As my personal world race of life begins to slow down, the ending of graduation festivities and the beginning of lovely summer nights with friends and families, I get a chance to reconnect with my blogs and tell y’all a little about who I am and what makes me the young women you learn about today. So, bear with me (and my grammar), it’s about to get personal as I give you a written window into my heart, soul, and mind.
I have only lived eighteen and a half years on this planet, and can honestly say I’ve tasted death literally and figuratively. I’ve felt the most powerful sense of joy and happiness radiate through my body, heart, and mind. I’ve felt weariness so great all my body knew to do was sleep in attempts escape reality. I’ve laughed so hard my body struggled to breath moving from joy to fear trying to recover ungracefully. I’ve risen on top of mountains and wept admiring God’s beautiful creation, not being able to comprehend why I am alive and my significance to His plan. I’ve traveled trough the valley of anguish and sorrow, reshaped from the trauma.
My friends, I have lived well and I have lived honestly, but I was never alone. In “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature” (1966) C.S lewis summarizes the growth of a child simply saying, “Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” How awful would a child process sin, ache, and dejection without the ideas of Prince Charming or ninja turtles and superheroes. In the end, these heroes all point back to the ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. The youth of the world need the fantasy heroes to mimic their life after, for what happens when their parent misses the ballet performance? What happens when they don’t get invited to the birthday party? What happens when someone they love dies? What happens when people can’t live up to heavenly standards? That has been and will be the struggle of the world and myself, filtering the world through gracious heavenly glasses and turning toward a God who doesn’t fail me, when the world is crumbling at my feet.
I have type 1 Diabetes. This is an autoimmune disease that is 24/7 365 nonstop and dangerous. I was nine years old when I was diagnosed, still in the Peter Pan fantasy stage of my life, I tasted never-ending pain for the first time. This is something a nine year old girl cannot comprehend. To have a burden that doesn’t eventually fall off until I die…what parent wants to tell their children they will have to stabs themselves with needles everyday for the rest of their life? Not one. I could handle the physical pain, but the mental struggle of how invisible this disease was to the rest of my family and friends was tough. They can’t feel the concrete thick blood struggling through my thin veins, they can’t feel the foggy headaches as I sit in class, they don’t know what it’s like to wake up in sweats about to die from low blood sugar, they don’t know what it’s like to struggle with weight gain, as an insecure teenager, because insulin (the treatment) is a fat storing horomone. But, at the same time I didn’t want them to know, I didn’t want my legacy to be the “sick girl”. God sent me to war spiritually and physically for the rest of my life, and I had a choice…I could choose to be sorry for myself and hate God or I could turn my childhood heroes and Jesus choosing to fight another day.
From the ages 11-14 everything was a chaotic rollercoaster of random challenges and traumas God sent to my path. I experienced a man breaking into my home, when I was home alone hiding under my sister’s bed watching his feet move around the room with a flashlight. I was chased through my neighborhood by a man on a bike when I ran into my friends house and watched him park outside and sit and wait. I’ve been flung off of sleds as we ice-tubed and ripped my face open, I was forced to quite competitive volleyball because my knees broke down on me and it was quite or be cripple. I’ve almost drowned in waders twice and have successfully ruined two phones that way. I could go on and on about my middle school years, they were scary. I have never been put in more situations that require me to sit and give everything to God. He put me in so many uncontrollable places, that put my life at risk. In hindsight, He was strengthening my faith and preparing me for my titanic. I can handle matters of the mind and body, but my titanic was the matter of my heart.
I was broken, like earth shattering devastatingly broken, when I experienced abandonment for the first time from someone I loved. True unfiltered abandonment. I was sixteen and I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t process that mental pain could be felt physically, I couldn’t understand that I loved someone who didn’t care that they crushed me. Someone who was my best friend and had loved me so gently for months. This was my titanic and it was sinking. My heart was hurting and I couldn’t find relief, I couldn’t put a bandage on it or quite and God wouldn’t make it stop. I would sit there and weep and pray and maybe after the “amen” I’ll be okay again, I’ll get an apology text, I’ll be able to be myself before my heart was involved. No. Literally, That’s it God wanted me to suffer through all of it, feel all of it, cope with all of it. He wanted to put me back together, not another human, not ice-cream, pizza, and period pieces… only Him and I as a team.
God has had me grow up a little faster than everyone around me for my entire life it seems. Starting in third grade with diabetes I always had a responsibility or a burden someone else didn’t. Ending in tenth grade when I had to face depression and pessimism, while everyone around me hadn’t experienced a personal death yet. Would I be happier in ignorance? No. Do I wish I had more of a childhood? No. Growing up a little early has been a curse yes, but it has allowed me to guide my friends and give them advice, it has forced me to trust the Lord with literally every situation, understanding my life is a river not a ladder. I have been given the opportunity to mentor young ladies and see the world more compassionately than ever before.
A servant cannot not know how to serve unless they have been served. I have been guided, I have been loved, and I have been served by Savior over and over.
So yes, the growth of a child is weary and it can be ugly, but as I look back on my experiences within in ugly there is family game nights, beach house dance parties, jumping into fountains, BBQ festivals, snowman making, homemade Olympic sports competitions, British TV nights with queso etc. These things are also filled with Jesus. He has shown up in the worst and he has shown up in the greatest, and I couldn’t love him more for it, because it has taught me how to filter to world and lead me here, The World Race! Here I Come!
