The Trailhead: broken-mess, IGNITE and hope

I think a few of you know where I have been dwelling in the recent past, or at least a shadow of it. But Daddy God has put me in a place where I have to be transparent, completely open to anyone who wants to know. I am walking into a place of new beginnings, which means walking through a place of immense pain. Old scars are being ripped open, masks are being torn away, everything I know and cling to, God is striping of me. It hurts like pouring hydrogen peroxide in an infected wound. This is for everyone and anyone to read, go into this knowing that I enter a completely vulnerable position here, and I am afraid of what will come of this. *takes a deep breath*

There has been a lot of brokenness in my life, as short as it has been (I feel stupid saying that as a 14 year old...). Over the past year I have battled depression, misery, loneliness, cutting, suicidal thoughts, hiding, faking peace and authenticity. It mostly roots from feeling like a social outcast most of my conscious life. Ever since I was very little, I never seemed to fit in with the other children my age. I felt like a puzzle piece shoved into the wrong box. I have had very few genuine friends, especially up to last summer. I was always lonely. I hardly recognised it. Last year, when I met the people who genuinely loved me, who I genuinely loved, who were like me, who were the puzzle I belonged to I found that hole in my heart. I learned what it was like to fit in. I learned what it was like to have true friends. Due to the business of my first year in High school, I went for about three months without seeing anyone I had met. I had regular conversations on gmail chat, but there is nothing that fills the thirst for face time other than face time. Loneliness set in like a fog.

In that time I realised there is nothing I value higher than genuine relationship. There is nothing I posses that I would not gladly give away to help a friend. I love my friends. I love them deeply. Any length of time without them is painful. They mean so So very much to me. If you are reading this, that applies to you. I am a broken mess of emotion, reality and new found joy in authentic relationships.

IGNITE was a week-long winter retreat up in the Tennessee mountains. It was hosted by the Institute for Cultural Communicators, a speech and debate training organization I am very involved in. In that week, not only did I catch the inspiration to become an Authentic Communicator, and catch the blue tape craze, but I got a taste of what it was like to live in perfect community, genuine relationships, authentic love and complete transparency. It was a glimpse of what a life of complete in-tuneness with God would look like, because that is what it was. I cannot at all communicate how much of a blessing it was to be there. In that short week, I strengthened long-standing relationships and built several new ones. Every night there were happy/relieved tears shed. Every morning we were reminded of the love around us. There was so much renewal and healing. I dont now how to express that any more than what I have already expressed about my value for relationships. :big smile:

It was very hard to leave, it was world-shaking. An entire week charged with emotion and community... Coming home was miserable.

I came home to a week's worth of homework, a nasty head-cold, and solitude. Wednesday was miserable. The morning I was in classes and Mr. Phillips (my History and Bible teacher) asked the question "If God is good, and He loves His people, why does he allow pain and suffering?". Ouch. I didn't have an answer. It was a question that had bothered me for a long time. The day went downhill from there. Mom surprised me by bringing my dear friend and brother Timothy to come pick me up, which did a little to improve my mood... But it made me feel empty seeing him and my sister as if I didn't exist. After youth group, I was feeling so empty, so loney that I wrote this poem:

To be or not to be,
Is that the question?
Tonight it does seem key.
I seem to be drifting in hesitation,
Unwilling to be authentically me.
I long for an authentic relation.

Hiding in masks, hiding from who I am,
Because I am not strong enough
to be weak
My emotions are pent up as behind a dam.
All I wish to be is to be meek.
But I brace myself to be slammed,
Against a wall; one I don't need to seek.

No one seems to care to notice,
That I am a shell,
Of who I was, I wish I was missed.
Loneliness is my personal hell.
My energy drains with a silent hiss.
I have no one to tell.

'Hey, are you alright?'
Would that be too much to ask?
It's starting to look like it might.
I broke my promise not to resort to a mask,
But I gave up trying to put up a fight.
It was just too much of a task.

So here I am, drifting here.
Without an answer to my thoughts,
And none is near.
I search for an answer as I think I ought.
I dip into thoughts I cannot hear.
Now I've lost the battle, for I had not fought.

That was the culmination of all the waves of emotion that washed over me. It hurt. I did not, by any means want to talk to anyone Wednesday night. And I didn't. I talked to three people, and those were shallow conversations. I hid. I did not want to face the vacuum of emptiness that was suffocating me. I no longer had any emotion to give. When I got home, I kept in my avoidance patterns. I went directly out back without greeting Dad or Nicole. I just wanted to sit down and cry.

Sometimes I am tempted to think I am invisible. Sometimes I am tempted to think no one cares. Every time I do, I am hastily proven very wrong. This was one of those times.

Tim and I must have talked for hours. In the end I came to this:
Daddy God is calling me to break my heart, abandon all sorts of things I sought out for comfort like music, He is stripping me down to bare bone until all that remains is me, not who I want to be but who He made me to be. He is making me into His princess. And like Much Afraid from the book "Hind's Feet on High Places", I have had a thorn shaped flower seed placed in the very core of my heart. It cannot bloom if I do not move, and every time I move the thorn digs deeper and more painfully into my heart. It hurts, and it will keep hurting until I am at the place He wants for me. As a friend of mine says, the more you bleed, the cleaner the wound becomes. Daddy God is cleaning my wounds thoroughly.

That is where I am. Right now, I am just a pile of bones. Everything I knew is gone. Everything He has for me is yet to come. I don't think that which I knew will ever be fully restored. I am confident that what He has prepared for me is better. I can't say I go into this willingly. I don't have a choice anymore. I can say I I'm dreadfully afraid. I trust God to do what is best.

In the mean time I cannot think of anything I desire and crave more than your prayers.

With that, I love you very much :smiles and hugs: