Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about random things that happened in my life. I think about how I was as a teenager. Or I might remember something from when I was 10. I guess watching my oldest daughter get older has got me thinking about about my own childhood and teenage years.
I have really changed quite a bit from when I was a kid. Socially, I did not really like people all the much. I was afraid of making mistakes in front of them or being rejected. I was VERY quiet. Although I was quiet, I did have a handful of friends. It could have been because I went to the same school from 1st grade to 7th grade, so we all kind of grew up together. So I wouldn’t exactly call myself anti-social back then. I did possess enough social skills to actually make and keep friends.
My favorite subject in school was English. Later on when I attended a public school, I enjoyed creative writing. I wish I still had some of my poems and stories from back then, but they have long been gone. I remember writing a poem about a snowflake and my teacher liked it so much she made me read it in front of the class. I wanted to die. I hated public speaking and I still do to this day. I think I’m much better at it now, but back then it was probably really painful to watch me do that.
When I was in 6th grade at my private school, I remember being in a play. I even made the props. It was the story of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at prop making and the scale of the pigs were much smaller than I was, so when I set it up, the entire class laughed hysterically at me. Maybe this is why I didn’t like public speaking. Things I did just never turned out. By the time I was in 12th grade, I had learned how to not be so fearful, at least on stage. I played Lady Montague in a parody of Romeo and Juliet. I actually liked acting, but I was fearful of messing up so I got really nervous whenever I had to be on stage. I remember also making a video in school. A group of girls and I had to make a pretend newscast of Gullivers Travels and I was the newscaster. When they went to play the tape of it in class, I wanted to barf. Thankfully, another student actually taped over it accidentally so my mug was not seen in the class that day. My entire group was mad that it was taped over, but I secretly was relieved. I hated watching myself on video and the thought of how kids might react to it…I didn’t even want to know.
Besides being fearful of, uh, everything…as a kid I loved to pretend. We had a wooded area behind our house and even when I was in 6th grade, I would run up there and pretend I was someone else. It was always some unreal scenario. I pretended I was a lost girl and someone found me. I would climb in the trees and pretend I was trying to survive being lost. Maybe I did this because I wanted to escape my own world, full of pain and uncertainty. My dad was dying. My mom was overbearing and strict. My brother tried to set our house on fire and he hated me and my other siblings. I just felt very much lost all the time. But then I’d go in the woods and I’d pretend I was someone else. My brother even built a fort up there one year. It was underground partially. Don’t ask me how he got it part underground, but it was a place I went to often and thought it was great. I had dreams of being grown up and everything was magical and wonderful, just like a Cinderella movie. It’s funny, because the adults in my life were never happy. I don’t know why I thought being an adult was the key to happiness.
When I was growing up, I loved animals. I wanted to be a vet until I started watching that show Rescue 911. Then I realized how sad it was that animals actually died and realized I could never do that job. We had cats growing up. We had a dog at different times. Animals in our house didn’t end well. They either died or ran away. We found a bunch of baby bunnies one year behind our house and we tried to nurse them to health. The mom was gone. Frankly, we should have just left them alone. I got one back to health. Then I lost the thing in my house. I never found it. Then one day, we were moving, and I rolled back my bed and there was the bunny smashed in the heating vent. I wanted to die. Maybe it was the fact that we were being evicted or that my dad was dying or that I was losing everything around me, but when I looked at that bunny, I knew whatever life I had was dead. A few days later my dad died. My cat ran away and when I did manage to find her, she ran away again. We had to move in with my brother and his kids hated us. That period in my life was like the period of all things dead.
Despite all the sadness, I remember some times that weren’t so sad. There were times of my sister and I biking around town or playing with our friends. There was softball and playgrounds and sneaking out of the house at midnight (oh we were kind of naughty). There were forts and playing video games in the basements of friends houses and walking 10 blocks to go get a candy bar at the nearest store. There was swimming and laughing and having crushes on silly boys who I would never even consider “dating material” now. As I got older, there were youth group services, youth concerts, and youth events that filled my time and made me feel like I was someone, if even for a short time.
Then there was another serious, sad thing – my brother committing suicide. Then my mom rushed me off to YWAM, which was her way of therapy and I needed something else to think about and so there I was, somehow going to be a witness to God yet feeling so much like a failure in every way. What a mess I was. Yet I was a glorious mess because God did not leave me that way. Maybe seeing the faces of orphans or the little tiny shacks called houses in Mexico or seeing the underground believers hide their faith and be in constant fear in Cuba changed me. Maybe it was exactly what I needed. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t really care. I was kind of along for the ride. But looking back, it shaped me. It made me appreciate all I do have. When I came back, I was an adult. Yes, I was 18, but I also seen things most 18 year olds never see. In my own life and in the streets of Mexico and Cuba. I didn’t connect the dots about until much later in my life, but when I look back on those days, I know God was in all of it.
I don’t have a pretty bow to tie this all together. I just have been thinking of so many things these last weeks and realizing God has always been there. He never forsakes us. And He pursues us. He wants us to come to Him. I find that true in my life.
Ezekiel 34:11-16 says this:
” ‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
I recently read this passage and never before realizing that God pursues me, my heart leaped. I always thought that if we turn away from God, we are separated from Him and He does not come looking for us. It kind of made me feel a bit like He didn’t care. But that isn’t true of His character at all so I don’t know why I thought that. I am Type A. If anything falls outside the box, I tend to freak. So when I read this, even for my Type A personality, I realized that I don’t have to work so hard! I mean, yes I still have to serve Him and seek to love Him and ask Him to help me endure, but its not on my own power or strength. It’s on His. This passage makes me leap for joy because I am free. God wants to find me. He wants to help me. He wants to do so many things to show His deep love for me.
Can you see instances in your life where God pursued you? I think if you look close enough, you will see it. Maybe He is even pursuing you right now as you read this. In any case, know that God loves you and calls you to Himself. There is no sin too big, no place where He cannot find you. This has comforted me in these last few weeks where I’ve felt sad and lonely. The same God that comforts me and comforted David, Hannah, Moses, Mary, and so many others is the God that will comfort you too.
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