The movie starts off with this 12-year-old girl talking to her best friend on the phone and she asks, “Do you want to be friends anymore?” There is a long silence and my heart breaks watching her sit in the corner of her bunkbed waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” says the best friend and the main character starts to cry. “I guess that’s a no. You don’t want to be friends anymore?” she asks between sniffs. It is tragic. I mean, you can see the 12-year-old’s little heart break as she realizes that this friendship meant nothing and that she is alone in this. That’s going to leave a scar…
Then, there’s another scene in the movie where her ex-boyfriend offers to take her out for her 17th birthday and it looks like they might be getting back together. They plan on going to dinner and watching a scary movie, and when he picks her up from her college dorm, you can tell that she is super nervous. Her date looks so handsome. He has the baby-making music playing and I’m thinking, “We all know where this is going.”
After a little grazing and touching in the dimly lit theater, they head back to her college dorm and there’s so much sexual tension in the air, it is ridiculous. But then they have to rush back to her dorm because she goes into a panic about an assignment that was due that night. Later, she finds out that the assignment wasn’t due until the next day, and she feels like God saved her from inviting her date in and losing her virginity. What a close call!
Some other stuff happens in the movie, but it doesn’t really get good until the end when the girl finishes college and decides to leave everything behind to go on an eleven-month adventure to pursue the Lord. Oh wait, that sounds really familiar…
Yes, this “movie” is my life and on this eleven-month adventure called the World Race, God has encouraged me to go back to the 12-year-old girl who was wounded and devalued by her best friend and to revisit the hormonal, 17-year-old girl who secretly lusted after her boyfriend, while striving so hard to remain pure.
No scene is too trivial, no event too small, God continues to lead me into cracks and crevices of my memory and my heart to deal with my past, so that I can break chains, knock down walls, and crush lies that have affected the way that I live this life, perceive others, and love God.
My hand hurts from all the journaling and the processing, but I feel like my heart is beginning to breathe again. I am committed to this painful process, and at the final scene of my life, I want my God to say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Thank you so much to everyone who has been donating! I am about $3,000 away and would love to be fully funded by the end of the year, so I would love your support.
P.S. It was my brother and dad’s birthdays this past week, so happy birthday to them!
