I’ve heard it said that there comes a point on the race when you realize that, though you left to serve others and help the world, the real work is being done in YOU. I reached that point a few months ago, I guess. I set out to the ends of the earth, confident that a tangible change would take place in me. I didn’t realize how big that change would be. Recently, I’ve been getting scared, guys. Because I see what my life looked like before and I see what it is now and I can’t see what it’s going to look like when I get home and that scares the hell out of me. Because I can’t go back to how it was.
Before the race, I loved my life and I hated myself. Life was easy. But it was empty. I had a routine that involved a lot of sleeping, a lot of alcohol, a lot of shallow relationships, a lot of fighting and yelling and crying and not a lot of clothes or health or dignity or love or Jesus.
Allow my heart to bleed for a moment.
I don’t regret my four years in college. They made me so desperate, so thirsty for Jesus, that I ended up here on the World Race. But I look back and my heart breaks at the emptiness in which I survived. Because a life like that cannot be deemed “living.” I look back and I feel filled with shame and disgust and horror at the person I was.
I had a lot of half-hearted, non-committal relationships with friends. And boys. And God. I believed to my very core that to be loved, you had to be beautiful, and to be beautiful, you had to be skinny. But I didn’t think I was any of those things. And although I would have never admitted it a year ago, my heart’s greatest desire—like so many of us—is to be truly known and truly loved. But I didn’t see it like that for a long time. I thought I was only good for my body and I hated my body; so I hated me. I intentionally hurt myself by eating until I was sick, sleeping through commitments, refusing to exercise, dressing myself in a way that now horrifies me, and drinking myself into a state of apathy.
The things I was passionate about, I ignored. The things that gave me life, I traded in for self-deprecation. I was dead to myself. How did I fall so far? How did I get so lost? My heart breaks as I look back at pictures from college. In every picture I see is a girl with caked-on makeup, glazed over eyes, showing too much skin in unflattering clothes, drink in hand, and leaning on some guy who probably doesn’t even know her last name. I recently looked through screenshots of old conversations and felt a fire in my throat and cheeks as I read the words I used to say to people—especially guys. When I think of the desperate attempts I made at making people love me, I feel sick. When I think of the ways I’ve ruined relationships, I want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out.
As I sit now in a coffee shop in Nicaragua, I feel tears welling up in my eyes as memories of bridges burned flash in my mind. I was confused for a long time why I was (mostly) single throughout college but now I see clearly that I was in a relationship: with alcohol. And it was a terrible, abusive relationship that I was so caught up in I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. But now I’m so far removed that I see so clearly that there was no room for anyone else in my life. I decided to deal with my life’s great losses by drinking to numb the hurt. I decided to deal with the embarrassment of last night by causing myself greater embarrassment tonight.
I wondered why I couldn’t lose weight as I double-fisted 25 cent beers every Tuesday night. I threw away the education I never knew I wanted in place of dingy bars and hangovers. I tossed genuine friendships to the side in favor of shallow, temporary relationships that wouldn’t expect anything of me other than being down to “go out” every night of the week. I made an absolute fool of myself in front of guys I had feelings for, feeling the need to get drunk to talk to them because I was so damn scared of rejection. It didn’t work out well for me.
But now… now. I’m coming home in 2 weeks. I don’t want any of the clothes I used to wear or the makeup that fills my drawers. I have been fasting alcohol since November and since then I’ve lost 30 pounds, watched my physical endurance skyrocket, seen my skin clear up, and perhaps most noteworthy: I’ve watched the suffocating cloud around me finally lift. For the first time in years, I can see clearly. I can see clearly.
I was hardened to the world. I used my body and allowed others to, too. I drank so that I wouldn’t have to face the fear of rejection or the shame of who I had become. My identity was in being the fun girl—the party girl. I was the one who walked in the door and immediately had shots lined up waiting. I was the one who walked home alone from the bars barefoot at 2 AM. Who cried over unanswered texts and regretted words I didn’t remember saying. Who found myself in the midst of fights I didn’t remember starting. I was the joke. I was the one no one took seriously—because I didn’t take myself seriously.
Since being on the race, people have spoken a number of words over me. Words I never would have described myself as a year ago. Words like delicate, tender-hearted, intricate, deep-well, gentle-strong, compassionate, pure, lovely, meek, and powerhouse. These people around me only know this new me. This real me. But my friends, my family, my church, the guys I tried to make love me… they don’t know me. And I want them to. And so I write this blog and I put my heart on the page and I know that no thousand-word confession or apology can convince anyone of anything. But I’m coming home in 2 weeks. I’m changed, y’all. I’ve been made new.
I get excited when I think about the change that Jesus has done in me. I’m excited for you to see it too. As I prepare to come back under my mom’s roof, in the town I grew up, surrounded by people who knew the girl I never should have been, I know that I will have critics. I know that people will be skeptical of the change in me and will be biding their time until I go back to my old and empty life. And you know what? I’m going to screw up. I’m going to need grace. I’m going to have a hard time adjusting to America and this new person I’ve become. But stand with me, guys. Because what’s ahead is so much greater than what’s in the past. I’m not going to try and prove anything to anyone. I’m not going to force people to love me or accept me or believe me. I’m simply going to live as myself—I’m going to live the abundant life which Jesus has called us to. And I invite you to walk with me. If I’ve hurt you, embarrassed you, made you think less of me, let’s start over. Because that’s the redemption that Jesus can provide. That’s the hope of a new life.
(First picture: March 2015 to May 2016; Second picture: January 2015 to November 2015)
“to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
(Ephesians 4:22-24)
