A Little Bit Brave

Sanctuary it must be me. the verses are there, this room is called “sanctuary” for a reason, with glass as stained as me depicting a savior as anxious as me. whom shall i fear? of whom shall i be afraid? i don’t know and it’s not important. i’m still shaking trying to be still and no matter what i don’t know who He is. God, you say that darkness is as light to you but i can’t see my hands in front of my face. i’m swimming in shadows, used the last of my oxygen cursing myself.  and i’m afraid of what i’ll see if i turn on the lights this sin demands payment in blood so i pour myself out. i am the one who deserves these lines carved over and over yet you are well acquainted with pain and panic you have seen the earth you created stained with your fear you are scarred with the reminder of all the weight you chose to carry because somehow, you love me you named the worthless worth dying for. now i look in the mirror, at rib...

Remember who God is, who He has shown Himself to be to you. How has God shown Himself to you? My friends sat on either of the table, their attention trained on me. I wished we were in a dorm room lit by fairy lights, sitting on the floor with finals to worry about. Cafeterias don’t have the same level of comfort or aesthetic. I wished we could go back in time, to when I lived across the hall or in the same dorm as these friends. But here? I could barely remember that time. My memory was narrowed to the last three weeks. And the last three weeks were not good. In the last three weeks, I couldn’t see very many reasons to keep going. As those three weeks stretched into five months, there were moments I couldn’t see any reasons to keep going. I knew a lot of Bible verses. One stuck out, glaring and obnoxious: Jeremiah 29:11. Now, I’m not one to drag the Bible, seeing as how I believe in it. I know that God knows the plans He has for me, plans for a hope and a future. All that goo...

Sometimes, I read my old blog posts, and I’m like “dang, she’s wise.” When I was in high school, I was really good at church. In small groups, I was the one who read books and Bible passages. I gave input and advice that impressed youth leaders. I had a scripture for every problem my friends had. And it was genuine. I shared from my heart. I didn’t have a secret double life. Tonight, as a sophomore in college, I went to a church small group. I looked at the passage we went over in group, and fear rose in my throat. For awhile, I focused on what we were talking about. But as time went on, my anxiety grew. I squeezed the hell out of my stress eggs, curled in on myself. The other girl, one of the group leaders, asked what I got out of the text. My mouth went dry. I didn’t want to share. I didn’t want anyone looking at me. I wanted to leave. After managing to spit out a sentence, I went back to the swirling thoughts in my head. It didn’t help that we were talking about anxiety a...

Listen. How deep the Father's love for us How vast beyond all measure That He should give His only Son To make a wretch His treasure Four-hundred years of silence. The Jewish people went through wars and conquests and bondage. They struggled to understand the purpose of the Law. They struggled to see God in the waiting. And here, there’s you. You see hard years and strife-filled families. You live wondering when things are going to get better. You fight the same battles, the same shame, sin, and scars. You struggle to see God in the waiting. They held to a promise. Pages of prophecy paving the path of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Savior. And with angel’s word and sheep’s bleating, He came.  The fullest expression of God, born under a tyrant king and legalistic religious rule. How great the pain of searing loss The Father turns His face away As wounds which mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory ...

Going to university terrified me. I had done well in community college classes. I had chosen a school 20 minutes from home. I had amazing friends at my home church. And I was scared. High school was tough for me, especially in terms of friendships. I was worried I would carry those problems into college. I've had crippling anxiety because of school before. I was worried that perfectionism would steal my joy. Every morning, I wake up a little earlier than I have to, and I spend time with God. How little I appreciated this habit before college. I read my Bible consistently long before I moved into my dorm. I listened to worship music. It was really good. But while I was at Gateway Student Conference in July, I heard God say to me, "this will be one of the hardest seasons of your life, but it won't be the same as other hard times. This time, you know I'm with you." I know this couldn't be a time I neglected my relationship with God. So many things--f...

I read a lot about being a freshman in college before I went to college. I have several Pinterest boards dedicated the topic and, while I felt prepared for tough classes and gross caf food, I did not feel prepared to make friends. Last month, I moved into Dallas Baptist University. I'm only 20 minutes away from home. I go to the same church I've been going to since I was 9. In a lot of ways, it doesn't feel like a huge change. However, if you've gone to university or if you ever talked to someone who attended college, you know that maybe the biggest change happening is internal. Meeting new people terrifies me. And college is filled with new people. New people who don't know me, don't know people who know me, haven't heard things about me, only know me from stalking my Instagram. A reason why meeting new people is so frightening to me is trust. For the first several weeks of university, I was paralyzingly anxious because I didn't believe I co...

A few weeks ago, I climbed up a mountain. Okay, so it wasn't a technical "mountain," and it wasn't exactly "climbing," but it felt close enough. We hiked up a hill. It was the last day of our mission trip to Ireland. For the previous five days, we had spent our time and energy playing with and loving kids who desperately needed it. I got weird looks from people when I told them I was going to Ireland for a mission trip--isn't Ireland already a mostly Christian country? According to statistics and the teaching in the schools, yes. Ireland is mostly Catholic/Christian. But going there, I saw people, especially the children I spent time with, dry and in need of Jesus' real grace and truth. On Saturday night, after the "Big Day Out" put on by the church we partnered with, our trip leader Matthew told us he, and anyone else who wanted to come, was going to get up and walk up this hill we had seen on the beach. To hike up the m...

Dear friend, watch this You weren't invited. You weren't noticed. You weren't chosen. It's past midnight and you're scrolling through Instagram, seeing the fun photos and exciting captions. And you weren't there.  Why?  You wonder. After all your effort and time spent, they overlooked you. And the lies seep in. You're not funny enough. Not pretty enough. Not fashionable or thin or curvy or good enough. The friends you thought were your best stop responding, stop speaking. But friend, this is not who you are. I've met Rejection a few times, and he's not a nice guy. He weasels his way in and replaces your expectations with disappointment and pain. He steals joy and brings down weeks. When this bully walks into your life, there are a few things you must remember: 1. You are accepted. Darling, there is a love, a friend, who will always accept you. Yes, you've heard it before. He may not seem like enough now, but when you...

I don't like busy. There are big things--elections and terrorism and school shootings. But there are also things that seem small--biology tests, writing speeches, keeping the kitchen clean. The noise that was once in the background grows, quietly growing until it's all I can hear. This is the busiest I've been in my life. It's my senior year of high school, and there's so much to do. I have dual credit classes, speeches, more speeches, work, writing, more writing. Which is why I haven't written a blog post in almost two months. I don't know how to be busy. I need time to slow down, take a breath. If I don't have time, I get anxious and I'm still learning how to handle anxiety. I barely know how to talk about it. There's another reason I haven't written here in so long. I haven't been sure about what I wanted to write. I've had writer's block with a lot of things lately. People think I'm good with words bec...

We've all heard it said that "home is where the heart is." In my loneliest moments, crying on my bathroom floor, the cry of my heart has been I want to go home.  It didn't matter where I was. It didn't have much to do with who was with me. I wanted to feel home. There's more to home than where our heart is. Our heart can be anywhere. I know my heart has been with the wrong people before. It's been focused on the wrong things before. My heart has been wrong before. My heart is wrong a lot. Our hearts are fickle. They change so often, especially as teenagers. We think we know what we're doing, we think we know what we want. But things change and suddenly what we thought we knew is gone; what we wanted is broken. In the last year I feel like I've watched person after person get exactly what I wanted. It's broken my heart again and again. If our home is where our heart is, our home is on fragile ground. When I started writing this, I wa...

I don't usually write responses to these sorts of things, even the biggest ones. Not because I don't care, but because I don't ever know what to say. But this time it hit 20 minutes from my house. Twelve police officers, twelve people shot, five killed. In Dallas. How many times can we stick #BlackLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter on our tweets before we actually realize that's true? The value of life can't be summed up in a million hashtags. Prejudice exists, and it's good that we've brought attention to that. But now all we're doing is bringing attention to it instead of fixing the problem. The problem didn't start with gunshots and protests. It didn't start with national outrage or Twitter trends. It started with hearts. It started with people. It started with people who didn't know the value in others. Maybe because they didn't know the value in themselves. The more we shout "#LIVESMATTER," the le...

If you buy this product, you will be beautiful. If you wear this outfit, you will be sexy. If you listen to this music, you will be popular. If you act like nothing bothers you, you will be accepted. If you do what he wants, you will be loved You will be enough. *~*~* In the last few weeks, I've learned how hard youth ministry really is. And I haven't seen the half of it. It shouldn't have surprised me. I've seen today's TV shows, heard the music, read books, watched commercials, listened to my friends. I've seen, heard, experienced the lies. We're constantly being told to want more, be more, do more. The bombardment of demands and standards and expectations is insane. A few days ago, the internet at my house went out. Yes, the great American tragedy. No Instagram, no Netflix, no Youtube. We don't have cable anymore either. Terrible right? (No. It's not. I highly recommend taking a few days off from the Internet. You...

We laughed until our sides hurt and tears came to our eyes. At this point, we weren't even laughing about the original joke. After ten minutes, it was a miracle we even had breath left. And yet we kept going. And that was just ten minutes out of a six day trip. I almost didn't go to that tournament. My heart was burning from a deep rejection. I was going through the motions, wishing for winter's months to come to an end. Spring felt decades away. I wished I were graduating this year instead of next. I wished I could start over with an entirely new group of people. I wished for the hurt to go away. But things hardly ever go as I wish them to. My fragile glass heart was broken, and the shards cut my soul. I held onto hope, but that hope was just a thread that I clutched as I walked in the dark, looking for a way out. When I deal with things, I deal with things on my own. Much of the time, this is stupid. Closing yourself off to Youtube videos and books isn't actuall...

|| "So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!'" -John 12:13 || When I prayed, I just wanted the problem to go away. I wanted God to fix the situation. I wanted things to go back to how they were. I prayed for months, but things just got gradually worse until things couldn't get any worse. Never had I wanted something so bad. Never had a loss wrecked me so bad. Sometimes I couldn't sleep over it. Any time I thought I would finally be okay, it would come around and hit me again. Why didn't God just take it away? When Israel prayed for a messiah, they wanted a king. They wanted a leader who would take away their sicknesses and oppression.  For hundreds of years, Israel begged God for a savior. When He came, they welcomed Him to Jerusalem with praise. The called Him king. Rightfully so. They believed He would take away their stru...

There are moments when I realize I've slipped away. I've stopped reading my bible every day. I've stopped praying intentionally. I haven't been to church in a week or two or three. I keep telling myself I'll get around to praying, around to reading. But another distraction, another obligation moves to the front of the line. I'll read a chapter in the Bible, then forget what I read an hour later. I'll forget to pray until right as I'm going to bed, and then I fall asleep. Small things, biting away at my relationship with God. I want to wait until I have time to really catch up on my reading, or really pray for everything I need to. Then I spend way too much time on Twitter, or watching TV, or listening to Tori Kelly. I end up frustrated with myself. I crave connection with God, but block it at the same time.  A week will go by, and then another. And I get more and more frustrated with myself. The more time that goes by, the more ti...