When He told me He wanted to go back to the beginning, I didn’t think that He would tell me to go back to the first day of kindergarten on the bus. Let me give you a few pictures: I’m a confident girl waiting at the court-side across from my house in New York, it’s my first day of school and I’m so happy to go! I’m stepping onto the bus after my dad has taken a picture of me and decide to sit with a girl who’s in the front seat, thinking we’ll become great friends. The next thing I know I’m being pushed into a bus seat window and bruise my shin because of the bus wheel.
Now imagine the sixth grade bus life. I’m getting made fun of. I get dropped off and see a boy’s hand sticking out the window who had been making fun of me, only to see a middle finger sticking up in my direction… All I can think about is the number of people on that bus who see it happen to me and do nothing to stop it from happening. The people making fun of me were people I considered to be friends.
Kids will be kids, right? What happens when you become deemed the “enemy” in a game for an entire weekend in the woods with family friends and are too young to understand that it’s not real? All I ever wanted was to be a part of the good group during that silly game.
One time in fifth grade, I was actually the mean girl in school to someone who never deserved it or did anything bad to me. She was different and everyone knew it. This girl screamed uncool and I made whoever would listen aware of it. She eventually spit the word I had used on her to get back at me: Geek. It was a small word, but had huge consequences. If I could, I would take it back in that very moment. I realize now that I only ever did to this girl what my biggest fear in life is: I made her an outcast and made her feel small in front of other people.
The power we have with our words and actions have every capacity to leave a scar or a healing touch. In my life, I’ve experienced a lot of words and actions that have not been life-giving from my peers and it has in turn hurt the way I see others and interact with everyone I meet. Between “geek and selfish,” feeling uninviting, annoying, and like I didn’t fit in, these feelings and words stuck with me for years. I’ve always tried to speak positively about the people I know in my life and feel like I have tried to be as generous as possible, but I’m human and definitely have my shortcomings – like we all do.
As I have looked back with the Lord on my short life, I see that there are so many patterns evident from even these small and seemingly mundane memories. It wasn’t until I began bringing these hard and painful memories to the light with the Lord that I even began to notice the patterns that I have been living in for years.
When I experienced being the new girl in seventh grade, I got thrown into a group of people known as the “looping pod,” or seventh grade speak for “smart kids.” I fell for a guy in seventh grade that every girl loved. I got lead on and then hurt numerous times for nearly four years straight because I didn’t realize or even know what a real friendship looked like with a guy and assumed that any interest meant he liked me. At the end of middle school, I got ditched by someone who I considered to be my best friend and felt like the world was ending.
At this point in my conversation with the Lord, I began asking Him why this happened to me. What could have lead anyone to push me down, give me a middle finger, or drop me as a friend before high school? The Lord simply told me that He was protecting me from an empty life. I asked Him if some friends just aren’t meant to be, and He quickly silenced that lie telling me with hard truth that all friends are meant to be, but some are only meant to weather a season or two.
A pattern I see in my life is consistently going to and gravitating toward people that were never true friends in the first place. I changed who I was to be seen as “cool” and I hated feeling “different.” I believe it’s a natural tendency to want to fit in for everyone. But if I get made fun of in groups or called out in front of others (aside from normal feedback time), it makes me want to shut down because it will bring me right back to these places (and many others) that I have recently just dusted out of the closet with the Lord.
The truth is that other people are always going to disappoint us. But the Lord isn’t in the business of disappointing His people. He is in the business of forgiving us for belittling other human beings. He is in the business of showing us where He was in the midst of horrible and life altering situations like losing friends and He is in the business of helping us grasp the depth of His love even when the actions from others don’t demonstrate His love at all. The truth is: None of us want to be alone. The truth is that when we feel alone, the Lord is always there.
He whispers You are loved. You are enough. You are cared for. You are invested in. The truth He tells me daily in my time with Him is that I am not abandoned and I am not left out. I am loved. I am beautiful. I am forgiven for my sins and selfish ambitions. The patterns of my past don’t need to repeat themselves and I don’t have to live by words that haunt me still… When I begin to get haunted by words or feelings I have so deeply felt before, it is a ploy of the enemy to keep me where I am. I don’t need to stand for that and neither will God because He is already on the winning side. Daily I will rise for the Lord, because the more I rise for Him and do life with Him, the more in-love I become with His mystery, His love, and His favor.
Have you gotten real with the Lord lately? Have you asked Him why? I challenge you to go to the hard places and come clean with Him. It’s necessary for increasing our faith and increasing intimacy with Him even further, because He already knows it all. Remember, though, that He’s not going to push you to go there if you don’t want to, but one thing He is going to do is patiently wait until you are ready. I promise you that what He has to say is worth it, every single time.
