Romans 12:9-21

Keep Fighting

I was a victim of child abuse. I am a rape survivor. I self-harmed. I had an eating disorder. I have tried to kill myself at least a dozen times.

I used to have a pro-ana/pro-mia blog, I was in and out of treatment centers for my eating disorder. For close to six years of my life I wanted to die. I’ve been there.

It’s still hard some days, and I can’t say I’m perfect. I still slip up. Occasionally I still take diet pills. After stopping for two years straight I cut myself again. I’ve fallen and gotten back up. 

The bottom line is, I KEPT FIGHTING. I started to believe in myself for the first time in my entire life. And I just want you to know there’s hope. It might not seem that way now, but it does.

Isaiah 40:11

Reflection on Matthew 13 and 14

  Jesus walking on water was one of my favorite topics to discuss on opinion essays because its so easy to relate to Peter's fear. Peter doubts subconsciously, as do I. If I were say, burning alive, (I never could really imagine myself drowning, Dawn says I was born a fish) my immediate response would be to pray that God would save me, even if God had told me prior to this that I would survive. Unlike Moses would was so close to sacrificing his son, I would have probably freaked out and told God I couldn't go through with it and then gone home and cried like a baby. Having faith that strong is something I can only aspire to at this point in my life, because deep down I know I'm too broken to take risks like that. The idea of dying or losing a son is just not something I can fathom, even if God promised He would save them. I made it this far and I think dying without finding out what it's like to be truly happy would just make me feel like I survived all of this and nothing good came of it. 

    Sean died at 17, but he died after finding himself and changing the lives of others. I know you don't know much about him, but I've wanted to tell you for a while and verbalizing my thoughts is just impossible when it comes to certain topics. He was born in Russia and adopted when he was four or five, but he remembered the negligence and abuse he endured in those few years which he believes caused him to have a dissociative identity disorder (how the two relate I don't really know, I'm no psychologist). He would skip school on days when he suffered those episodes and often felt like his "other half" was trying to kill him. He drank a lot before he finally told me his life story, which he apparently had tried to tell others, but no one was really willing to listen, and he sensed I was fucked up enough to understand. I never fully understood everything he said that night, and he only brought it up once after that. But that night he told me he thought he was going to die within the year, and I promised him he wouldn't, even though he did. 

    After he told me his life seemed to turn around. He didn't drink as much, the other side of him he felt he had better control of, he applied to Julliard, helped a bunch of kids get their shit together, got me to stop cutting, and got his one friend to stop doing coke and she joined the army. He saved my ass too many times to count, my dad really fucked me up that year (this was the year he totaled my car on my birthday and the abuse got pretty bad and I was suicidal almost 100% of the time). He seemed happy, and a weeks before his 18th birthday, he died of a heart arrhythmia in the middle of first block weight room. From what I gathered, the other kids in the room thought he was dead the moment he hit the ground and finished seizing. From that day on, Amit tried hard to get my to function, but no matter how hard he tried, it just didn't work. I made 1000 paper cranes and took a few months of from school, but I couldn't really get my shit together. I never really did, I just studied and tried to forget. I can't say I really even loved him, I never even thought about it until he had already passed, I never told him it even. I think his death scared me because I thought I could die without figuring out my life, I don't want to die angry at my dad, I want to find happiness first.

    The point isn't that he died, the point is he died content. I haven't reached that point yet, so having faith so strong that I would potentially risk my life isn't something I've come to yet, I want to, but I don't feel I can. I wish I had enough faith to put everything I have into God's hands and follow Him, but right now, I can't fathom doing it. Sometime in the future I hope to, but I have a feeling it'll be a while before that day comes.

Isaiah 41:10

Reflection on Matthew 10 and 11

 Rest is an important part of life and, as we both know, has a huge impact on our emotions. While rest, such as sleep, is great, spiritual rest is something harder to come by. We can take a pill to get 8 hours of sleep, but we can't take a pill to become closer to God. It would be great if we could just pop a pill down our throat and somehow get rid of all of the evil that we are capable of, but if we did that, we'd been sending that to the Middle East instead of fighting (that isn't to say sending some of those hypothetical pills to the capital wouldn't be a terrible idea either). But since it isn't that easy we have to figure things out for ourselves, which is hard enough to do when we have time, never mind when we can barely get ourselves to drive our cars down the road to work in the morning. For instance, my laziness is so bad that when I had to go to the post office mail something, I looked at their hours, realized I had slept through when they were open then decided it could wait until the next week. 

    I guess I'm more motivated when I have things to do. I worked the last two years of high school full time, averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night, but I still managed to get A's, earn a raise, play lacrosse, go to church 2-3 times a week, pray daily, council my mother, deal with a drunken father, and drive the 100 miles a day between school, work, and home. Now I complain if I get anything less than 12 hours of sleep and I don't even think of going to church more than once a week. I will say that without church during those two years, I don't think I would've made it. I'm pretty sure starting my day out in the chapel with the aspirings gave me the strength I needed to get through the day. I would sit in the back, next to Sister Mary Bertha with her gold and pearl rosary beads, head down, with her white habit covering her face, and watch the mass as an observer. I was intrigued by the dedication of everyone in the room, so consumed by their faith in God. I wanted to have their faith, but I didn't know where to start. 

    Sister Mary Bertha always tried to show me why God put certain obstacles in our lives, but there were parts of my life she knew her words couldn't heal, she told me she understood what happened by the look in my eyes, I never understood how she knew, she just did. She would tell me about her life in Italy and how much God had provided for her over the years, and how she knew He would do the same for me. She told me I would eventually find my way and learn to trust God completely, and He would help me understand what it meant to rest.  I just wish "rest" would come quicker. Its not that I never feel at rest with God, I just always wish it would last a little longer.

1 Kings 19

Reflection on John 3

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Growing up I learned to believe in a mean God, one who punished us for all we’ve done wrong. Though I know now that isn’t true, it is always a struggle to believe that God will forgive all sins. Sometimes I fell so far into the deep end that I couldn’t see the light. It’s easy to pin all of our problems on God, but He never gives us anything we can’t grow from. In every inch of the human body and soul, God is there, even if we forget, He never leaves us.

            John 3: 16-21 states the most profound sacrifice God could have given us. He gave His only son to free us from our sin and lead us into the Kingdom of Heaven. All too often we forget the strength of God’s love. I admit, this is something I struggle with on a daily basis. I know God is there, and I know I should put Him first in everything I do, but sometimes I am too narcissistic. I think about everything that has gone wrong in my life and wonder how I made it, in retrospect I should’ve died three-four years ago.

            The only conclusion I can draw from this is I was put on this earth for a reason, I know there is something left for me to do here, if there wasn’t God would’ve let me go by now. Each book in the New Testament (excluding, in my opinion, Revelation) offers a deeper understanding of God’s unmerited love for us. God gives us hope in our most desperate times. When I was eleven I prayed every single night for the pain to go away, and it didn’t for years. It wasn’t until I realized that God puts tragedy in our lives to learn from that I truly grew in my faith.

            As I read the entire passage, the message became clear. In this passage Jesus takes several forms, Christ the Lord, Christ the teacher, and Christ the friend. As Christ the Lord he makes it known to Nicodemus the heart of God. Jesus shows him what motivates God, what He truly wants for the human race, and how He wants to help. The entire history of salvation, from the fall of Adam and Eve up to the final judgment revolves around Jesus. God sent Jesus because He did not want us to perish in our sins; He wants to share with us His everlasting life. Giving His only son is the proof that He is willing to do anything to save us, to give us a way to finally be free. God has no hidden agenda, only pure generosity.

Jesus has proven his love by coming to earth “for our sake and for our salvation.” He invites us to believe, so that we might not perish but have eternal life. He did not come for his own sake, but for ours. This is the epitome of friendship. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). But in his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus once again points out that we remain free to accept or reject his offer of friendship, his offer of salvation. He makes it starkly clear: “Whoever does not believe in him has already been condemned.” Salvation depends on God and on us; God has done his part, now we must do ours.

Beautiful

Take a Moment

Sometimes I forget to take a break. 

I'm often way too busy as a student to 

appreciate what God has done for me. 

I took this photo over two years ago on 

a crowded street in Savannah, Georgia 

and every time I look at it i realize it's 

the little things that matter. 

This is what we should be 

focusing on as a human race,

 the little things

 that bring us hope.