Actor Zachary Levi is on a mission to spread love, but not just any kind of love, “radical love” inspired by God’s love for us.
Growing up in an abusive household, Levi never really believed he was worthy of love. From a young age, feelings of anxiety and depression were normalized in his life to the point that he didn’t know anything was wrong.
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He was even insecure about his acting career, despite starring in the hit TV show “Chuck” for five seasons and racking up dozens of credits in various shows and films.
But it all came to head five years ago, when Levi had a mental breakdown and was struggling with severe suicidal thoughts. He felt so helpless and alone that for the first time, his belief in God faltered.
“I was so enveloped in the darkness that it was pretty much the first time in my life I could say that I maybe stopped believing there was a God,” the “American Underdog” and “Shazam!” actor explained in a recent interview.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I had a very real faith… and I have always leaned into God and into my faith and trust and followed,” he added. “I haven’t done it perfectly. But I got to this place where … to feel abandoned and to feel like I didn’t want to live anymore really, really, really shook my faith.”
Levi’s friends and members of his family rallied around him and got him into an intensive 3-week therapy program that set him on the path to recovery. That, in combination with a “special woman,” who Levi said showed him love like a mother would and prayed for him daily, helped Levi see that the lies he’d been told for so long and believed about himself were just that—lies.
That difficult period was a turning point for Levi and eventually inspired him to write his new book, “Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others.”
“I really want everybody to understand that it doesn’t matter what you do, there’s no way of earning it, you just are… you are loved,” Levi explained.
Looking back, Levi sees how God’s hand was always working in his life—even in his darkest moments.
“All of that is all God breathed – I can’t see it any other way,” Levi said, noting that the events of the last five years have “God’s fingerprints all over them.”
“But through that, all of that has ultimately been incredibly redeemed… God’s been very instrumental in all of it,” he concluded.
Photo credit: YouTube
H/T: Faithwire
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