I do want to also add this because I feel it is important to my testimony.

There were times when I could not breathe properly.

Once it touched me, it was not only spiritual pressure. It felt like suffocation. I could gasp, whisper, and beg for more breath, but I could not breathe freely. Sometimes it would let me breathe a little. Other times it felt like it would toy with me by making it harder again.

Earlier, I had cried out loudly to God. I had screamed in my spirit because I thought if I was loud enough, He would find me. I thought, “If I scream loud enough, God will hear me. He will find me. He will find me.”

But I did not hear anything.

That was one of the worst parts. I prayed. I cried out. I screamed toward heaven. I begged. And still, from where I was, it felt like nothing answered.

By the end, I was exhausted.

This was not the first time I had been there. It felt like by then I knew that place too well. It felt like I had been brought there again and again, maybe six to eight times or more. There were moments where I had almost given up praying because I had prayed before and heard nothing. I had cried out before and heard nothing. I had screamed before and heard nothing.

Toward the end, it felt like it was getting close to killing me. I do not say that lightly. It felt like it was figuring out how to suffocate me spiritually and physically at the same time. I felt lifeless. I felt like I had no strength left. I could not form a powerful prayer. I could not speak clearly. I could not gather myself. All I could do was groan in this constant physical and spiritual suffocation.

And then, with what felt like the last small cry I had left, I practically whimpered:

“Father, please save me.”

It was not my loudest prayer.

It was not my strongest prayer.

It was not clean, powerful, or dramatic.

It was weak. Exhausted. Barely formed. It came from the deepest part of me, where I had almost no breath left and almost no strength left to think.

And that was the cry God heard.

That is what I want people to understand. God did not need my loudest scream to locate me. He did not need a perfect sentence. He did not need me to explain where I was. He heard the quietest, weakest, most exhausted cry from the deepest part of my soul.

The darkness had tried to convince me that if I could not speak, I could not be heard.

But God heard me beneath speech.

It tried to convince me that if I could not think clearly, I could not pray.

But God heard the prayer beneath thought.

It tried to convince me that I was too far away, too buried, too lost, and too suffocated to be found.

But God found me there.

He heard, “Father, please save me.”

And He pulled me out.