Anger,
hatred, misery, depression and resentment were just a few of the many strong
emotions I was hiding under my mask of indifference and passiveness. I lived
every moment spontaneously; recklessly burning my way through life, not even
knowing how broken I was. Any money that I had I spent on drugs or alcohol,
desperately searching for relief; for an escape from the treacherous pain I had
bottled within me. I would do anything for that temporary escape from reality.
My parents’ divorce had caused tremendous amounts of pain and brokenness in my
life, and my relationship with my mom was nearly nonexistent. My friends had
become my family since things were so dysfunctional at home, and I lived off of
the shallow relationships that I had with them. I was buried deep within this
pit of darkness just two and a half years ago, until a magnificent Savior came
to my rescue and turned my life upside-down.
It
was late February in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and things had never been worse. I
cringed at the thought of returning home, so I spent almost every night of the
week at different friends’ houses. I couldn’t stand to be at school while I was
sober, so I skipped at least one class every day, which of course had me nearly
failing the eleventh grade. One evening, my mother was insisting that I come
home and that I was grounded. I wouldn’t tell her where I was and I refused to
come home. I called my dad to inform him of my side of the story so that he
wouldn’t hear my mom’s side of the story first. He could sense that something
was terribly wrong, so he demanded to know where I was so that he could come
get me and bring me to his house in Bentonville, Arkansas to stay with him, my
step-mother and two siblings for the night. He explained that I didn’t even
have to go to school the next day, but that we needed to sort things out. So on
the long drive from Fayetteville to Bentonville, I told my dad a censored and extremely
mild version of what had been going on in my life. My dad went to Fayetteville
High that week and talked to my counselor and the school resource officers. He
then found out about the kind of trouble I had been getting into, and the kind
of crowd I was hanging around with. Knowing that if I had one more absence I
would fail my junior year, he pulled me out of Fayetteville and enrolled me at
Bentonville High School.
I
was living; literally walking through, my worst and most horrific nightmare on
the first day I spent at BHS. Not only were all my best friends that I’d had
since elementary school thirty minutes away, but I barely knew two people in
the entire school of 3,600 students. I felt betrayed, mistreated and like an
alien from a planet that was light years away. My despair was overwhelming, yet
still; I tucked it away, hiding my true feelings from everyone else. For the
first two weeks at my dad’s house, everything was normal. But one night, my dad
read the text messages on my phone and found out just how far down a dark path
I had already gone, and how deeply lost I was. From that point on, I had no
phone, no Facebook, no MySpace (ha), no email, no contact whatsoever with the
friends from my past.
Before
I became that person that is so unrecognizable to me now, I had a faint
relationship with God up until my ninth grade year, when things started to fall
apart. But God never left me. God never forgot about me. God had never once
stopped trying to win my heart over. I had ignored Him for such a long time, so
God finally picked me up by the neck and shook me until I listened. He stripped
me of every single thing that had meaning to me, begging me to choose Him. My
father had heard of a program called Celebrate Recovery at our church, and he
knew that there was a program for hurting teens called the Landing. He took me
there on the Friday after he had taken away nearly every freedom I had.
The
Landing has been the outlet that God used to transform me. I remember my first
night there so clearly; during worship I was trying to sing the words, but as I
sang, God tugged at my heart harder and harder. Finally, I didn’t have the
strength to hold in my cries anymore. I let out all the pain and hurt that I
had bottled up, and God took it all, freeing me, relieving me of the weight
that had crushed down on my shoulders for so many years. In that moment, God
revived me, for I had been the living dead for so long. That night was my
breaking point, the time at which I finally turned to God for comfort and healing
rather than drugs or alcohol. I ran to God, and He was waiting there for me,
His arms wide open and His loving heart ready to pour into my cold and empty
heart. I walked out of the Landing that night with a smile across my face. I
felt joy; true, real and marvelous joy, for the first time in my life.
Fast-forward
two and a half years and you see a completely transformed human being. You
would not recognize me now if you saw who I was just a few years ago. Back
then, I lived as though relationship with Jesus was some fairytale to hope for
but never attained. How wrong I was. Jesus is REAL. He is ALIVE and with me
every second, always pursuing and chasing after me. He freely offers me His
true and abundant life of fulfillment and joy. Because of the Holy Spirit
living inside me, I have constant and eternal access to the God of the
universe. Jesus freely offers me intimacy with Him. He requires me to do
nothing but seek Him; to know, believe and walk in His truth; to walk with Him.
He chose to reveal this to me! And He didn’t choose to reveal this to me
because I’m a “good person,” He chose to save me and show this to me when I was
in the depth of my sin.
...ME!
Two years ago, He chose to reveal these beautiful things to ME! The selfish
druggie/alcoholic that did nothing but wreak havoc any place she went. God does
not pick His favorites. And he most definitely does not choose (in the world’s
eyes) the strongest, smartest, most popular or most beautiful. He chooses (in
the world’s eyes) the weakest, the below average, the smallest, most pitiful
and most lost. I am the prime example of this. Why? Because in my weakness, He
is MADE STRONG! His greatness, His beauty and His love is glorified in my life
because I was so lost in darkness, and now His light beams and pours out from
my life!
God
has renewed my life and changed my heart in every way. He has healed me (and is
continually healing me) from so many wounds and He teaches me something new
every day. I passed my junior year and graduated from Bentonville High School
with good grades, and I am now a sophomore in college. God has blessed me with
so many new and wonderful friends and I now have remarkable relationships with
my family members. The road has not been easy, and sometimes I still feel like
my world is crumbling. But because of what Jesus has done for me, I experience
His abundant life every day! And God is always there; ready to catch and
embrace me with loving arms when I’m hurting. I simply cannot express in words
how very grateful I am for the miraculous work that God has done in me and in
my life. ‘Grateful’ seems like such a puny word in the scope of His glory. He
has redeemed me from the horrible life that I lived! But I am no more deserving
of His love now than I was two years ago. Despite my utter weakness, and
despite the mistakes I make every day, He still pours over me His grace, His
love, His mercy, His joy and peace. Even in the darkest of times, I never lose
hope because of my Savior. I have no fear of death and no guilt in life because
His grace covers me no matter what. These are Biblical truths that He has
revealed to me over the past few years, and walking in them has given me the
greatest freedom I have ever known. Because He died on the Cross to pay the
debt that I could never pay, I am free forever, and I get to experience Him in
all His fullness every day!
Oh
how marvelous He is! The only proper and appropriate response to the marvelous
majesty and magnificence of God is to offer my life back up to Him, so that He
may be glorified through it! When I look at myself and my life, I can so
clearly see the glorious fingerprints of God. I can cheerfully say that my life
is forever changed, and it will never be the same!
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