Picture this. A five year old girl, crying in her bed because her parents are making her clean the bedroom she shares with her sister all by herself. She can hear her parents and sister through the screen on her bedroom window as they laugh and plant flowers in the front yard. It's a Sunday afternoon, just a few weeks after Easter and this little girl has, for the second year in a row, heard the story of how Jesus died on the cross. The year before, it was a novel story. But this year, it was different. A quietly whispered prayer of desperation as she sits on her bed, "Jesus, save me. I want to be like you." She didn't tell anyone, but she hoped that her life would be different.
The same little girl, several years older. She hasn't yet been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, but the recommendation process has started. The expectations of her teacher are so low that she has decided it isn't worth trying to teach this young girl anything. Her parents are asking for straight A's while her teachers are content to just pass her along. The other kids see her as stupid and mock her on the playground daily. They think it's funny to make her cry. She often prays for her parents to get divorced because they fight so much. She wants to live with her great grandma or her dad's parents. Those are the only places she feels completely safe.
Watch her as she grows. She is now in the fifth grade and just received her first kiss. The excitement that someone might think she was pretty enough to kiss hasn't worn off yet. She is excited to have a real "boyfriend" instead of just reading about them in the books that she gets from the library. But something is wrong with this picture now. Her entire self worth has become tied to how the boys see her. Because if she can't be smart, maybe she can at least be pretty.
This precious little girl has made it to high school with her grades and innocence mostly in tact. While she has figured out that she is smart, she has to fight for every opportunity. But her worth is still wrapped up in the boys passing through her life. One boy hurt her in so many ways, including leading to the loss of two of her three pregnancies. She has lost all but one of her three friends from junior high. The few friends she made in this school were always somehow linked to her abuser. Even her mom encouraged the relationship, because she never said anything to anyone about how he hurt her. Self destruction has become a constant companion. She still went to church, praying that not even God could see her sins. Death was a frequent prayer, but something that God would not allow, no matter how hard or in what manner she tried.
We can keep watching as this little girl has graduated from high school and moved on to college. It's her first semester and everything is new and exciting. Including the older guy she just met. He is five years older and wants nothing to do with Christianity. But he likes the way she looks. She thinks the world revolves around this guy. But he hurts her too. He hurts her in ways that could change the entire course of her life. His mistakes steal the tiny life that was growing inside of her. They nearly destroy her academic career. It takes everything that she has to push him away. While she cannot see it at the time, it is only by God's grace that she was not implicated in the crimes of others and that she manages to live through it all.
This mentally, physically, and emotionally damaged young woman still claims to be a Christian, but no longer knows who she is in Christ. She is set up by friends during that same disastrous semester with a young man who has been praying to just see the girl that God has created for him. The two go on a blind date as part of a larger group of people, though neither wants to be there. She writes it off as a wasted evening. He knows that he just had dinner with his future wife. She can't stand him, but he gently pursues her. One night, she realizes that with his gentle demeanor, she has fallen in love with him. But this love is different. This is a love that will endure through many struggles.
It has finally happened. She has began to process what has happened to her in her first twenty years of life. But not in healthy ways. She has started smoking regularly, has developed a relationship with alcohol that is more than just normal teenage drinking, and has begun to cut herself in places that no one will see. She knows how to hide things; she has been doing it her entire life. Yet, somehow a few friends discover the risky behavior, drinking, and drugs. They try to disrupt her path, but they cannot grasp the extent of her pain or the desire for the ultimate destruction. This path of demise leads her to Wicca, where she begins to study it with as much fervor as possible. Yet, she is still a student at a Christian college. Not many people take notice. Only her closest friend and the quiet boy who loves her know. She begins to experiment with homosexuality. After all, if there is no Christian God, then there is no sin. As she walks this journey nearly alone, she continues to try to take her own life.
The gentle man stands beside her, knowing the path that she walks is not of God. He continues to pray for her daily, loving her in ways she does not know or understand. This man wrestles with her sins, knowing that they cannot continue, but also knowing that he may be one of the last who can reach her. She walks an odd path of deceit; practicing Wicca while serving in church. He brings her to church one Sunday and insists upon introducing her to the leaders of a recovery program, praying that she will accept the opportunity. She gives in and goes, hoping that once will be enough to satisfy everyone and allow them to see that she isn't as broken as they think.
One meeting put a small chink in the armor of destruction that the dark girl wore. Another meeting led to a small crack. Meeting after meeting led to the desecration of the walls where she lived. She found a sponsor. But the extent of the cave she had curled up in to die was too dark for the first one. So she found another. Sadly, there was more darkness now than there was for the first and that was too much for anyone. So quietly, she rebuilt the walls and fortified them. While she was no longer drinking, other destructive habits were crawling out of the woodwork. The desire to cut resurfaced.
The broken young woman insisted that everything was fine because she was going to church and had renounced Wicca. She was still cutting and smoking. Except the knife she wielded with precision no longer satisfied her soul. Despite her best efforts, these behaviors were only becoming more visible. She was still going to a recovery group, but recovery had stalled.
Then came a fiery leader, one who was not afraid at first. She was willing to call out the truth of the situation. But they did not last long together, because the vast expanse of the darkness had continued to grow. Yet, the recovery group thought that they saw progress and made her a leader for a younger women's group. She was leading but ill-equipped and even less prepared. This didn't last long.
One more sponsor came after that. She was just as fierce as the last, but infinitely more strong willed. This was the first time that the young woman was moving forward in what appeared to be a long time. She was progressing well with this new mentor. Things were going smoothly and for the first time, someone didn't run at the sight of all of the darkness. Instead, a match was lit within that walled off and fortified dark cave. Sadly, those who did not understand starting with such a tiny spark intervened and took away the leader that this young woman needed in her life. This young woman abandoned the group that took the first person who could reach her away. candle
She began going to a new group at a different church. The atmosphere was entirely different. She was able to let her guard down because she was surrounded by healthy people who only sought to grow stronger in their faith. It rubbed off on her, and soon she was reading the books and writing about her experiences in ways that she had never done before. She began to shed the victim mentality for the first time and in its place, the mentality of a survivor. Suddenly, the destructive patterns were fading. She was growing in God's calling this time.
Throughout all of this, the young man who loved her stood by her side encouraging the positive growth. He married her while she was still mourning the removal of her sponsor. The loving husband encouraged her to go to the new group and did his best to make sure that she never missed a week. He prayed and watched her grow deeper and closer to God. The old threatening letters and Wiccan trinkets of her past were destroyed. Finally, he knew they were moving in the same direction. He was willing to be patient with her as she grew, with only one ultimatum - that she never ask him to stop growing in the ways that God was calling him. Somehow, he knew that God was leading them in the same direction, but that it would take her time to catch up.
The happily married young woman still struggled and fell a few times before her sobriety became something that she owned. She is growing in ways that she never imagined God would lead her. She is in the process of becoming ordained and now teaches in a unique school. While she continues to heal from her past, it isn't the defining point in her life anymore. She knows who her Heavenly Father is and does her best to stay in the center of His will for her life.
Her biggest struggle now is not her sobriety, or smoking, or cutting, but her health. For over seven months now, she has struggled with the supposedly simple act of breathing. It took five months and three specialists just to get a diagnosis. This is not how she imagined ending her twenties and spending the year that she turned thirty. In many ways, her treatment feels more brutal than the illness itself. Because of the treatment, she gets sick incredibly easily. Whether it is a sinus infection or a kidney infection, the doctors are limited on the medications and techniques they can use to treat her because of the infection in her lungs.
Thankfully, she will celebrate her third year of sobriety on November 7th, 2016.
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