I Am Intentional - Devotions for Women by Anna Szabo of Online Discipleship for Women

Have you ever felt like you’re just aimlessly wandering through life and not getting anywhere? I felt that way, too. Born out of wedlock during the crush of the USSR, raised on welfare by a single mom with mental health issues, I was told that would never amount to anything. My mom taught me that I was ugly, stupid, worthless, and a mistake. She revealed to me how she went to abort me. She persuaded me that I didn’t deserve to live. She looked me straight in the eye and yelled: “I hate you and I just want you dead!” I attempted suicide twice as a child. All I knew about my father was that he was in jail and that I was an unwanted accident. I felt confused about who I was and why I was even born. Today, I know that my life has a great purpose because God created me to make a positive impact in His kingdom. I founded this Christian ministry in 2017 to help alleviate suicide among women globally by sharing hope in Christ. I help women see themselves the way God sees them. So, I am intentional in the way I live, think, relate to people, and commune with God.

I am Intentional #52Devotionals Devotions for Women  by Anna Szabo

Living Aimlessly

I remember feeling numb, confused, and lost. I was depressed and severely suicidal. I had no wants and no desires of any kind. I had no goals. I felt dead on the inside. To help me process that season of no aspirations and no motivation, I wrote a poem called “No Aspiration, No Motivation.” I’m going to share it with you so that you can relate.

"No Aspiration, No Motivation, aka Suicidal Ideation" #PoemsFromGod

 I feel stuck in life and I don’t care about the future.
 I have no desires of any kind, I’m numb, and I feel no motivation.
 I searched inside myself, but my broken heart I can’t seem to suture.
 I just don’t care and for nothing do I have any aspiration. 
 
 Why can’t I strive for something great and aim to be important?
 Why don’t I have at least some kind of meaningful goals?
 Why are my hope, my drive, my aim all completely distorted?
 Why am I not interested is playing any social roles?
 
 I want to want to want some kind of wanting.
 I want to want to live, and matter, and achieve.
 Only I don’t. And knowing this is daunting.
 I’m being honest: all I do is grieve. 
 
 My life is not at all like everybody else’s:
 They have their past, their present, and their future.
 I am my past. And all I am is helpless. 
 My heart is broken. Can it I ever suture?
 

 3/12/18 © Anna Szabo, JD, MBA 

This poem communicates how confused and lost I felt at the time. I was in so much pain. I was worn out by adversity, betrayal, abuse, rejection, and deception. I was recovering from a horrible marriage, which is described in my essays called “Marrying Michel Szabo” and “My Story of Narcissistic Abuse Relationship.” I’ll tell you briefly what happened.

In 2015, a God-loving man, who worked at the mega-church I attended, began courting me for marriage. He was so perfect that after each date, I wrote him a gratitude letter which eventually turned into a gratitude book I gave him as a wedding gift. Four months after our wedding, my perfect Christian husband … filed for divorce saying he wasn’t interested in me anymore and wanted to be an IronMan instead and compete in Kona. He called his bicycle “My other wife I cheat on you with” and I felt deceived, disoriented, devalued, discarded, and depressed. 

Being Aimless

I had never lived aimlessly before. I became aimless and stopped caring for a season after the narcissistic tried to destroy my life and I became numb from pain. The narc had imposed mental cruelty on me regularly for a while, and after a while, when I was manipulated into a complete mental haze where I became depressed and suicidal, I stopped caring and became aimless. I described this in an essay called “Narcissistic Abuse Makes You Feel Hopeless.”

When I was living without intentions, on autopilot, I noticed that future was uncomfortable to think about. I was just getting through the day, every day. I couldn’t imagine anything good or positive in my future. I couldn’t set goals because goals have to do with being future-focused. I didn’t want to be in my future. I wanted my future not to be, if it makes any sense. I wanted my life to end, to stop, to no longer continue. Why? Because I had experienced too much emotional pain and I needed the pain to stop. I couldn’t take the pain anymore.

Living without clear intentions resulted in feeling trapped in annoying mundane. I wasn’t striving for anything. I wasn’t excited. I felt already dead but my body was waking around wearing smiles, dresses, heels, and makeup. People thought I was perfectly alive. In fact, on the day I was planning my suicide, the waitress who served me lunch said I looked sophisticated, projected confidence, and appeared to have my life together. I responded with thanks, opened my journal, and wrote the following:

“I feel like I just need to die. It sucks to be alive. My life sucks and it sucks to be me.”

I was depressed and suicidal but stuck in the deadly trap of toxic positivity, aka the happiness illusion. I described it in my essays “The Happiness Illusion” and “Tell Me How You Really Feel.” While contemplating suicide, I came across a lecture on depression by Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University. It explained that after about 5 major setbacks in life, adversity becomes too much, and that’s when people choose to escape emotional pain by suicide.

The lecture also explained that depression is known as self-aggression, which is anger against self. Anger is known as unprocessed grief. It’s unresolved sadness. I had experienced more than 5 setbacks in my life. So, on the inside, I resented my addiction to performance, perfection, and toxic positivity, but on the outside, I felt pressured to choose happiness all the time. I was in conflict with myself. I was tired of being trapped in the happiness illusion. That‘s why I was depressed and suicidal. My self-aggression resulted from decades of accumulated and compounded unprocessed grief.

I realized that, to be friends with myself, to stop depression, self-aggression, and suicidal ideation, I had to ditch the unreasonable demands of our culture, escape the deadly trap of toxic positivity, acknowledge my emotional pain, allow myself to be sad about my own problems, and become fully human by experiencing the healing power of self-pity. Once I allowed myself to be fully human, process grief, and weep, I found wisdom in my wounds. I saw blessings in my baggage.

Intentional Living

Intentional living starts with our realization of the purpose of life. I asked myself about that and had to look in the Bible to figure out why I was even here to begin with. I unpacked my baggage and saw how much God comforted me while delivering me through every adversity in my past. The blessings in my baggage where so many: comfort for other women in adversity, hope that God has a plan, and encouragement to persevere with fortitude. God prepared me for ministry!

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah 1:5

God made us on purpose. He put me through “life school” to equip and prepare me for ministry. He ordained each of my circumstances to help me grow in faith and then share hope with others. My thinking shifted because God opened up my eyes to the things previously unseen. I learned that God uses what He hates to accomplish what He loves. To fulfill my purpose, I needed to go through all my trials and tribulations. They perfectly prepared me to follow God’s calling on my life.

It was a breakthrough!

The intentionality I need to exhibit toward my thoughts, behaviors, and words is explained in the Bible. God has a purpose for us to minister to His kingdom. Ministry is the purpose of my life. I am Christ’s disciple, and it’s no small task to tell the world about Jesus. If I wanted to follow Jesus Christ as His disciple, I needed to develop intentional intentionality. Bad English, I know. However grammatically-improper it sounds, intentional intentionality is the key to intentional living

However grammatically-improper it sounds, intentional intentionality is the key to intentional living

Anna Szabo

If we don’t want to wander through life aimlessly, we must set our intentions on living intentionally according to God’s purpose for our lives. Otherwise, we can get overwhelmed by adversity, becoming unable to see God’s purpose in our pain. We can get sidetracked by bleeding emotional wounds and forget to extract wisdom from those tribulations and trials. We must keep an eternal perspective at all times.

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them.

1 Corinthians 7:17

What is this truth teaching us? The lesson here is this: we must understand what the Lord assigned to us as a believer and we must intentionally live in accordance with that assignment. Our lives as Christ-followers are aimed to follow our special anointing and glorify God. We must be intentional in how we live out of our gratitude for what Jesus did for us.

Being Intentional

To set our intentions, we must understand our identity in Christ and God’s promises to us. Our identity in Christ is reflected in what God says in the Bible about who we are as His children: worthy, loved, accepted, powerful, victorious… God’s promises have to do with everything God said we can count on as His children: peace, joy, protection, forgiveness, wisdom, love, prosperity… 

There are 3573 promises in the Bible! I even wrote a poem about God’s promises as I was trying to set my intentions on my future while recovering from suicidal depression and narcissistic abuse. It’s called “Standing on God’s Promises.” If we understand who we are in Christ and what God promises to us, we can then use that knowledge every day as our “armor” to protect us from getting conquered by adversity.

That’s why I say we must demonstrate “intentionality about intentional living.” Apostle Paul wrote about the Armor of God in his letter to Ephesians encouraging them to use their identity in Christ and God’s promises to deal with everyday life’s trials and stand strong.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

Ephesians 6:13-15

Being intentional means that you know who you are, whose you are, why you’re here, where you’re going, and how to get there. It means that you understand and embrace the purpose of your life. It means that you live in accordance with your special anointing. Intentional living means that every day when you wake up, you arm yourself with peace, your identity as a child of God, God’s eternal promises, and His joy. Everything changed for me when I decided to live intentionally according to the purpose of my life. This Christian ministry for women was born. I wrote a book called “52 Things God Says About You.” I published a book of Christian fairytales called “How Princess Lana Developed Faith and Fortitude.” I created a collection of Christian apparel to encourage and empower women with God’s truth. I began ministering to people.

Living on Purpose

Your life has a purpose. God uniquely designed every part of you to fulfill that purpose. He made you a masterpiece in His image so that you can bring Him honor and glory while living your life intentionally following His word.
Do you believe that God has a special anointing on your life? Are you ready to pray and ask Him to help set your intentions on His plan for a purposeful, intentional living? If you said yes, memorize the Biblical affirmation I created for you below and begin being intentional about being intentional every day.

I Am Intentional

I am Intentional #52Devotionals

I'm intentional, and my life has a great purpose.
God Himself appointed me to make an impact in the world.
I am leading my life committed to compassion and service.
I am doing exactly what, I know, to do by Him I’m called. 

Click to Tweet

What difference can being intentional make in your life? Share with me in the comments below so I can cheer you on. When you share your story, you give God all the glory. Your testimony can encourage and empower someone who’s confused, lost, in pain, or even suicidal. Share in the comments how God is working in you.

Today, I help women see themselves the way God sees them. From the Bible, I discovered 52 incredibly-positive things God says about us as His daughters. Those 52 precious discoveries turned into 52 Biblical affirmations I created to encourage and empower Christian women. To help share this life-changing information with you, I created an ebook called #52Devotionals. Download it below for free. Share it with someone who needs encouragement right now.

Anna Szabo's 52 Devotionals ebook revealing 52 things God says about you

Read Next

SHARE IF YOU CARE
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments