You Belong Among The Wildflowers

You belong among the wildflowers…you belong somewhere you feel free.
(Wildflowers-Tom Petty)

 

 

I’ve gone back and forth deciding whether or not to write this post…and it definitely hasn’t been easy.  But ultimately I’m not just sharing for my own sake. I’m sharing this story for others who may be able to relate or who may need to hear it.

 

 

March 22^nd has always held a special place in my heart, and it always will.

It’s special because on this day 9 years ago, the world lost this crazy, quirky, funny, beautiful girl:

 

 

Jami was one of my best friends in middle school & junior high, and almost every memory I have of her involves lots of laughter…including the time we dyed our hair blue for the county fair (it ended up raining and dying the rest of us blue), and the time we got lost in the woods riding four-wheelers. I remember her as being the lively, care-free girl I always wished I could be.

 

But going into high school we started to lose touch. We didn’t have any classes together anymore, we became interested in different things, and we made new sets of friends.

 

Because we had grown apart I never saw any of the warning signs, I never heard the cries for help, and I certainly never saw the end coming. And I blamed myself for that for so long. I thought maybe if I had been a better friend, tried harder to fit in with her new friends, just called her every once in a while to check in, to remind her she was loved…that maybe I could have helped her…and maybe she wouldn’t have decided to take her own life.

 

To this day I still wonder if there is something I could have done to help…and I know that question will always remain unanswered…along with the ever-haunting question of, “Why?” But honestly, those questions aren’t important anymore.

 

What is important is what we can be doing to help others who are lost, who are stuck in what they think is a never-ending darkness, and who need to be reminded of the Glorious Light there is to be found. Part of why I am so excited to be a part of the World Race is because of Jami. Because there are thousands upon thousands of people in this world who need to hear the story of Hope. They need to know (or to be reminded of) the love that surrounds them, the love of our precious Savior who came to die so that they might LIVE. They need to know that there is always hope.

 

I truly believe that God brings good out of every situation. I’ve seen it firsthand in my own life, as well as the lives of Jami’s friends and family.  God can take something as tragic and heart-wrenching as suicide, and He turn it into a beautiful story of redemption and hopefulness to bring others out of that same darkness and into His Light.

 

 

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”
-Isaiah 42:16