DANCING ON JUPITER

By guest blogger India Amos

When I think of my childhood, it’s full of memories of me telling stories. I often wrote them down, I sometimes told them out loud, and they always meandered through my mind.

My childhood summers in West Virginia were long and largely uneventful, and I’d spend hour after hour traipsing through the worlds of my imagination. 

When life became challenging, I would slip away to a universe that was entirely my own. In a few short words, I could be a pirate or fearless treasure hunter who traveled the world in search of something incredible. There, my real reality didn’t matter as much because I had created one of my own. 

This one felt safer, so I stayed there longer than I should have. 

I had just entered my teen years when things started to change. They always do, and they always change for the worse when we do not invite God into our narrative. 

Life became harder, and I didn’t know how to cope. The only skill I had was to disappear because that’s all I’d ever practiced. 

The older I got, though, the less it worked. 

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10a NKJV). 

My imagination, which had once been a pasture of comfort, dissolved into a den of snares. Now, when I slipped into my thoughts, I was met with hisses of hostility. 

Everyone hates you. They just tolerate you out of pity. 

You’re trash — just look at yourself. Nobody could ever love you. 

You should just disappear. Nobody would notice anyway. 

Give up now. What’s the point of living another day when all you’ll ever have is this? 

It didn’t take long for the whispers to become shouts. They echoed in the chambers of my mind like voices in a cavernous courtroom, each one a condemning accusation about the person I was tricked into believing I was and the one I was convinced I always would be. 

Instead of being comforted by picturesque stories, my thoughts were consumed by these worst-case scenarios and catastrophes. And just as my peaceful musings seeped into my reality, these paralyzing fears did, too. Eventually I couldn’t even separate which was real reality and which was my reality. For more than three years, I existed in an in between-ness that stretched me and strained me until I had one foot in this world and another foot somewhere else entirely. 

I was here in the flesh, but my mind had been hijacked by another reality — one where it really was better if I just gave up on everything and slowly peeled myself away. 

But God. 

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep” (John 10:11). 

I met Jesus a year after I moved to Florida, and my anxiety and depression were drowning me. I had just been assaulted in Miami, and my patience for living was so thin, if I held it up to the light, I could almost see through it. 

But God. 

“But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine'” (Isaiah 43: 1 NKJV).

When I met God, everything changed. Since I had little in my life that I valued, I had little to cling to. I gave everything I could think of to the Lord — my hobbies, jobs and friends. He worked true miracles out of each of those scenarios, but I couldn’t see a way for my mind to be redeemed. 

It had been years since I could sit in a silent room by myself without my thoughts trapping me in an endless cycle of “what ifs.” I didn’t believe life could be any different.

But God. 

“You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book?” (Psalm 56:8 NKJV)

God is all-powerful, but He did not take away my anxiety and depression instantaneously. He could have, but He didn’t. When the panic attacks would come even after I had professed Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I sometimes resented Him for it. 

If He were God Almighty, why wouldn’t He save me from the suffering? 

Now that my anxiety attacks are almost nonexistent, I have a clearer understanding as to why the Lord didn’t dissolve all my anxious thoughts in a single heartbeat: It wouldn’t have been for my benefit, and I wouldn’t have gotten to know Him through the pain. 

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). 

Now, I wasn’t fighting alone. When the panic attacks and bouts of depression came, I didn’t have to run from them anymore; instead, I could walk through them with God. With Jehovah-Nissi as my banner, light flooded into the shadows of my mind, slowly but faithfully reclaiming the territory I had unknowingly given away to the enemy. 

It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened. Wherever light shines, the darkness has no choice but to retreat. Eventually, the anxious thoughts became less frequent. Now, they’ve all but disappeared.

God did what I wanted Him to do for me, but because He is rich in mercy, He hadn’t done all He wanted to do for me. 

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame” (Joel 2:25-26 NKJV).

Slowly, the Lord began to beckon me back into my imagination. As I read His Word, my curiosity was piqued. The Bible is full of concrete concepts and images, but I’m always captivated by God’s mystery and the fact that there are some things we just won’t know on this side of heaven. 

What will it be like to worship God endlessly? 

How would I feel to walk side by side with the Lord? 

What color is agape? What does it taste like?

Where does He really store the snow? 

These are the questions my mind craves, and God is faithful to meet me there. But because I’m a broken human still, thoughts colored by depression are still likely to appear in my mind sometimes. Sometimes they appear when I’m reading the Bible. Other times, they seemingly arise out of the blue. 

But now, instead of succumbing to them, I can stand against them. They do not have to be my reality anymore. The Lord has already overcome the world (John 16:33), which means He has already overcome the battle in my mind, too. 

If I fight alongside Him, I cannot lose. 

So now, when these thoughts arise, I don’t accept them as reality. Instead, I do my best to fix my eyes on eternity (2 Corinthians 4:18), and I think about the life I’ll live far longer than the one I’m journeying through now. 

One of the things I most look forward to in heaven is taking trips with Jesus. We’ll have a redeemed universe, after all, and nothing about God’s character indicates that he made a whole universe for it to sit there untouched. I believe in heaven, we get to explore it. 

Until that day comes, I can do it in my imagination. And I have found that nothing makes the enemy flee like walking through the land God reclaimed for me. 

I do this by leaning into my imagination. And in my imagination, I like to explore eternity. 

Sometimes, I’m walking through the desert, and Emmanuel is with me. We might be in the redeemed version of Arizona or Egypt, but everything is still and silent, save a flicker of sand dusting over my shoes as the wind blows. It’s peaceful, and I’m loved. 

Other times, we’re in the jungles of Brazil or Thailand just to watch the animals. I’m not scared because I’m safe with Jesus. Instead of fear, I feel joy and wonder. 

And sometimes, we go even farther to explore the marvelous bits of creation that are just beyond grasp for this lifetime. I like to imagine us watching diamonds rain from the sky on Neptune or dancing on Jupiter as a perfect eternity stretches on forever. We laugh because it’s incredible, and I smile because we’re together. 

Until it happens in reality, it happens in my imagination. And because the end is already written, that is enough for now.