There’s a lot you go through in life and sometimes you don’t truly understand how it affects you. You see the immediate effect, how your mood changes, how you react, how you think about things, etc. Sometimes it’s hard though to see how it shapes the way you think, process, and view yourself in the long run.
For me, what God has been walking me through this month has been ten plus year in the making. And in order for that to make sense, I’ll have to explain a little about my life as a whole.
Growing up, I was never someone’s “best friend”. I had friends and people who would play with me and be around me but even in my neighborhood there wasn’t anyone who was exactly my age. My actual best friend growing up was my grandmother, Audrey, who I so fondly called Nanny. She even lived in an apartment attached to my childhood home in our backyard for most of my life growing up. It was her house I would go to after school, watch movies in, play games, and have sleepovers. I never really did a lot of that stuff with my peers and even when I would invite them over it never seemed to be their first choice to do so.
Along with growing up with not too many close friends, I was bullied for most of my life. It started as soon as I joined the swim team in Kindergarten and would continue until I was a junior in high school.
At first, it started with little five to seven-year-old me running around in my bathing suit at swim meets being made fun of by my fellow teammates and being told I was fat. It continued through second grade where I had a bully until about third grade. It even followed me when I switched schools to a private school in fourth grade where I was called fat and sometimes laughed at and made fun of for who I was and things that I was interested in.
I switched schools again to a public school when I reached 6th grade. This is where it escalated over the next three years to the point where I had a bodyguard at church and at school and a death threat on mine and my families lives. I was the target of many jokes, pranks, and harsh comments for three years.
Once stepping over into high school it deescalated over the next three years until my junior year when it finally ended. That’s about the time where everyone started to apply for college, take the SAT/ACT and entering into another stage in life that was too busy to focus on others. So, people stop focusing on stuff around them and worrying about themselves.
Through all that time I never was angry at anyone, truly I was angry at myself. I thought that there surely must be something wrong with me or that all that they were saying was true because it consumed my life for over ten years. It was from different people, at different schools, at church, and always surrounded the same dialogue. I was the common denominator through the years so I was the problem, right?
I would ask God why out of hurt and tears. I would wake up my mom in the middle of the night and ask her if I was fat. I would look to the church and I ended up being bullied and hurt there as well. This went on for years and the hurt never left.
The one thing that got me through was my love for God. I held onto my life motto of “everything happens for a reason” because I knew that whatever I went through, God would be able to make beautiful and use it to speak to others about things that they are going through. He would take the hurt and pain and use it for something good.
I forgave, forgot and moved on. It was just middle school and high school after all. I let myself minimize what I went through in my mind and make it seem not that bad. I left the state for college and continued on with my life.
I never gave anyone a second thought, held grudges, or truly had any bitterness towards those who constantly hurt me and tried to tear me down. I thought I was free from it all and could leave it all behind. But God has shown me something else. That those years of abuse and bullying were during formidable years of my life. That I took those things people said to me, etched them in my heart and mind, and let them take root. They became part of my daily thought process. That I wasn’t a good person, that I was a bad Christian, I’m not a good friend, I’m not worthy of friendship, I’m not anyone’s true best friend, that I had something wrong with me. These and other lies became my normal thought process. Throughout the years, God has proven those lies to not be true but there were still some I had not yet realized.
Through this last month God is pointing out where I still tear myself down, where I let words people say to me become a place where the enemy can attack. God revealed to me that, along with those lies and things that I adopted growing up, was that I am really hard on myself. That I don’t celebrate who I am but I am quick to point out what’s wrong with me.
God’s teaching me to be kinder to myself and to celebrate who I am, celebrate victories I have, celebrate the beautiful and good things about me. Because when I do that, I am celebrating who He is because He is what is beautiful and good about me. That the small victories matter and I am worthy of friendship and love from the people around me.
The years of bullying and hurt, I know, are going to be redeemed in Christ. That they are going to be used for a greater purpose than anything I could think of. I am thankful for them because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am. They made me more compassionate and empathetic in the end. The pain and hurt from those years were real and hard to go through at the time. But I have an amazing Father who takes all the hurt I’ve been through and uses it for His glory. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to live them again, but whatever goodness I can bring from them in God’s name is totally worth it.
