That phone number right there, it saves lives, y'all.
How do I know?
Because it's the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, and I called it on Thursday.
I'm not writing this post to make you go "OMG! What happened?" or tell me you love me or tell me how sorry you are that I'm struggling.
I'm writing this post because September is National Suicide Prevention Month.
And I'm writing this post because it's something that nobody really wants to talk about, and so many people suffer in silence because of that. Trust me, a big part of me really doesn't want to write this post - I'm shaking trying to type out the words - but I feel like I need to. The people you think have everything going for them, the people who can appear to be doing so well, the people you put up on a pedestal as your role models because they seem so fierce and you wish you had the kind of innate fierceness that they do, those can just as easily be the people who are struggling with depression or other mental illness and suicidal thoughts as those who have made it known.
I was so ashamed to tell my best friend today what happened, honestly. I thought it'd make me appear weak. I thought that it would shake the belief he's always held in me, that it would shatter his desire to be my constant cheerleader. But it was after some wise words from him that I realized (remembered?) that depression, mental illness, they don't make a person weak. The chemical imbalance in my brain does not make me weak; it's part of what makes me me. My strength lies in the fact that I've never let the demons win. I've never given up fighting, no matter how low, or broken, or close to giving up I've felt.
But more importantly, my strength lies in the fact that despite everything this world has thrown at me, I still desire more than anything to love people and be kind, in the fact that that is my core characteristic when I owe the world nothing at this point. I'd honestly never thought of strength like that until he said it. But he's right. Love in the face of unrelenting bullshit, I can't imagine anything stronger, more powerful, more beautiful than that.
When people get to know my life story, and they learn everything that I've survived, they often start to look at me like I'm more capable or successful, or just better, than them. "I could never deal with all that you deal with." That's what I hear almost every time. But what the vast majority of people don't hear or see or know about, everyone except a handful of my closest friends, are the times that I am breaking down, feeling absolutely crushed under the weight of my day-to-day life. I put on a good face for most people, but for a select few, I'll show when my heart is broken, when my mind is clouded by anger and frustration and fear, when my eyes can't see another inch and my feet can't figure out how to take another step forward because everything just seems so. hard. They know when I'm hitting my breaking points, and they refuse to let me go.
It just so happened that Thursday night, I didn't tell any of them. One, because when it got really bad and dark, it was incredibly late and I didn't think I could wake any of them up. But mostly two, because I had it in my head that I didn't want to be a burden to them, that they have their own lives with their own problems, and it would be so much easier for all of them if I just wasn't here. Their lives would be "less complicated." After everything I went through to get the incredible family of friends that I have today, and knowing how much they love me and everything they've stood by me through, I still thought it would be easier if I left them. That was one of the (many) things that pushed me to the edge that night.
I didn't actually attempt suicide on Thursday. Today, I'm really grateful that I didn't. But I considered it, in a way that I haven't really done since high school when I was dealing with relentless bullying. There are three things that stopped me.
One, this song by a rapper named Logic, and the cover by Alyson Stoner and Next Town Down, all about someone who is suicidal calling that hotline. Whether or not you're in that state of mind, you should listen to it. It's incredibly powerful.
Two, remembering what two of my soccer brothers told me last summer after my heart stopped during that surgery - that losing me was a possibility they couldn't bear to think about, that it would destroy them. Despite the fact that I thought it would make their lives less complicated in the long run, I knew I couldn't hurt them like that.
And lastly, the woman I spoke to at the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. She talked me off of that edge when I didn't have anybody else to call and made me start to believe in myself again just a little bit when I couldn't see a way forward and felt like giving up.
If you're reading this, please hear me. I don't know what you're going through, and I may not be able to help or understand it, but the Hotline, it works. It worked for me. Please call if you need help. The world needs you.
When I was in third grade, Becky O'Neill called me stupid, because I wrote my Js backwards. I told her, "J's a hard letter. You never know whether to hook left or hook right." A right hook from Ashton Bellman in junior high was meant to swell me up and make my tiny nose normal-sized. At least, that's what he told me. And in high school, Ryan Mundy called me many things I dare not repeat but still replay in my head from time to time, all because I did theater instead of playing football. Sticks and stones, right? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words...A stone I can take. A quick break, yeah, that I can shake. And though you've never punched me in the face, every syllable you speak stabs through my spirit and hardens my heart. And though my hand makes the cut, your words are the accomplice, seeking to accomplish I know not what other than to bury some sense of loathing you have for your own self. I know you hate yourself so much; otherwise, you wouldn't be so obsessed with hating me more. No eye has seen and no ear has heard just how much I care about what you think of me, because I would never show anyone other than the darkness of my bedroom and tear-stained pillowcase. Just in case Mom and Dad could hear my cries, I suffocated my suffering in a cotton case grave and believed all the lies you told me about who I am, or what I would become, or whose fault it was. It got worse when your fingers started saying what your mouth was too cowardly to utter. Under the influence of your description of me, I learned to despise many things about myself, not because they're so bad, but because if I didn't have them, then you wouldn't have noticed them and be powerless to use them against me. The pricks and pins of pricks' opinions spins my whole sense of self out of whack, and so I shacked up in the safest place possible: on the island of invisibility, on the shore of "don't make any waves," at the corner of complacency and fitting in. I hide in the back country of cowardice praying you won't notice this insecurity factory I call a life, or a family, or a faith, or a body. And even today, I'm not lying when I say I could care less about what people think of me, because I could. I could care much, much less, because I still care a whole lot. But you are not my source. You are not my well. If your opinion of me were the last cup of water in a desert, I would throw it in your face, and even though there's still a trace of the pain you caused, those scars are hard as armor and so faint that sometimes I can't even see them anymore. Because the sticks that used to harm me have been crossed, the stone that used to bruise me has been rolled away. Sticks and stones were your weapon, but sticks and stones are His way. So say all you want; a better Word has been spoken. Lie all you need to; a greater Truth has been revealed. Hold me back if you must, but my future has been sealed. Sticks and stones, right?
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It's been a while since I've really thought about the bullying I experienced growing up. Progress, right? Well, then things like this poem come along, and I realize I've still got a lot more healing to do than I thought I did...and I've never been more thankful.
Most people know that I was bullied pretty intensely when I was a teenager, to the point where I was forced to leave the church I'd grown up in and spent the vast majority of my high school years contemplating suicide. I was surrounded by so many people telling me that I was unwanted and that I would never be loved that I became convinced that they were right. Even when I got to Campbell and met the people who proved they were wrong, became my family, and loved me at my lowest, my brain couldn't reconcile the truth in front of me with the lies that had been engrained deep into my soul.
I think I've gotten better at it over the years, but listening to this poem made me remember that those wounds are still very much a part of me and how I view the world and relationships. I still struggle to understand why people like me as much as they do and to accept the love that I know in my heart I deserve. I can't help but wonder how different my life would be now if I'd had words like Jon's to hear when I was younger, if I would have sabotaged so many friendships out of fear and shock.
I know the truth now. I know who I am as a person, as a friend, and in the eyes of God. I know how loved I really am. Just today, one of my friends from my neighborhood in NYC called me. He originally said he only had five minutes, but we ended up talking for nearly half an hour, and one of the last things he said to me was a reminder that I am never alone and never forgotten, even though it can feel that way being stuck in this town so far away from the people who know and love me best.
Words can break you. Physical wounds heal. The bleeding stops. The bruises and scars fade. The pain goes away. But mental wounds? They seep into your soul like red wine into a white couch that you have no idea how to get out, except you can't throw out this couch because you've only got one and you're stuck with it for life. So you scrub and scrub and pray that God will perform some miracle and it will go back to the bright white it was before, and some days you think it has, but other days, you look at it, and you notice the faint reddish-purple droplets still lingering and become convinced that it's all ruined, that you're ruined, and you might as well give up.
That's what happened to me. I became so convinced that I was too broken to be redeemed or ever be worthy of love that I stopped trying to find it, but more importantly, I pushed it away anytime I thought it was getting close. I hid. I tried not to be seen so I could avoid what I believed was the inevitable end of someone else telling me they hated me. But people like my soccer boys and my Reformation brothers, they saw me saying "no" and refused to take that for an answer. They made me their family when I didn't think I wanted them to and pursued me when I tried to run from them. They are the reasons I finally began to understand that maybe I am worthy of love, after all.
But ask any of them and they'll tell you the lesson doesn't always stick with me. I've said more times than I can count that I don't understand how I got so lucky to have them, and it's partially because it still seems so unbelievable that everything has changed so drastically. God used two groups of guys I never really intended on meeting to begin with to show me that His declaration of my worth is the final say. He is the voice of truth, and He tells a story completely opposite from what I grew up hearing and believing. It's like Jon says; my future has been sealed because my self-worth lies in a foundation that no person can ever shake. I know it's true because I actually trust people now. I'm not afraid of loving and being loved just because I've been burned or I've heard a lot of terrible things said about me. I stay determined to see the good in people because God sent me people who saw the good in me when I didn't see it in myself.
Do I remember the things bullies told me? Yep, pretty much every single one of them. Do they still sting? Yep, some days more than others. But do they define me? Not in the least. And that change in my perspective is 100% all God's doing through the Holy Spirit and His working through the people He's surrounded me with.
Praise be to God.
If you have scars from bullying (which, really, I think more of us do than we care to admit), go listen to Jon's new poem, "Sticks and Stones." It's embedded in this post. Bring tissues.
There are a million things I could say about the "Trump Tapes," but anything I could say about how disgusting it is has already been said a million times, usually by people much more eloquent than me. It's hard for me to get my words out clearly when I'm kind of blinded with pain and anger.
So instead, I'm gonna tell you a story. A story I haven't told to anyone before this weekend.
Every fall, my town hosts a weekend-long event downtown called the Mullet Festival (mullet as in the fish, not the haircut, just to be clear). I haven't been in years due to being at Campbell and then in New York, but when I was younger, we'd go pretty much every year.
On Saturday night of the festival, there was a series of performances by various bands, some local, some the town has gotten to come specifically for the weekend. It was usually a pretty crowded, fun time. And in this town, by the time we were pre-teens, my mom would kind of let us wander around the main area, as long as we knew when and where to meet her. You don't really have to worry about things going wrong in this town; it's kind of the stereotypical small town in that bad things rarely happen, and people tend to watch out for each other.
Well, one of these weekends, I was either 10 or 11 (I don't remember exactly), I was wandering through the crowd of people, when I ran into a group of four Marines. (My town is about 20 minutes from the largest Marine Corps base on the east coast, so plenty of Marines live in this town or on the outskirts and come to the festival to hang out.) I've always looked much older in age than I really am, so I didn't look like a pre-teen, and these Marines immediately latched on to me. Despite my limited experience with seeing people drinking alcohol, I could pretty much immediately tell they were drunk, so I knew I needed to get out of there.
But it was far too crowded for me to just run, and as I tried to maneuver my way through the crowd, they followed me.
"Baby, where are you going?"
"Pretty girl, come back."
"We just want to talk to you, beautiful."
They were right at my back, pretty much, shouting these things over the music and grabbing onto my shoulders and arms, attempting to wrap their arms around my chest, anything they could get their hands on. Luckily for me, it was crowded enough, they were drunk enough, and I was strong enough that they couldn't get a real grasp on me. I'm still not sure how I managed to get away when they started trying to pull me backwards, other than sheer force of will. I didn't know anything about sex, but even at that age, I knew that guys take advantage of girls, especially when they're in groups.
By some miracle, after they followed me all through the crowd, I spotted my sister, who is 4.5 years older than me right at the same time as these much older and more attractive girls grabbed the Marines' attention. I'm still not sure if they were just trying to look out for me and get them off of me, or if they were just girls who thought guys in uniform were super attractive, but I didn't care. I took the opportunity and bolted. I didn't tell my sister, or my mom, or anyone what happened, but I sure didn't leave their sides for the rest of the night.
For a long time, I just blew it off as "oh, drunk guys do stupid things when they're drunk," but as I got into high school and learned more about sex, sexuality, and guys, I realized just how wrong it was. I know it's nothing compared to the assault and rape that a lot of women have to survive, but it was still traumatizing enough to me to think about what could have happened. I know now that if there hadn't been a crowd of people around, there would have been no way I could have gotten away from them.
This is why what Donald Trump said matters. I don't care if you want to say it was "just words." It is a microcosm of the prevalent American culture in which men believe that they are entitled to women's time, attention, and bodies. These Marines, without knowing anything about me, including my age, believed that they had the right to force me to stay and talk to them, and do God knows what else that they wanted. They didn't take my instant response of leaving as soon as they came toward me as a sign I didn't want to talk to them; they saw it as a sign they needed to follow me until I gave them what they wanted.
When a man kisses, or gropes, or grabs, or follows a woman without her consent, he removes her autonomy. He takes away her right to make decisions about what she wants and with whom she wants to interact. He reverts back to previous centuries when a woman was nothing more than property for him to own, not an equal, beautiful image-bearer of God. He distorts the idea of God-given rights and removes the humanity from a person standing right in front of him.
And when a man boasts about doing those things to women, he perpetuates the culture to other men around him, particularly the younger men, that doing it is not only okay, it's a sign of masculinity and power. Women become conquests, games, trophies, as though he who wins the most wins the game of life. And it isn't until men boldly stand up and show others around them that women are meant to be more than that that this culture will change.
Donald Trump has immense influence right now. He has millions of people who are not only following his every move, but who are supporting him wholeheartedly. And when stories like this comes out, and his idea of an apology is to include an attack on someone else, he is telling millions of men and boys who are watching him that his actions are okay and something to model their own actions after. Not only that, he's reminding women and girls everywhere, especially the millions who have been raped, assaulted, or molested, that their wants and desires don't matter. To willingly perpetuate rape culture and the reality of toxic masculinity on the largest political stage in the world is not only hurtful to so many, it's dangerous. It's dangerous not just for this generation, but for the generations to come who will learn from us.
To Mr. Trump, I refuse to buy into your reality. I refuse to believe that it's normal or okay for men to talk the way that you do/did. (I know plenty of men, and athletes who practically live in locker rooms - none of them would talk like that.) I refuse to accept the idea that I am less than you because of my gender. I refuse to relinquish my dignity, needs, and desires, to those of men and boys who have been taught they have the right to have me whenever they want. I refuse to sit back and allow this culture to continue without saying something. And it's by sharing my story and writing this post that I hope I might offer one more story and example of why what you said really isn't "just words." We are more than just objects for the taking, Mr. Trump. I hope one day you will understand that, or at the very least, that your sons will.
Sometimes I feel like people have me on a pedestal.
It seems like people take the fact that God has given me this crazy life story and that I am a miracle and equate it with me being Superwoman and so much stronger than them.
People see all these amazing qualities in me, yet I'm sitting here thinking that I'm such a disaster I don't know how they see what they do.
I know there are people that are looking up to me and learning from me, and while I am genuinely so honored that God has given me this platform of sorts, sometimes I get really overwhelmed. I feel this pressure to be someone worthy of being looked up to, not because of anything other people are saying or doing, but because I just so badly want to get this right. I want to take what God has given me and make something good come from it. I want to help people, but I'm not always sure I know what to do to do that.
But I was talking to Clayton about all of this tonight, and he helped me see something I hadn't realized before. People look up to the saints. People want to emulate the saints. Yet the saints still screwed up a good bit. The people who are looking up to me and learning from me aren't expecting me to be perfect. They may have me on a bit of a pedestal, but that doesn't mean they've forgotten I'm human.
Tonight, Ricky told me that he learned just how real God's presence really is when he met me. That boy never ceases to humble me with his words, but these ones in particular were a really good reminder for me. I felt like it was God reminding me that even when I feel like I'm getting everything wrong, He's still using me. Because in the end, it's not really so much about what I can do as it is what I'm willing to let God do through me.
He's the one in control here. He's the one telling the story, I'm just the keys on the keyboard. He's the one painting the picture in my life, I'm just the paintbrush. If there's one thing I know in all of this, it's that God will make something out of my life that is so much more beautiful than I could even imagine.
Thank God for that. I don't have a chance at getting any of this right without Him.
When people use the word steward, or hear that word, it's usually in reference to time or money. But something that's been on my mind lately is how I feel this responsibility with the story that I've been given to do it justice, to do God justice. To take care of it, in a sense. I didn't really know how to put it into words until I had a talk with Pastor Ben today and he used the word steward and I had one of those "aha!" moments where it was like, yes, I found the word I was looking for.
I want to be a good steward with my story, but a lot of days, I'm not sure how to do it.
It's hard to know how to do that when there are so many unknowns. When it's still being written. When there are just as many downs as there are ups and I don't ever feel like I have a grasp on what it is I need to do to show people that God is at the center of all this.
It's like, one day I can feel so confident, so sure of God's presence in the craziness, and be able to boast of my struggles and my weaknesses because I feel so confident of how God is working in all of it, because I can see good in it. And then the next day, I'm at a loss. I cry and plead with God to let me feel His presence because the stress of one health thing after another makes me feel like I'm drowning and there's no one there to catch me. Even though I know I'm never alone, there is a very big and sometimes very painful difference between knowing something is true and believing it, feeling it deep in your aching soul.
And those bad days, they make me wonder if I can really be a "good Christian" (or at least whatever it is my mind tells me makes up one of those) if I have so many days where I'm angry and doubtful and frustrated and exhausted. They make me wonder if I'm being hypocritical or a liar when I talk about God's goodness in my life on the good days, even though I know that a bad day could very easily be just around the corner. But Ben really helped me with that, and what he said has stuck with me. The good days, when they are happening, are still very real to me. I'm not lying when I say what I say on the good days because on those days, I believe what I'm saying to be true. The bad days don't make the good days any less good. I am telling my story day by day, even though the polarization of the good and the bad may not make sense to someone else.
I am being authentic, and in being authentic, I am telling the best story I could possibly tell. I'm telling one that is real. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to pretend like things are good when they're not; it just takes up way more energy than I am willing to expend on a facade.
So yeah, I do feel a responsibility with this story I've been given, because it's so much crazier than what most people are used to or expect, but what I realized while sitting here, literally while sitting here writing, is that God doesn't actually need me to do anything. God can make whatever message He is trying to tell through me and my life known to the masses all on His own if that's what He wants to do. God knows my heart, and He knows that I am trying to do the best that I can in this life to walk in His will and show people His presence and power through the events of my life. God knows that I will go where He needs me to go, and talk to anyone who will listen.
I'm just the vessel. The One behind the wheel will work out the details of the journey.
Right now, you're sitting in a hospital bed at Duke with a tube coming out of the back of your skull. The past week and a half has been a whirlwind of unexpected brain surgeries, a brush with death, blown IVs and all the other fun things that go with being stuck in a hospital, and sheer panic. You were supposed to move to Campbell five days ago, something you'd been waiting for since you got your acceptance letter because it meant a way out of Swansboro, but that plan got upended when you nearly didn't make it out of that first surgery. You're going to go, just not in the time you think it will or want it to happen.
See, by the time 2009 is over, you're going to face four more brain surgeries and three more issues that very easily could kill you. The good news is that they don't. The bad news is that you're going to be taken on a ride that no one wants to be on. And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. You'll get to go to Campbell for a few weeks, but you'll have to leave just when life starts to feel like it's getting back to normal. It will feel very much like hell on earth, and you're going to be instantly infuriated by anyone who tries to get you not to refer to this period as such. It's okay to be angry. Just try not to take it out entirely on the people around you. Your mom would do anything, absolutely anything, to take your pain away, and it's not the doctors' fault you keep needing surgery. And the nurses, the hospital chaplains, they all mean well, they really do.
That God everyone keeps talking to you about? Hear them out. I know that you know He's real. And I know you hate Him. I get it, you have to have someone to blame for this disaster, for taking away your education, the one thing you think you're good at and good for. I wish you knew what you're really worth, because it would do so much for the ways that your heart will break over the next few months. The good news is that you eventually do give yourself to the Lord, you see Him for the ways He carries you through this period. It'll take time, but I promise that when it happens, it's going to be the best feeling in the world and you'll have an at least slightly better understanding of what you're facing now.
When you finally get out of the hospital in November (there are breaks, but not long ones, this saga won't end for another three months), you're going to be so mentally and emotionally broken from the trauma that you're going to be pretty disgusted by the idea of turning around and going to a Christian university. You're beyond ecstatic to finally get to go to Campbell and stay there, but you won't forget that you'll be surrounded by talk of God. That gets better, too. It's not as suffocating as you expect it to be.
You can't fully understand it now, but going to this Christian university will be the best thing that can happen to you. Your first college friends will be the niece of a woman your Mom works with (it's not as awkward as it sounds) and her roommates, who bring you to a Bible study. You pretty much fake your way through it, but you will appreciate these girls simply for being kind to you. The first year of your college life will mostly be spent recovering from the brain surgeries and then the foot surgeries (oh yeah, those are coming next year, but you ask for them because your feet are in so much pain), so you don't get the full college "experience" at first, but you don't care because you love just being a student there. You will meet professors who love you, pray for you, make you laugh, make you scream, and everything in between.
But even better than the academics is the friends you will make. You know how Matt has always told you that it wasn't your fault you got bullied so much, that you weren't the problem? (Speaking of Matt, you'll not be so in love with him soon enough. It'll hit you like a ton of bricks one day that all he really is meant to be is your best friend and big brother. Just wait.) And you know how no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't make yourself believe that anyone else would ever love you even close to the way he does? Well guess what - Matt was right. You are going to have more love in your life than you know what to do with before too long. You will find girls who build you up and support you through all the drama. One girl in particular will become your best friend for life, and the best part is that, in profile, she's exactly the girl who used to make your life miserable. These girls will help you find your voice. They will be everything you wish girlfriends could be. They will listen to you talk about crushes, talk to you about family drama, help you get ready for a dance, and they'll trust you enough to come to you for advice for their own lives. These girls will teach you how to love yourself the way you couldn't before.
And part of me feels like this is even cooler, you will find a group of guy friends in your senior year that you will affectionately call your brothers. You have to weed through a lot of dramatic boys and some bullying ones, too, to get to them, but when you find them, they will make it more than worth it. The way that these brothers love you will go a long way in healing the scars from the boys who abused you before. They will defend you, tease you, teach you, learn from you, appease your major penchant for pictures, give you the biggest hugs, and never let you forget that they love you. Your insecurity will make you want to question them and their sincerity, but please don't. They are not the boys from your past. When you question them anyway, they won't get mad, they won't run. They somehow instinctively understand you and will make you laugh by saying they don't know why you want to hang out with them. Bask in your friends' love. They are only a glimpse of the greater Love.
Speaking of that greater Love, remember how I told you you'll take a hold of it one day? Yeah. It'll happen. In a pretty strange way, no less. You're going to meet a band at Campbell, visiting thanks to Campbell staff, that turns everything you think you know on its head in the best possible way. (Just another reason to be thankful you were led to Campbell.) Your first conversation with them, you're going to be surprised at how different they seem. It's not that they're Christians, it's that they don't flaunt it, they don't ever preach at you. You'll see a light in them, and it won't make sense at first, all you'll know is that you want to get to know them better. And you will, both through the power of social media and your determination to go all over the state to see them in person again. You'll see them a lot. They will make it feel safe for you to ask about God and Jesus and Christianity, all the questions you brushed aside after your health trauma and the mistreatment you were dealt by Christians. They will become such an important part of your life in such a short amount of time that your mom is going to send you on a plane to go visit them. You'll think it's just for their celebration, but it turns out to be the biggest week of your life, because one night on that trip, you will surrender yourself to God and get baptized in a church of hundreds of strangers and two of your best friends. It will be a crazy story to tell, but you'll never do it without a huge smile on your face. Part of you will wish it had happened sooner, but you'll mostly just appreciate that it happened at all.
Another cool gift that comes from meeting those four kids in that band is that they will teach you not to be ashamed of your story. They will be the first people to show you what good talking about your story can do, and they will only be the spark that lights the flame of your passion for telling people about the miracles God has done in you and for you. One day, you'll get on a plane to Texas to meet a church of people who were affected by your story and wanted to meet you. (Never let it be said the internet can't do awesome things.) Over the next several months, you're not going to want to talk to anyone about the details of the trauma you face, but soon enough, you will hear what people learn from you and from it. It's going to baffle you tremendously, you'll say over and over again just how unqualified you are to teach people anything about life or God, but every time it happens, you will thank God for using you and grow more determined to tell anyone who listen about what He is capable of. Take hold of that passion and run with it.
You can't see it now, but where you are right now is not the end of your life. You're going to be taken out of these ashes and made to see yourself and your life for all the beauty within. And five years from now, you'll be sitting in your New York City apartment, having graduated Campbell with high honors, about to start chasing your dreams as you begin grad school at NYU. That seems impossible to you right now, but it's true.
As cheesy as it is, life really does get better. I'm thankful for your innate stubbornness, which will only be made stronger over the next few months, because you'll make it through. Your life will never be without medical problems, but they'll be much less complicated. You'll make it through with one heck of a story to tell and a fire for loving people that you just haven't been capable of up until now. You have so much to offer the world and the people you will meet, and soon enough, you will see just how much the world and your future have to offer you.
You'll be more than fine. You're going to be great. I promise.
That's what people tell me, anyway. I need to write a book about my life and share my story with a larger audience.
Part of me wants to, and part of me finds thinks I don't have enough to say to fill an entire book. I don't have a clue as to how to organize it. I don't know what to write about, other than my life, but that wouldn't exactly be a very coherent or entertaining read. I ramble too much. I'd have to narrow it down, focus on different pieces, plan an outline. And there'd have to be a point, because a bunch of strangers aren't going to be interested in the stuff that's gone on in my life unless there's a point. They have to relate to it, and how can I make people relate to something so out of the ordinary?
I feel like if and or when I'm supposed to do this, the inspiration will hit. Right now, I just can't see it happening. I'm not saying I can't see it EVER happening, because I know all too well what happens when I try to plan the future, but it's just not in the picture. There are too many questions and too many things still up in the air regarding New York and that's gonna be such a huge change that I can't write it anytime soon. It'll happen when it's meant to happen. That sounds cheesy, but I really believe it.
I don't know what brought that on, but there you go.
A couple asides: My mother woke me up to harass me about a Big Bang Theory flash mob. And also I have the money for an apartment now. And also I got to have a lovely chat with my friend Lauren and it was the highlight of my day.
I feel like I've slammed my head into a wall. It's fun. I did get a little work done. So yay? Still not enough, though. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
So let's talk about football. State pretty much slaughtered Central Michigan today, 45-14. And they got their two TDs in the 4th quarter. We were up 38 points before they even got on the board. Then again, their main quarterback is out with a broken collarbone so their QB today was a red-shirt freshman (meaning this is his first season playing, but he's actually a sophomore), so I don't think we can feel too cocky about the win. I also watched the Texas A&M/Arkansas game since I have several blog friends who love both teams. Now, I understand why a lot of non-A&M people hate A&M's quarterback, Johnny Manziel aka "Johnny Football." He is incredibly full of himself and his talent, and you can see it through a TV screen, but the kid is GOOD. Call him cocky all you want, but he is good. He's a red-shirt sophomore and the talent he has at 20 years old is just ridiculous. With a ranked team surrounding him and up against a young team and a new coach at Arkansas, it's no surprise that they won.
But it makes me wonder what is going on in Johnny's mind off the field. Is he that full of himself in the rest of his life, or is this a persona people see when he puts on that uniform and takes control of the Aggies? Does he think that this is what he was made for, to play football? Is this what life is about for him? I can't believe I'm thinking this deeply about a football player I've never seen play before tonight, but seeing his attitude just got me thinking. If he puts his whole worth on how many games he wins, how many touchdowns he throws, then, honestly, that just makes me want to pray for him, not hate him. Because he is missing so much.
And he's not the only one. We were all made to worship. The problem is that the only thing worthy of being worshiped is God, The Creator, and all too often, we end up worshiping things He created.
We worship teams and players that we love, just because they're talented, forgetting that there's Someone who gave them that talent. We worship celebrities, thinking that's who we can model ourselves after, and then get disappointed when we find out they're just as fallible as we are.
We worship our passions and hobbies, music, sports, politics, thinking that if we succeed, we'll find the validation that our broken hearts long for, forgetting that this world is just as broken as we are and thus can't give the validation we need. We forget that our worth doesn't lie in what we can do. I sent a text to Ryann after every soccer game she lost when she was here at Campbell, just to remind her that she's worth more than what pops up on the scoreboard. I wish every athlete had that reminder in their lives, because as her best friend, and knowing several other collegiate athletes, I've seen how blurry your vision can get when you pour your heart and soul into a sport.
We worship relationships, craving a hole inside of us to be filled by people we love and who love us, forgetting that only God can fill that hole and give us the kind of relationship that we seek. We get scared when they fail us, wondering if they really care about us like they said they did. We put expectations on ourselves and each other that none of us were ever created to be able to keep.
We worship ourselves. We fool ourselves into thinking that we were meant to be served by this life and in this world, and get mad when God doesn't act like our fast-food server and give us exactly what we want how we want as quickly as we want.
And the thing is, Christians are just as guilty of this as non-believers. That's a huge message that I would love to get across to the people I know who aren't Christians. I know I'm not better than you. I know that I've worshiped every single one of the things that I just listed up there, I've made every single one of those mistakes. Any Christian who is going to be real and vulnerable with you will tell you the same. Christians just don't have to get weighed down by the guilt of our mistakes because we have Jesus, who paid the price for all of it for us, because the God that we serve is a God of boundless forgiveness and countless second chances.
I don't know if Johnny Manziel knows Jesus. My gut tells me he doesn't, but what do I know? Watching that game tonight made me wish I could have a conversation with him, find out what he really believes, and tell him that there's something so much bigger out there, something that won't be ripped away if his body starts failing him tomorrow.
For me, it took having everything I thought I knew about my life ripped away, almost losing my chance to go to college, to realize that my world wasn't meant to be centered on my education and my value was not based on my GPA. I hope somehow, Johnny realizes that this world isn't about football, either, before he has to walk down the same path that I did.
And I pray the same for each of you, too. Because we all struggle with this, whether we admit to it or not.
And not just any Friday, but a Friday I've been looking forward to for weeks now. Nick Vitellaro (I've written about him once before here) released the video for his latest spoken word poem, "The Hardened Heart."
For those of you seeing this via email or a reader who won't see the embedded Youtube video, here's my transcription of the (incredible!!!) poem. (Seriously, it's incredible. You should go check it out.) (And okay, let me clarify - it's my best transcription. There may be a few errors; the boy talks fast!)
"The Hardened Heart" by Nick Vitellaro
Allow me to introduce myself. Some of you may already know me. I don't mean to be rude or intrusive. I just thought it would be fair to give you a warning. We may already be best friends, or you may hardly even know I exist. Either way, let me paint you some perspectives. On my campus, I walk down the halls of my high school, too cool to pray, and too proud to pursue the vision God has called me to. I'll say I'm waiting for confirmation or some kind of sign while I sit back and watch my classmates be blind. "They have planks in their eyes," I'll say. "I just have a little bit of sawdust in mine." Lord, this was not what I had in mind! I'm trying to be their light, but it's too dark in here to shine. I will justify and rationalize to nullify the pain of watching my closest friends die.
I am the hardened heart of Christianity. Well, me, myself, and I are doing just fine within the confines of the church property lines. We are seeing more and more come to church every single week and still experiencing defeat out on the city streets. Seven days without Jesus makes one weak. That's why my favorite thing to play is hide and go seek, seeking Jesus at church but hiding the rest of the week. And I am numb to feeling sympathy, passion, a stranger to me, as if doing something about injustice is actually my responsibility. I'm too busy with my own calling and what God has for me than to actually do anything about the call God has placed right in front of me.
But I'm such a good actor, I could fool Steven Spielberg. The performance I put on at church is superb. My script is equipped with mighty adjectives but lacks the verbs. I have won the Hypocrisy Oscar Awards. You see, I learned all the motions until I became a master of disguise, thought I could hide from the Master of the skies, thought my own theories were divine so I disconnected from the vine, telling everybody else where to find Christ, but never allowing Himself to change my life.
But I mean, my salvation is set in stone, right? I mean, I am a Christian by tradition, 'cause after all, I do celebrate Christmas. But these material presents are blinding me from God's presence. Now I'm bitter and restless, and my callousness has brought me to cowardliness. So in the fight to save my family, coworkers, and friends, I have become a pacifist. But I'll sit in church, say I'm getting fed while lacking the spiritual nutrients, starved myself from fasting so becoming well-fed was really becoming sick, refused to partake of the Bread daily so I got anorexic, developed a gag reflex so I spat out the same regurgitated message and expected those around me to openly digest it.
See, I have a confession. I am the victim. I long for redemption. I'm sick of saying I don't hear anything from God when really, I won't listen. I'm tired of these conditions. Side effects are heart-attackin' me, searing the freedom that once pumped through these arteries. They put my heart's dreams into custody, handcuffed my destiny to apathy, cardiac arrest in me when all I needed was a rest in me. No wonder the leading cause of death is heart disease. But even though these bones have been dry for the longest time, I think I can hear that still small voice calling this sleeper to rise, because where there is death, He breathes life. He says, "I will take your cold, calloused heart and replace it with Mine. Let Me exchange your heart with its original design."
So yeah, they do have planks in their eyes, but you know what? So do I. But Jesus was the greatest carpenter of all time. He could craft destiny out of every lumber found in the eyes of mankind. He enabled Noah to build the ark, Solomon to build the temple, out of the very wood taken from the trees He Himself rooted in the earth. He would even plant a seed that would give birth to the very tree that He would hang on to show you your worth. So I refuse. I refuse to drown in the same waters He walks on. And even though it was locked as the door of my heart, He knocks on it.
So if you identify with any of the hardened heart symptoms, listen. Stop buying into the world's sales pitches and slogans, 'cause they will leave you bankrupt at the cost of your emotion. But Christ is in the business of putting frozen hearts back into motion. He's available 24/7 with arms wide open, and His unconditional redemption gives promotion to every testimony ever spoken, 'cause our cold, calloused hearts are like God's glow sticks. To shine, they must first be broken.
(taken from the end scene of the video)
I think a big part of the reason why I was so excited about the drop of this new poem video was because since I knew what a major effect Nick's first two poems had had on me (I still love to go back and watch, even though I can pretty much recite them by heart, haha!), I was anxious to see what this third poem would be and how it would touch my heart. This poem really made me see that God does have me on a journey of healing right now, not just from the physical pain I'm dealing with, but more importantly from the wounds both old and new that I either thought had healed or just chose to ignore. This poem hit on a lot of the same stuff that Jeff Bethke's book did. But let me start from the beginning. I promise, I'll try not to make this drag on forever. I just want to share my heart and how, once again, I see myself and my story in Nick's words.
I'll say I'm waiting for confirmation or some kind of sign while I sit back and watch my classmates be blind. "They have planks in their eyes," I'll say. "I just have a little bit of sawdust in mine." Lord, this was not what I had in mind! I'm trying to be their light, but it's too dark in here to shine. I will justify and rationalize to nullify the pain of watching my closest friends die.
Nick may have been talking about school and friends and classmates here, but it instantly made me think of my family. Matt, my best friend, too, but mostly my family. Especially with my sisters, I spent most of my teenage years focusing on all the things that were wrong with them, justifying any time I felt I had upset my mother with "I'm the good child! I'm better than them!" The contempt would drip from my lips like poison, except I was the only one dying inside. And now, I've gotten to the point where I avoid going home whenever possible simply because it's too exhausting to be there. Instead of choosing to go where it's dark and dirty and ugly, the kind of place where Jesus would have spent his free time, and show them God's love for them through my actions of love for them, I took the cowardly way out and chose to avoid them altogether. I've cried at night sometimes, wondering why God couldn't just my already complicated life a little easier and give me a family who were already Christians.
"But I'm such a good actor, I could fool Steven Spielberg. The performance I put on at church is superb. My script is equipped with mighty adjectives but lacks the verbs. I have won the Hypocrisy Oscar Awards. You see, I learned all the motions until I became a master of disguise, thought I could hide from the Master of the skies, thought my own theories were divine so I disconnected from the vine, telling everybody else where to find Christ, but never allowing Himself to change my life."
I've said on this blog before that when I was in the depths of my depression during those six brain surgeries in the fall of 2009, I was a master at making people believe that I believed in God, secretly scoffing behind their backs, or when the doors shut or the emails were sent, that they actually bought the lies I fed them. I thought it was their mistake for thinking a broken, 17-year-old girl with no solid Christian foundation could be going through medical hell and still have faith and joy. Really, I was fully convinced that I was going to handle my life, I didn't need anybody else's advice, or their pity, and especially not the God who, in my eyes, was putting me through this torture in the first place. But when people showed up to check in? Oh yeah, I knew exactly what they wanted or needed to hear, just enough that would make them think I already agreed with what they wanted to tell me. I knew what to say, the smile to put on my face, but the whole time the typical Christianese spiel came out of my mouth to pastors, nurses, friends, I knew in my head that I was fooling them all.
"Now I'm bitter and restless, and my callousness has brought me to cowardliness. So in the fight to save my family, coworkers, and friends, I have become a pacifist."
Again, even now, even when I know what it feels like to have your life radically flipped upside down by the love that can only come from the Father, I've basically...stopped trying. I hide this part of me, the very core of who I am, because it's easier and less heartbreaking to avoid the awkward and tense conversations that lead to argument. I ask myself what the point is - they're never going to see it my way, anyway. So I keep my mouth shut, and I stay away so I don't become the version of me that is what's comfortable for them. And in my heart, I resent them for not letting me be the person I am without snarky remarks in return just because they disagree with it.
"But even though these bones have been dry for the longest time, I think I can hear that still small voice calling this sleeper to rise, because where there is death, He breathes life. He says, "I will take your cold, calloused heart and replace it with Mine. Let Me exchange your heart with its original design.""
I spent 19.5 years of my life running as far as I could from anything that had "God" or "Christianity" attached to it. And still, He came after me. He made me alive for the first time when He forced me to the breaking point where I realized that if I kept trying to fight for myself, it was going to kill me. He made me alive when He introduced me to The Vespers and planted that question in the back of my mind, Is this what Christians can really be like? And slowly, step by step, day after day, with a few detours thrown in as I tried to run back to the mindset I'd grown so accustomed to, He pieced my broken life back together and gave me life, real life.
"So yeah, they do have planks in their eyes, but you know what? So do I. But Jesus was the greatest carpenter of all time. He could craft destiny out of every lumber found in the eyes of mankind...He would even plant a seed that would give birth to the very tree that He would hang on to show you your worth...And even though it was locked as the door of my heart, He knocks on it."
Being saved by God, being baptized into Christ, was hands-down the most humbling experience of my life. It was when I took my focus off judging everyone else, my sisters for being rebellious, the kids at school for calling themselves Christians but purposely aiming to make my life as difficult as they could, that I was able to see that I can be just as hypocritical as the rest of them. And when I admitted to that, it was like, as Jeff writes in his book, God said, "Okay, now that you're being honest, we can finally get somewhere." God saw and knew how broken I was inside, and instead of leaving and giving up like what I was used to, He kept pursuing me until I gave in. And it was the best thing I've ever done. I opened the door, and I found everything I was missing before, a lot of stuff I had foolishly convinced myself I didn't need.
"But Christ is in the business of putting frozen hearts back into motion. He's available 24/7 with arms wide open, and His unconditional redemption gives promotion to every testimony ever spoken, 'cause our cold, calloused hearts are like God's glow sticks. To shine, they must first be broken."
I met The Vespers about three months after I hit my breaking point. If I had met them before that, I wouldn't have been ready for it. I wouldn't have had the guts to tell Bruno my life story in the middle of a crowded dining hall. I would have missed the lesson that God wanted to show me, that my story can change people, even affirmed Christians. When God really ripped me in two in the middle of that church in Nashville, I changed. For good. People who see pictures of that night tell me I look like I'm glowing. I started telling my story to complete strangers, to anyone and everyone who would listen. I can boast about how broken I am because then I can tell people how whole He is. And I wouldn't have the confidence I have now, I wouldn't have emails and texts saying that I've changed lives all across the country, even from people I've never laid eyes on, if He hadn't broken me. All of that darkness and brokenness that I felt was because He knew that He wanted to get me here, that one day I would be filled with a burning passion to tell everyone I know about the God that saved me. And if I'm going to do this for strangers, I need to do it for the people that I love, too.
This video is healing for me. Healing to let go of the resentment I hold towards others both from my past and my present, the fear that I'll never be good enough for God to really love me, to not hide my faith or my love for Jesus from anyone, especially not from the people I love most. This journey of healing that I'm on is dirty and twisted and confusing, but it's never-ending, and it's getting me to where I ultimately need and want to be: in heaven, worshiping the One who pulled me through in the first place.
I also like music. Also not a secret. You know what music has that most regular speech doesn't? Rhythm.
I love writing, but one thing I've never been good at writing is poetry. So instead, I listen to other people's poetry because sometimes, I hear somebody say something that mirrors exactly what is going on in my heart, something I couldn't find the words to say, and even if I could, it wouldn't sound as good as what I heard.
I've mentioned a guy named Jeff Bethke before. He got famous from a spoken word poem he wrote that went viral on YouTube. I didn't know what spoken word poetry was until I ran into his work, but I sort of fell in love with it. It combines two things I love very much: it's poetry, so it's made up of words, but it also has a music-like rhythm to it that regular poetry doesn't have. Well, through Jeff's YouTube channel, I found out about a guy named Nick Vitellaro, and I watched the two spoken word poem videos that he has online.
Now, y'all know me. When I find something I like, whether it be a show, or a song/band, or a writer, I tend to latch onto it and listen to it over and over and over again and somehow never get tired of it. I've watched Nick's two videos so many times in the past few days I've already lost count. Call me weird if you must, I'm used to it with this habit of mine, but trust me, it's worth it. Nick's poetry is just that good. It's that powerful.
This first one is called "Sincerely Freedom". It's actually a story of pornography and sex addiction, and while that specific aspect isn't something I can relate to, there's one section in particular that hit me hard. It's something I think everyone can relate to, so I suggest you watch the full thing.
5:05 to 5:38 says this: "And I'll be honest, I don't have a twelve-step program, an informative pamphlet, or strategic plan. I have no Visine or vaccine to help you see past your past, but let me pass you what I do have. I have a Savior. His compassion's new every day. His faithfulness stays. He made a way out of no way, turned my darkness into day. The sacrifice made, our ransom paid, he took our place. Blood poured down his face as he replaced our disgrace with his grace. Buried for three days, but death could not contain! He left death in his grave! DEATH DIED THAT DAY!"
Most of us don't have a sex or pornography addiction. But what most of us, if not all of us, do have is something in our past that is tying us down. It consumes us, it becomes our identity, and we feel like we'll never escape the control it has over our hearts and minds. I know that, for me, that "thing" was my health issues. They consumed my thoughts every second. They were pretty much all I talked about. They were who I was. I was "the sick girl".....and then I found Jesus. I found the identity he had waiting for me, the one of God's daughter, of redemption, of miracles, of grace and mercy and the power to tell people how He saved me. Jesus died so that I could be released from the grasp that the enemy had on my life and my person. Now, I still have health issues, but they are just a piece of my story, a piece that has been redeemed more beautifully than I could have ever imagined, a piece that I can use to show people the love of the Father.
The second is called "The Lost Sheep." This was me. I was the sheep Jesus left the flock to find. I am amazed I haven't cried at how intensely I see my life story in this poem.
There were several quotes that jumped out at me with this one, which is funny since it's a lot shorter than the first video.
0:49-1:03: "But my weakness, my brokenness, was so much more real to me than the God these pastors claimed could set this sheep free. 'Cause where was this Shepherd? Where was his flock? Why haven't any of them tried to meet me in the darkness where I walk?"
Yeah...that about sums up my teenage years. Countless Christian voices in my ears telling me of the God that loved me at my worst, but I didn't feel Him. I didn't see Him. I didn't see any of His people, whom I knew were supposed to be the hands and feet of Christ, try to meet me where I was and walk with me through it. All I got were trite Christian phrases that meant nothing to me in my pain, until even they said I wasn't worth it and kicked me out.
1:25-1:38: "So like John Lennon, I imagined the Savior I wanted to see, but like Paul McCartney, I was scared, so I just let it be. Drivin' around pimpin' in my yellow submarine, all the while screaming, 'Help! I need somebody.'"
First off, I appreciate anyone who can fit that many Beatles references into 14 seconds. ;) Second, I remember how good I got when I went through those six brain surgeries in 2009 at making everyone around me believe that I was fine, that I was handling the struggles in my life just fine, while I was actually screaming on the inside, "HELP! I need somebody." My mom couldn't help me. My family couldn't help me. Friends couldn't help me. The doctors couldn't stop problem after problem from wreaking havoc on my body. I was so blinded by my anger and pain that I couldn't possibly believe that God was helping me. All I knew at the time was that I wanted to be rescued from the nightmare I was caught in.
1:58-2:10: "But see, you can't stargaze at the King of days without seeing the sun rays. So when I heard that the Son raised on the third day, I realized that I was the sheep that was never even lost in the first place."
After I found Christ and started pursuing him, chasing after him with all the breath in my lungs, I realized that I was never out of God's sight. Even when I hated Him, when I blamed Him for everything wrong in my life, He still kept an eye on me and watched my life and protected me from so many things that could have ended the life He had designed for me. He never left. I learned that part of His unconditional love means that He even loves the ones who don't love Him.
2:32-3:00: "Because my God is like Muhammad Ali in the ring, with the grace of a butterfly and the sovereignty of a King. He dodges every cold, fatal sting of death with the very same breath that put life inside my chest. So if you call the Gospel trash, then I guess you have grasped the message, 'cause my God dumpster dives head first into wreckage. He transforms recycled sinners into His very own reflection, so you can call Him a garbageman, 'cause He turned my mess into a message."
John 10:10 says "I have come so that you may have life, and have it to the fullest." My God is the kind of God that lives by the mantra "Go big or go home." He's not just okay with fixing one part of my life; He insisted on radically transforming every piece of my existence, right down to the core of who I was and who I saw myself as. To human eyes and ears, my story is ugly. It's full of pain and anger and depression and doubt and fear. I know, because that's how I used to view my life. But that's not the way God sees it or me. God sees redemption, God sees brokenness made whole, God sees miracles, God sees grace and countless second chances and a story of a very broken little girl who came to life in the love and grace He had waiting for me all along. And now I get to share this story with anyone and everyone who will listen.
3:12-3:18: "So praise the Lord, praise the Lord, come on, PRAISE THE LORD! 'Cause His pursuit after you is relentless."
And in that, I see the story of my life leading up to my baptism. There were so many events before April 5, 2012, where I refused to recognize His presence in my life because I was scared, because I didn't want to give in. But then He broke me. And I praise Him for that every day, because my baptism was the start of the coolest ride I have ever experienced, and I wouldn't be where I am today or the person I am today, or have the story I do today if He hadn't chosen to keep pursuing me. He never gave up. Praise the Lord!
I love the Internet. I love how I can come across the work of a guy I've never met, a guy who doesn't know me or my story at all, and somehow the words he wrote long before I ever knew he existed reflect my life and the struggles I face every day. These two videos are a wonderful reminder to keep running on the path that God has laid out for me. They're a reminder of my One Word, to keep seeking Him to help me release the demons of my past that still try to tie me down and hold me back from the John 10:10 life He wants for me.
The freedom I seek and desire can only be found in Him, so I'm gonna keep chasing after the Lord whose protection and love and grace over my life never quits.
First things first: I think I'm finally starting to mend from this nasty virus that's had me down and out for the past week. I still took a super-long nap this afternoon, but I've been more productive today than I have in the past week combined, so I'll take it.
Now, the cool thing about today.
I mentioned in this post on Thursday that I had a meeting this morning that could open up some doors for me. Now that it's over, I can tell you what it was. I met up with Pastor Sean and his wife, Carla, so I could tell them my story. On the 7th, my first Sunday at Theater Church, Sean told the congregation that they were always looking for people to share testimonies during Sunday service, like a 3-5 minute glimpse into how God has worked in their lives. Y'all know what a passion God has given me for telling my story to people, so I naturally jumped at the chance. Due to our crazy schedules, this was the first time that the three of us could get together.
So we met up this morning for coffee (hot chocolate for me since I hate coffee), and we sat and talked. I told them pretty much everything, abridging just enough that we wouldn't be sitting there all day. Sean asked a couple questions, but it was mostly just me talking for a little over an hour. Now, keep in mind that I was just expecting Sean to give me permission to speak during the service one Sunday.
Instead, when I was done, Sean looked up at me and asked, "Would you be comfortable videotaping that?"
I know I looked relatively calm on the outside, but on the inside, I was freaking out. He went on to say that he didn't want to make me cut any of my story out because it is so full of evidence of God's faithful hand on me, that he couldn't expect me to cut all of that down to 3-5 minutes. Then, he said that by putting it on video, they could make copies and give them to struggling people in the church or community, and they could play it at larger events, and he could make me some copies to have for my personal keeping.
I don't even know how to begin to describe the awe I felt after hearing Sean's offer/request/response to everything that I'd told him. I knew how much I loved telling people about God's work in my life, but I never expected him to have that strong of a reaction to it, to see it as worthy of a bigger opportunity than anyone else's story. I never saw my story or my life as any more special than anyone else's, just a tad bit more complicated. So to hear Sean say what he did, to realize that he saw how much my life is a testimony to God's faithfulness, to have yet another confirmation that I could affect people with my words and the story that God gave me, well, it's just about put me in tears reliving it all.
The timing couldn't have been better. The past few weeks have been spent seriously contemplating using my story for somethingbigger to bring God the glory He rightfully deserves. Throughout this, throughout talks with a few people who know my story in depth and know my heart for doing something with it, I've been praying for God to open a door for me.
This is the door. I just know it. This is the first step to me publicly ministering to people with the gifts and the life that God gave me. And I couldn't be more thrilled. God is so good, and He has been so faithful to bring me through the fires that I've survived. It's my job to share that with the world. It's my job to reach out to the people who are scared of God or churches or both and tell them that I get it, I get what it's like to be terrified of the one thing everyone keeps telling you is the best thing for you. It's my job to tell my story to anyone who will listen, and in the process, maybe restore their faith that miracles still happen.
This life was never about me, anyway. All of the strength, all of the kindness, all of the good things that my friends see in me and compliment me for are HIM. Every bit of this is Him. I'll do whatever He asks me to do with this story because it's all His. He is and will always be my faithful, loving, Heavenly Father, and all I want is to make Him proud. I am honored that God has chosen me to be His vessel, and I'm so excited to tell the world of the kind of miracles He's capable of.
So God, since I know you're listening, keep the surprises coming. I'm all in.
Three times today, my mind has been brought back to one big theme. Two were conversations with Kyla and Taylor, and the third was during a sermon I listened to at a Revival event at the main campus that Theater Church is affiliated with.
The theme? Living radically.
It started when Taylor and I were discussing the journey that my life has been on in the time that we've known each other and how he's gotten a firsthand look at how I went from a fake Christian, someone who claimed the title but didn't do much else, to someone actively pursuing whatever it is that God has planned for me. He called me radical. He said it was because I went through an intense storm and found my faith on the other side and because I now have this incredibly strong passion for telling people about my story. I have that passion because I want to help them and show them just the kind of miracles that God can do.
Then, I went to the Revival, and the pastor spoke about how faith doesn't really mean anything if you're not pursuing that real relationship with Christ. He said you can live radically without becoming an international missionary or adopting a bunch of orphans, that sometimes living radically just means you're willing to shout from the rooftops about how amazing your God really is. The radical ones are those who put every bit of their trust in the power of the Holy Spirit and go do things they wouldn't think to do on their own.
Then, I got on the phone with Kyla, and she and I discussed a lot of the same stuff that Taylor and I did. I mentioned an idea that I came up with while talking to Taylor, and it spurred this long talk about how I've influenced and encouraged her without even realizing and how she has done the same for me. It's so inspiring and encouraging for me to hear that simply talking about my spiritual journey and the ways in which my faith has increased helps other people.
I've mentioned before that I've wondered if God has something bigger in store for me to do with my testimony. All of this happening today has really solidified the fact that I know I want whatever it is that God has for me. I want to be radical. I want to be unashamed of my faith, like the Gospel says and like I remember The Vespers being the very first day I met them. I want to be the girl that shouts from the rooftops (or internet, whatever) just how amazing my God is. I want to (figuratively) grab someone by the shoulders, shake them and say, "LOOK. Look at my life. This is what God can do! This is what He can redeem!" I want to use my testimony to show the world that there is nothing out of His reach.
I want to be His vessel. I don't know whether that means my only platform will be this barely-read blog in the corner of the gigantic internet, or one day I'll end up standing on a stage in front of hundreds or thousands with a microphone using my life and my words to bring God the glory and recognition He deserves. What I do know is that I want to reach as many people as I possibly can, and I'm open for anything, any task God gives me.
Every single one of us has a story worth telling. Do yourself a favor and ask God what He wants you to do with yours. Today. Right now. When He answers, He will give you the strength and tools to fulfill that. Like me and public speaking, large crowds scare me, but if someone comes and says they want me to share my story with a crowd of hundreds, I'll jump at the chance because not only can I help people, I get to show people who might be struggling with their faith what it feels like to know God never gives up on you. I get to show people that trauma can turn into something beautiful. I get to show people that God is sufficient.
I want to tell as many people as possible that there is a God who can save them over and over again from unimaginable harm and risk of death. I am a living testimony to His power, love, and grace, and I just can't keep quiet about it anymore.
The way I see it? When people call you a radical Christian, you're doing something right.
So go. Be radical. You'll change lives. I promise.
So I was sitting here trying to decide what to blog about, and this idea just popped in my head and all sorts of thoughts started pouring in, so I'm going to go with it.
The thing about having a public blog is that anyone can find them. And I mean anyone. Like Sarah, the girl who was in marching band with Holly in high school and ended up picking me up at the airport after my Nashville trip. How completely random is that?! But the most complicated part about it, at least for me, is that blogs are just a highlight reel of the writer's life. Believe it or not, there's a LOT I don't put on this page. I keep plenty of secrets. Everyone does. I've hid a lot over the years because I was too scared to put it all out there.
Now, though? I'm not going to lie: My life is pretty awesome right now. It's finally everything Matt promised me it would be once I got out of that small little town and got to college. I'm getting to do some ridiculously cool things that most people only dream about (pictures from today will be at the bottom of the post). I have so many friends that are the kind that stick with you for life, something I never thought would happen with anyone other than Matt. I am totally aware every day just how much God has blessed me by putting me right where I am, physically and mentally.
BUT sometimes I feel like if a complete stranger found my blog one day and started reading the most recent posts, they might get this idea that I'm posting what I have because I want to brag about how awesome my life is. And that is not it at all. I mean, those of you who have read here for a while know what I have been through over the 3+ years that I've had this blog, but that fact won't mean anything to someone who doesn't know.
And let's face it, the posts I've made about getting to spend my birthday at the Memorials around the city, and meeting the Secretary of the Navy last night, can easily be construed as bragging. Even reading them myself, I can sometimes feel that kind of tone. I can only hope and pray that the people who read my posts either know my heart enough already or will take the time to get to know my heart to know that I am not that person. I truly hope and pray that I never become that person. I know what it's like to have the threat of losing every dream you had hanging over your head, and so frankly, I'm in awe that in less than 3 years I've gone from a girl who spent basically an entire fall in a hospital bed to a girl who's living and working in DC meeting people that help run this country, who got to skip school for a week and fly out to hang with some of her dearest friends and favorite band. If you had told me that 2012 would turn out like this when I was laying in Duke, or giving myself antibiotics twice a day for the staph infection in my foot, I would've thought you were crazy. I had pretty much given up all hope of having a normal life.
I'm living my dream, y'all, and there's nothing I could have ever done to deserve a blessing like this. In fact, my human mind can't even comprehend how God would still want to bless me like this after I spent so many years hating Him and blaming Him for all of my pain. But if there's anything that I want people to take away from the words I leave on this site is that this doesn't just happen to me. God wants to work these kinds of life-altering miracles in your life, too. Whether or not you know Him, He knows you and He loves you SO much. I had nothing to do with God for pretty much my entire high school life, but looking back, there were so many things that happened that set me up to get me not only to Campbell, but to this program. He was still paying attention.
My life is just an example. I am nothing more than a living testimony for His grace, forgiveness, and love. He doesn't love me anymore than He loves you, I promise. No matter what your relationship (or lack thereof) with Him has been, His love doesn't change. He brought me out of some scarily dark years to a point where I feel on top of the world. The knowledge I have of the incomprehensible depth of His love is what gets me through the bad days because, I promise, I still have plenty of those. Being a Christian and having a relationship with Christ doesn't mean that your life suddenly turns magical and all is perfect in the world. People are still mean, bad things happen, you cry, you get mad, you're still human. It just means that through your relationship with Him, He will take everything you've been through and turn it into something more beautiful than any human could ever imagine or create themselves. He wants to know you, intimately, passionately, deeply. He sure as heck wanted to know me. He had to pretty much chase me down to get me to where I am now. God's love is that great; He's willing to do whatever it takes to bring you back where you belong.
So please, when you read what I have to say on this blog (and I still can't figure out why anyone still does), know that my life is far from perfect, and that my life, my words, my story? They were never about me. They're about Him. They're about this new Mallory that He created and is molding out of the ashes that were my life such a short time ago. It's my job to do something with it. All of this is happening so I can show anyone and everyone I meet what He has done for me, and to tell them He can do it in their lives, too. Because HE CAN.
And He will, if you're willing to give up control and let Him. It's not going to be quick, and it's not going to be easy, and sometimes it's going to hurt like hell. I, control freak extraordinaire, can tell you that for a fact. But this I can also promise you:
It will be worth it.
That's me, sitting in Ben Bernanke's chair. Ben Bernanke is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
(After having the opportunity to share my testimony last night, I woke up this morning feeling inspired. It was like I had gotten a good smack in the face, and my focus was put back where it belongs. I've never actually written out my full testimony, with every nitty gritty detail, and after some encouragement, I decided to go ahead and do it. So here we go. I pray that if you choose to read this, you leave having learned something.)
When I was little, saying prayers was just something we did every night before bed. It wasn't a big deal, it was just a part of life. I was baptized when I was a baby, so I know the influence was there from the beginning. I don't really remember going to church and things, though I know we did because I remember seeing the old church directories, but I remember word for word the prayer Mom taught Holly, Chelsea, and me to say: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God, I'm thankful for........God, I pray for.........Amen."
My parents split up in March 1997, and my mom, sisters, and I moved to Swansboro and in with my grandma until my mom could find our own house. We fell right in with the Methodist church in town, and it was nice. We still got to see my dad, who still lived in Raleigh, some weekends, and we had a routine. When my dad got diagnosed with leukemia in August 1998, my 6-year-old mind was sure that God would heal him, because that's what I was always taught God does, and healing in my mind meant I'd get to keep him. The following March, when doctors found benign tumors in my thyroid and I ended up in Duke four floors away from my dad, I didn't even really think anything of it. I was just excited that I got to talk to him on the phone.
Then, on June 17, 1999, two days after my 7th birthday, my whole world got rocked. This day is the first vivid memory I have. I woke up that morning like a typical kid, still excited about all the presents I had received, and found my mom and one of the pastors from our church sitting in the living room. They told my sisters and me that our dad had passed away early that morning. We sat there and listened to the pastor pray, and then I ran to my room. A shot of me laying on the bottom bunk in my sister's and my room and sobbing for hours is still stuck in my head like a photograph. In the days after that, I pretty much decided I was done with God. My 7-year-old, heartbroken self couldn't rationalize how a God that was supposed to love me would take away my daddy. So that was it, there couldn't have been a God. I still went to church basically because my mother forced us all to do it, but I didn't listen to a word that was said. I blocked it out because I just didn't believe any of it could actually be true.
In 2002, when I started 6th grade, I joined the Youth Group at church. It was just what you were "supposed to do," but like before, my heart wasn't in it. I went through "Confirmation" because people told me to and because I wanted to be included in the group. This is also the time when I remember Chelsea's mental issues getting really out of control, which did nothing to change my belief that there couldn't be a God taking care of my family as I was watching it fall apart. Then, in November 2003, I went with some of the Youth Group to a weekend retreat at Camp Don Lee, a Christian camp my sisters and I had attended several summers. The Saturday night of the retreat, there on the beach in front of a campfire and a wooden cross, I broke down. I started crying and begging God to forgive me for all the mistakes I had made, for turning my back on Him. I remember one of the group leaders coming and kneeling beside me, and I asked her if I could be alone because I had to come to terms with everything that had happened in the past five years. I consider that day the day I got "saved." I told God I loved Him and wanted Him in my heart and for Him to be with me always. Afterwards, I was pretty much on top of the world. I told everyone I knew about what had happened, and I believed my life was going to be different from that day on. It just had to be. The next fall, I went back to the same retreat. I was ashamed at what I saw as all of my "failures" from the previous year, and I again promised Christ that I was going to be better this time.
Then, I started high school. High school was a whole new game for me. I had always had friends, even though I had never been popular. But in high school, the slight bullying that I had had to deal with in the past got magnified about a hundred fold. People I didn't know were spreading rumors about me. People, especially guys, that I thought were my friends only pretended to be nice to me so they could emotionally abuse me; I let them because I thought I deserved it, I believed them when they told me it was my fault. This was also the point when my health issues started getting really out of control, which only fueled the rumors about me more. This wasn't just at school, either. In the fall of 2006, there was a blow-up at church in which I found out that basically the entire youth group, kids and adults, believed I was faking my problems. So I left, without a second thought. At this point, I had sunk into such a deep depression that I completely and totally shut down. I didn't speak to anyone at school except for the one friend that always believed me (Matt, of course), ever, not a word. At home, the only times I spoke to anyone in my family were when I needed to release all the anger that had built up inside me. And I certainly didn't talk to God. I resorted back to that 7-year-old version of myself, the one that believed that a God that loved me wouldn't let my life be going the way it was. I contemplated suicide on a weekly basis, and I honestly believe that Matt is the reason I never actually attempted it. Even when he went to college and was gone for my junior and senior year, he was still the one soft place I had to land. So it's not too surprising that I completely fell in love with him. I put my entire peace of mind, my happiness, my existence on him, because I didn't believe that there was a God anymore.
A month before I graduated, I returned to school after being homebound for seven weeks. It was at this point that I realized I really didn't care what anyone in that school thought of me, and I was done trying to be who they wanted me to be. I thought I was actually turning a corner. That summer was really pretty good. I had graduation and birthday celebrations, I had Matt home for the summer, and I was focused on getting out of Swansboro and getting to experience my new life at Campbell. I was finally starting to think again that there could actually be a loving God watching over me.
If you've been a longtime reader here, you know what happened next, starting in August 2009 - six brain surgeries, several life-threatening complications, and staph pneumonia all within a three month span that caused me to miss that first semester. I spent a total of 49 days in hospital beds that fall and I don't even know how many days in bed at home, and in those 49 days, I questioned everything about the world around me. All I wanted was to go to college, to be a student, to have a regular life. I was 17, 17-year-olds weren't supposed to have to deal with stuff like this! Every time I thought I was getting better, a new complication showed up and I just got angrier and angrier. I sunk even further into the hole of depression that I had just felt myself starting to climb out of weeks before. I made everyone else believe I was still trusting in God's plan for my life and my health, but to be perfectly honest, I only kept saying that because part of me hoped if I said it enough I'd actually believe it. I never did. I was angry at the world. I was angry that God had "abandoned" me. I was angry that my mom was depressed and that her principal was trying to fire her. I was angry that I couldn't catch a break. I met a lot of amazing Christian friends through the blog world around this time, but there was nothing anyone could've said to bring me out of that. I was a master at making them all believe that I was fine and a Christian.
That following spring, in January 2010, I went to Campbell. Finally. I was weak, I was constantly exhausted, but I was finally getting to experience a taste of the life I had been dreaming of. When I went to see a podiatrist and scheduled my foot surgeries, I was actually excited because these surgeries could only make my life better! It was at this point that I finally started processing everything that had happened to me in 2009. I had to come to terms with what I'd been through, but the process was so overwhelming I didn't even know where to begin. All I knew was that I was not going to let this stop me, I was not going to be "the sick girl" and let that define my life.
I didn't even really have the time to dig into that before I hit my breaking point. In September 2010, less than two weeks after I got the cast off from my second foot surgery, I contracted a massive MRSA infection in my foot. This infection was missed by the hospital near Campbell , and thus got to the point that by the time I made it to my foot doctor, as I later found out, I was 24-48 hours from going into septic shock and probably dying. I had emergency surgery on Saturday, September 25th, to clean out the infection and laying there in that hospital bed, I told the doctors that I didn't care what had to be done, this was not, under any circumstances, going to make me miss another semester of school. And when no one was watching, I basically told God "since you apparently want to see how much I can take, how many tests you can throw at me before I break, I'll prove you wrong. I can do this." I was more determined than ever to fight. The only problem was that I had the wrong opponent in mind.
I spent two weeks at home before I went back to school. I had a PICC line in my arm for six weeks with which I was required to give myself high-dose, extremely intense IV antibiotics. I missed every other Monday of class because I had to be consistently checked by both my podiatrist and my "Infectious Disease" doctor. Going into this, I thought it would be a cake walk compared to all of the brain surgeries. I could do this, no big deal. I had no idea what I was signing up for. It was physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting to be constantly paranoid about another infection or medical problem. But I kept going. I stayed in class, because in my eyes, I had no other choice. I wasn't going to let whoever was "doing this to me" prove that I was weak.
At least, that was until I hit my breaking point. Sometime right at the end of that 6-week period, I broke. I completely and utterly shattered. I felt like I was suffocating and there had to be a way out. I had no choice but to accept the fact that if I kept trying to do this on my own, I was going to kill myself, whether I intended to or not. I had an epiphany of sorts, in that I realized that God didn't cause my problems; instead, He saved me from them by letting me cheat death more than half a dozen times. I was tired of fighting by myself. I had no worldly comfort or support, as my relationships with my mom and sisters were basically non-existent and Matt and I had our own rollercoaster ride. Somehow, I just knew that if I was going to make it through this, there had to be a God that was taking care of me, that gave me the strength to get through it, because clearly, the strength I felt by myself wasn't enough.
This is when I decided to take that same stubbornness I had felt before, the determination to "prove God wrong", and use it for something good. Something in my gut just told me that I wouldn't have gone through all of this pain and suffering for no reason, that a God who saved my life so many times wouldn't let it all be for nothing. There had to be a reason I was still here because, according to every doctor I saw, I should've been dead. And so I started praying that God would show me the reason for this, that God would show me why my life was the way it was, and what He wanted me to do with it. I prayed that I could make a positive difference in someone's life with what I had learned; then, I would feel like it had a purpose, like I had a purpose.
Months later, those prayers already started getting answered. I got diagnosed with Bell's Palsy in January, and it went away after 16 days instead of the 3-6 months all the doctors told me. I joined my first Bible study. I made real friends at school for the first time, and those friends started confiding in me the things they had learned from watching me and my struggles. That was when I finally got it. God was using me to teach others. I had been so caught up in my self-pity before that I didn't see it, but my life was (and is!) part of a much bigger purpose. It was my job to show the world the miracles that had been performed in my life, and to therefore tell them of the miracles that He can perform in theirs. I'll never forget the first time Ryann told me she appreciated her life and her health more because of me, or when I sat at lunch and poured out my entire story to Bruno the day I first met The Vespers and he told me that I was going to do big things with my testimony, "bigger things than [he]'ll ever do."
Life is hard. There is no way to prepare someone for it. It's just hard. It's frustrating, and scary, and overwhelming, and sad at times. But you can get through this. I am a living, breathing testimony to the power of God, to His unending love and grace, to the fact there is no limit on the number or magnitude of miracles He can perform in your life. Don't give up. Please. Because once you're on the other side, you will see the purpose. It may not be immediate, it may not even be until you're in Heaven (that's frankly when I was expecting to find out the purpose for everything in my life), but you will see it. Everything that happens is for His will, and He will redeem every bit of pain and suffering you have faced if you let Him. I promise.
I may not be sure of many things in life, but the one thing I am 1000% positive of is that giving your life to the God that loves each of us more than we will ever understand is a decision that you can never regret.
If you'd like to talk privately with me, my email is malloryannjones@gmail.com
