My Whole World Was Collapsing Around Me
On 2nd July 2019, just over 2 weeks after I had been baptised, I wrote the following journal entry into DayOne - the incredible app which I started using on 31st March 2019, and I continue to use daily even now as I write these words, on 2nd July 2025.
Here is my raw journal entry directly from my journal, which I have been led to share publicly - maybe even for you personally right now in your life…
On My Needs Praying To God - 2nd July 2019
Tonight I truly, truly felt like my whole world was collapsing around me.
I drove to St Michaels Church in Marbury. I was planning to walk to the lake behind the church, to sit and ponder and try and make sense of everything.
As I was walking through the church garden to get to the lake, I couldn’t leave the church. I was compelled to stay in the church garden.
I got my phone out and started playing some of the songs Rammie had shared with me. They included Joy by Housefires and I’ll Give Thanks by the Housefires and Kirby Kaplan.
I was looking at the church, I was looking at the grave stones. I was reading the words people had chose to write on the grave stones. Reading people express how much love they have for the person that has passed. Reading how much joy that person had brought in to other people’s lives.
I started praying to God. I started asking him for guidance. Asking him to show me the way. Asking him to help heal my heart. Asking to show me the light.
My business was at the point of me having to take it back to right to the start. To go back to being just myself. That was 15 years ago. I didn’t know if I could do it.
I was crying. I got down on my knees and started praying. I put my hands on the ground and started feeling the grass. I was probably the most present I have been in my whole life.
After some minutes I got up and walked around the graveyard some more.
I started to gather my thoughts a bit. I knew that quite soon I will be speaking to Rammie and his friend and pastor Stefan. I thought that I will get home and speak to them there rather than stay at the church. I felt like I had done what I could do for this evening there.
End of journal entry
There are a few scriptures which come to my mind in relation to where I was back in early July 2019, following my baptism. In addition, I have shared the 2 songs which I played on this day, in the very depth of deep pain, heartbreak and sorrow.
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
James 1:2-4
For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.
2 Corinthians 7:10
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
