, but this was one person I trusted completely. I was positive that they would never and could never turn on me. This one person did just that. If I could describe to you how much that hurt, I would but I can’t. I cried. I hurt. I could not forgive. I could not love. I was very angry. I decided not to deal with it. It seems so incredibly ironic that while I was at camp learning to trust God and learning to trust people, someone at home was busy rejecting me. I thought that God would give me people I could trust for a while and then maybe let me get hurt again. But instead He allowed the exact opposite to happen. It didn’t make sense to me. It still doesn’t.

While I not dealing with that hurt, I received something in the mail. It said that the camp I was at the past summer was in need of a secretary. The secretary is expected to stay there for two years. I thought it sounded like something I would like to do and it fit in with my plan for my life so I started praying about it. After weeks-months of praying about it, God said no. He said no in a very big way. He said no, not ever, in your single life, will you, Brittany Coblentz be involved in long term out of country missions. With that statement, God destroyed about ¾’s of my world/life plan. You must understand that I have wanted to be a missionary since I was a little girl. I love helping people and helping them in that way was a great big dream of mine. A dream I thought I was safe in assuming, was my calling in life because we all know that missionaries are needed all over and we all know that God loves missionaries. But He said no. My world was crumbling around me. I no longer had any dreams, and I had almost no vision. I wanted to throw a tantrum 95% of the time. I did throw them just not that much. I tried to convince myself that God had something better for me. But it didn’t work. My heart could not believe it. My world had lost its purpose, I had no idea what would happen next. The sun seemed to hide behind clouds.

About 5-6 months after God said no, two things happened that destroyed the remaining ¼ of my world. We went to see my cousins in Arkansas. On the way out there we listened to a guy preach. Not only did this guy preach he started making predictions about the future. I am one who gets incredibly frightened with end time stuff. It has always been something that I avoid thinking about because of the fear that it causes me. According to him, all that end time stuff was right around the corner. Part of me, said you know what, he doesn’t know, only God knows the future. The other part of me said, how can he not know. So that weekend I had a bit of a rough time with life. The evening before we were supposed to come home, my cousin and I went on a four-wheeler ride. We turned it on its side. It was a very scary situation. You want to see your life flash before your eyes just go on a four wheeler ride and make sure you tip it and hit your head on the ground. My cousin received a very nasty gash on her knee and I got a scratch beside my eye. I still have a scar. One of their neighbors saw what happened and drove us home. We went in the house and when my mom discovered us she promptly decided that it was a really good time to try to pass out. People got us cleaned up, and the next morning we left.

When I came home, I had a serious breakdown. I completely fell apart. A lot of stuff had led me to this point, the person that had let me down who I still hadn’t completely forgiven, God crushed my dreams which portrayed a lack of surrender and trust in my life, that man who was making predictions which showed me again that I didn’t trust God very much, and our four-wheeler accident which showed me how quickly life can be taken. I was a mess. A very frightened mess. This began a time of panic attacks. If you haven’t had a panic attack before it’s something like this, a great big giant fist of fear grabs your body and you cannot think about anything except for that giant fist of fear for several seconds or minutes. They’re horrible. I wasn’t able to sleep by myself, the sleep I did get wasn’t the most restful. After about a week or so of not being able to sleep by myself, I decided it was time that I move on with life. I needed to sleep in my own bed and just get over it. I slept in my own bed but I was far from over it. Thus began an incredibly dark time in my life. A part of me wanted to trust God about the future and a part of me rebelled. I hate to admit this but I guess this is what confessions are all about, I think the rebelling part of me was winning. I would read my Bible but every verse I read seemed to be full of doom. I went to church and every message and Sunday school lesson seemed to be have no hope. One of the things I hung onto during this time was the hope of Heaven, then someone destroyed my vision of Heaven and even Heaven was no longer safe to dream about. Instead of getting stronger I was continually getting weaker. My sky grew even darker, my world became a wilderness.

I went to a photography class in DC and met lots of new people. People who had made God their passion and were serving Him and trusting Him with all their hearts. I noticed this in one person especially. Maybe it was because it seemed like she went out of her way to be nice to me. Maybe it was because she seemed to be Jesus to every person in that class. I don’t know. . . Her life made me think thoughts that I wasn’t so sure I wanted to think. I went home and life was still dark, I couldn’t get ahead. I was beginning to wonder if I was depressed. I thought about suicide at times though I never got serious about it. Life was offering no hope, and it didn’t seem like God was either. The very sad thing is I didn’t dare tell anyone what I was feeling. No one knew what I was going through. (my family knew a little but even they didn’t know all of it) It wasn’t because people didn’t care. It was because I didn’t want to admit that I was struggling so badly. The saddest thing though is the fact that I knew all along what I must do to get freedom. God was whispering it in ever so many circumstances, “Give me your life, give me your life. . .” I wasn’t so sure I wanted to so I ignored him and tried to find it in everything else. Which of course led to even more struggles.

Several months after the first photography class, I went to another one, this time it was in Colorado. The same person was there. I noticed even more how passionate she was about God. Whether it was in our times of singing, or when she was teaching, it was always there. She loved God and everyone knew it. She trusted Him for everything, she seemed to know that He would always be there. Every day I saw how very different I was from her but instead of turning me off (which can happen a lot in these situations), she made me incredibly hungry. I wanted what she had very much, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to give up my life.

My family came out to Colorado, and we spent two more weeks there. I think my family wanted to send me back home more than once during that trip. I was horrible. I was very grouchy and made my family miserable. My mom told me later that she never thought she would have to worry about me spiritually, she thought I was the one child that would be ‘safe’ in that area, but on this trip she discovered she was very wrong and she had no idea what was going to happen to me. She called my aunt and asked her to start praying for me really hard. I texted two of my friends and asked them to pray for me. One of those friends was the girl that I meant through photography classes. A couple days later we left Colorado, I was a bit more friendly towards God but for the most part I was still fighting Him.

A couple weeks after I came home I emailed my photography class friend, and told her exactly how ugly I really was. I revealed my struggles to her. I told her how I wasn’t so sure I wanted anything to do with God. I told her this stuff just so that she would know how to pray for me. She was pretty much the only person who knew what was going on inside of me. She prayed. I asked God to show me how to love Him how she did. Slowly, I surrendered more and more of my life to Him. We had a week of meetings at our church. The man that preached every evening was another one of those people who have given everything to God, trusted Him for everything, and love Him with their lives. I think every time he preached tears came to my eyes. He is another one of the many people that God used to change to life of Brittany Coblentz.

Since then God has done incredible miracles in my heart, it seems like every week He shows me something new. He has given me new dreams, dreams much better than the ones I had before. He has challenged me. He has continued to love me with His everlasting love. God has rescued me from Hell, and from the chaos I had created in my life. He is the only thing worth living for.

I confess that when I am too much a part of my life things get really ugly and that when I allow God to take over my life things become incredibly beautiful.

I confess that I cannot save myself in any way, and that I am a product of prayer and the mercy, grace and kindness of a God who loves undeserving people.

I confess that I am a very great sinner, in need of a very great Savior.

I confess that my plans are no match for the plans of God.

I confess that I can do no good thing, only the God who lives inside me can make something good of my life.

I confess that I have proven that when I am my own god, I make my life miserable, but when God is my God, my life is exciting, beautiful, and incredibly fulfilling.

So when you see me getting puffed up with pride and trust me anyone can see pride in my life, kindly whisper to me, “You are a very great sinner saved only because of the mercy of an incredibly kind God. It wasn’t anything that you have done, Brittany, it was all Him.”

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To all you beautiful people, who have prayed for me and fought for me, whose lives have given me hope, who have cheered for me, and who have allowed God to use you in my life, I thank you. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I don’t know where I would be without you.