When I was about ten my dad stepped down as an elder and became youth minister at our church. I was thrilled at this and I have to admit, very proud of my parents who were taking this step. At the time I was ten and had only a year before I would be youth age. All year I laid in wait of entering into middle school. When I entered into sixth grade and was able to join the youth I was thrilled. Not only ecstatic that I could finally be apart of the fun, but most importantly apart of the learning. My dad was an amazing teacher and I learned so much from his insights into God’s word. The two years I had in youth were beautiful ones. Ones that are now splotched and stained by hurt and whose color and vibrancy have faded by the wear of reliving them.
The circumstances that changed my life were ultimately for my good, and although they were painful I couldn’t have grown until I went through them.
I had just finished sixth grade, my first year of middle school, it had been a great year full of laughter, new experiences, and valuable lessons. I was content in my current situation, too content. I didn’t want anything to change and I had confidence that it wouldn’t. I found my identity in my church itself, the people, the building, and the roles we played in making it what it was. It became who I was. I didn’t realize the mistake I was making and didn’t even comprehend how much I weighed my identity in the church. Not until it was stripped away.
When this stripping took place I was left stunned. Night after night I cried myself to sleep dreaming of better days. After hours of sleeplessness I would often be jerked from my slumber dreaming that I was falling through the clouds unable to stop the death that lay below. After these almost nightly dreams I would wake up sweating, gripping my sheets, and crying inconsolably. Evening after evening I would sit up and wait unable to eat or think of anything other than the nagging fear that seemed to be consuming me from the inside out. Sunday after Sunday arrived when I would put on a cheerful face and play the part of a carefree seventh grader, very few people saw through my act. I have so many memories of my mom and I sitting together holding one another and sobbing, so many memories of staring at our joyful Christmas tree, my tears blurring the lights that illuminated the dark room, so many memories of those dark days that closed in on one of the most painful days of my life. The day our time at the church ended. My parents didn’t tell my little siblings that Sunday would be our last. They didn’t even say that it would be to one another, but we all knew it was. We are just taking a break for a little while, they would lovingly say whenever any of the younger ones asked, but I knew too much to take any comfort from those meaningless words. Our last Sunday approached, falling dreadfully close to Christmas, and I cried the whole way to church. When I stepped out of our black Honda Odyssey, I did something I’d never done before; I waited by the car for my parents so I could walk in with them. Every Sunday since I was old enough to walk the short distance through the parking lot alone, I had gone ahead of my parents. I would rush into the scene a smile on my face and a Bible in my hand. I would say hello to everyone, help set up, then wait near the entrance so I could see when my friends arrived. This Sunday was different though. We got there later than normal and as we were making our way to the entrance I noticed that the parking lot was already pretty full. I kept my head down and many of the people calling out their cheerful Sunday hellos were, uncharacteristically, met with a forced reply and a small glance into my tear-filled eyes. My heart ached so badly I couldn’t imagine enjoying anything ever again.
The days, weeks, months, and even years following that day have been riddled with pain and longing for the ‘good old days’. Our wounds have not fully healed, but they say time heals all wounds and time is what is still passing.
I would beg to differ however, yes in part time heals wounds, but in reality they cannot ever be healed and restored unless God is the one who does the healing and restoring.
People say that if you’re not in the midst of a storm than you’re either coming out of one or going into one. These events that shape our lives are called storms for a reason, they aren’t merely trying times, but times of great hopelessness and loss. Some struggles will be harder than others and some people’s lots may be greater than your own, but the greater the pain of another doesn’t undermine yours. They say you’re either on the mountaintop or in the valley and believe me; you cannot be in both places. You cannot be up and down, low and high, left and right. So I guess it was only fitting that when our storm came it poured down on every inch of our lives.
The enemy left nothing untouched, he never does, but if there were no storms in life there would be no character, no endurance, no faith or trust, and definitely no growth in any of us. Therefore I’ve come to the conclusion that our lives our better off from these storms, they draw us closer and nearer to our Lord and there is no place I would rather be.
Seventh grade flew by as a wrecking ball on my life and I had no idea that there was another one headed in my direction. In the spring of ’17 that second wrecking ball was released and, quite literally, awoke me from my slumber. I startled awake, the cheering sunlight of a clear spring morning filtering with a lazy haze through my window and streaming down upon my head, christening it in a halo of sunlight. In a peaceful moment I laid there wondering what had jerked me awake so suddenly. Then came the faint sound of muffled sobs and fearful sighs. It was the voice of my mother that I heard, but whom she was talking about I was unsure. My heart raced as I swung my feet over the side of the bed. I tried to reconcile the words I had heard in my brain. Maybe this was a dream. After a few minutes of explanation I learned that my long awaited, deeply loved, unborn cousin was going to be delivered months before his due date. The whole day was agony waiting for every tidbit of information to flow through the doctors to my grandparents and then to us. My cousin was born weighing a pound and a half. The Lord gave my little cousin all the strength and might he needed to fight the curve balls thrown his way. Today, my little cousin is preparing to celebrate his third birthday!
In the fall of 2017 I attended homeschool classes with my two best friends and although it was so good for me to get to be with them, I hid behind them and crouched in the shadows of their boldness. They were confident when I was anything but and I sat quiet letting them be my voice. I grew to hide behind them and their fearless personalities, but it was oh so very bad for me. The next year when another wrecking ball was fired in my direction they wouldn’t be there to hide behind and I would be forced to fend for myself. It was released in the spring when they both decided to attend charter school the following school year. It crushed my already shattered heart and I felt excluded and forgotten beyond words.
The pain did not droll away with time and at the end of 2018 I penned in my journal, “I do not want the year to end this way. I had so much hope that this year was the year my promises would be fulfilled and they weren’t.” I was broken, bitter, lost, lonely, and completely confused at the beginning of 2019. My word for the year was ‘accepted’, which is what I longed to be, but yet couldn’t even grasp the meaning of.
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