Years of Faith Restored with One Desperate Prayer
“I was unhappy with who I was,” Isabell Bowling said. “I felt like I was not living up to the expectations that God wanted of me, and I was desperate for His approval and for His validation. It was darkness. It was depression. It was a lie that I was believing.”
“I am Marilyn Hickey's granddaughter; I’m Sarah Bowling’s daughter,” Isabell said. “It was normal that we spent five days a week at church and weekends we volunteered. My parents, they've always said, ‘It's about whoever God wants you to be. We want you to be the best version of that.’ Then you get to church and all of the very well-meaning and very loving church members are not saying that. There was always that whisper of, ‘Look good, act good.’ It's hard because part of me was like, ‘I don’t really care what these people think. But the other part of me is like, ‘It kind of feels bad that I’m letting these people down. I want them to like me and I want them to respect the church and I feel like I’m a representative of the church.’”
“I didn’t feel like there was any space for me to be a kid,” Isabell said. “And I didn’t feel like there was really any ability to fail, and I felt like I was consistently failing and I wasn’t living up to these expectations – way too much pressure.”
“When I was 14 years old, I got diagnosed with epilepsy and I started taking medication for it,” Isabell said. “Nobody told me this, but one of the side effects was a chemical imbalance that causes depression. All I had heard growing up was that if you're depressed, essentially, you're not praying hard enough. I felt like I was disappointing God, and so He was withholding His presence from me. So, I basically told the Lord, ‘If You're going to withhold Your spirit from me, I'm going to take my own life and I'm going to come hang out with You in Heaven.’”
“I live in Colorado and it's very cold,” Isabell said. “My plan was to go downtown and just sit in a corner in a box and wait to freeze to death. Nobody knew. I didn’t tell anybody that I was sad or that I was planning this. I gave the Lord until the end of the year and I said, ‘Good luck, and then I’m going to come see You if not.’”
“I went to this Christmas party,” Isabell said. “I remember I felt the Lord, the Holy Spirit, stirring in my heart. We had a very important conversation. It was about my identity. ‘These next few years you can go through any of it and I’m always with you.’ Then I was like, ‘I'm not going to end my life, God is with me. He has a plan for my life. He has a calling for me.’ So, then I was still depressed because of the chemical imbalance, but I felt like I could get through it and I could do it and I had this ability. And so, I kind of neglected reading scripture in high school because I had this experience to carry me through. I realized that that was not enough. And then Covid hit.”
“I had learned that God was the healer my whole life, but people were dying and I couldn’t rectify those two things in my mind,” Isabell said. “I was isolated, I didn't have access to my friends. I was depressed and I was sad. I started scrolling through TikTok, I used to follow all these preachers and pastors and whatever, but I was getting Buddhist and New Age people and tarot readings and things that had to do with my horoscope. These gave me more peace than reading my Bible. I could say, ‘Oh yeah, today is going to be a good day because I’m a Libra or whatever. Look at the state of the Church, there’s no peace in the Church.’ I was like, ‘I’m not dealing with this – the Church, God, all of this mess. It's much easier to put it to the side and to focus on Buddhism, and on emptying myself because I was already empty.’”
“I knew that it was wrong.” Isabell said. “I went to my mom and I said, ‘Mom, I'm having a difficult time being happy. I think that I'm depressed.’ And my mom said, ‘You're going to start going to therapy.’ You know how great it is to talk to somebody? Now there's hope, there’s a plan and there’s a future.”
“At the very end of the summer Colorado had opened up more, so, we had a worship night for some of our members,” Isabell said. “I had a vision where I was drowning in a lake. I was looking for Jesus, and I heard him whisper over my right shoulder. And He said, ‘I'll be with you until we need to come to the surface together.’ I felt so glad. He saved my life. I wanted to have a relationship with God on my own terms, not one that reflected my grandmother’s or my mom’s or my dad’s or my pastor’s, but one for myself.”
“I started reading the Bible for myself,” Isabell said. “I wanted a more active prayer life and I started getting that. I started working for Marilyn Hickey Ministries and Miracle Word Ministries. That requires you to attend prayer every single morning. The Lord was like, ‘These are things that you have asked Me for and I have them for you here in this place. I'm a youth pastor in Colorado. I'm able to speak into the lives of kids, of teenagers, of middle schoolers and high schoolers who are going through similar things. My desire to live that lifestyle is not because of a sense of duty or obligation, but it's because I love the Lord so much that I want to.”
“I don’t feel the need to alter my personality to be more or less palatable to people because God loves me the way that I am,” Isabell said. “I have learned that when scary thoughts come up, there are practical ways that I’ve learned through therapy and with the help of God, that I can navigate those times. I have scriptures that I speak over myself every single day, ‘I cast my burdens on God and He sustains me, never letting the righteous be shaken. In God alone I put my trust. I will not be afraid, for God is for me who can be against?’ Only God can fully know somebody. The dark parts, the scary parts, the worrisome parts, and fully love you.
