Today I have a guest article from my friend and published author Vella Karman! Check out her website and subscribe for more personal stories of overcoming darkness with LIGHT!

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I’d just moved out on my own. My dream career was close enough to taste, and the college-life community that I’d dreamed about for the last four years had sprung up around me like a garden of vibrant flowers.

To keep pressing into my calling to write gripping, authentic Christian fiction, I had to work a lot. I needed to show up 40 hours a week at my writing apprenticeship, and then work nights at a Hibachi restaurant. I couldn’t take extended time off. Even if I needed to.

But it wasn’t a burden. I enjoyed the work.

When It All Fell Apart…

A few months after my nineteenth birthday, it started.

I’d be going about my normal day, getting dressed or cooking or hanging out with friends. Then I’d suddenly be pounded with dark thoughts. My stomach would start to clench. Soon I’d be running for the nearest trash can.

I probably vomited more than a hundred times over the course of six months. I remember one day I vomited about 8 times.

My doctor couldn’t find a single thing wrong with me. That, plus the fact that it was accompanied by those dark thoughts, led me to the conclusion that it was spiritual warfare.

Spiritual Warfare…

It all came to a head on New Year’s Eve, 2024.

It had been nine months since this started. After the first three months, it had gotten better, but it hadn’t gone away. My friends had gotten used to me pausing mid-conversation to vomit.

My writing apprenticeship had pushed me to keep growing in my faith. My manager at the Hibachi restaurant had stopped asking if the doctors had figured out what
was wrong with me. I didn’t throw up at the restaurant, and since I knew it wasn’t an infectious disease, I’d stopped calling off sick.

From an outward standpoint…life had gone on.

I was still struggling. Not as much. Not as dramatic. But it hurt.

The hardest part was that right before all this started, I’d been praying over the townhouse with my epic housemate, and I’d realized that neither of us had thrown up in our time as
housemates. I thanked God, and prayed that it would continue.

Sometimes people assume that I’ve never experienced any raw life because I write/recommend clean fiction. That’s not true.

Spiritual warfare is hard, but it’s even harder when it throws your own prayers in your face.

New Year’s Eve, 2024

I watched a movie with my mom that night. At the end of the movie, I started to feel the dark thoughts closing in.

I tried to distract myself, but it didn’t work.

For most of my high school years, I’d had a panic attack every New Year’s Eve. I felt just as
helpless then as I did in high school.

When the vomit came, it was worse than almost any other time. It stung my throat. It came
again, and again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t stop. I started to pray, “Jesus help–” but I was cut off by another wave of vomit.

Nothing seemed to help. I was at the end of myself.

That’s when I realized that the truth in God’s word was all that I could stand on.

I said, “I am a child of God, and you have no power over me.” And I believed it.

The vomit stopped.

I shielded myself from the dark thoughts by focusing on what God says is true. And for the next literal year, I didn’t throw up once.

Not once.

What’s True?

I used to be overwhelmed by darkness. But Jesus filled my life with light.

Everything changed when I shifted my attention from the darkness to the truth found in the light.

God is more powerful than any of our problems.

Beyond the Mirage is my debut novel, and it showcases this. (It came out two weeks ago and it’s a #1 New Release!!)

The story is super fun, and the main character keeps asking herself “what’s true?”

I had so much fun infusing this book with light, emotion, truth (and a little suspense).

Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Mirage-Vella-Karman/dp/1960230255/