Perfectly Broken

There's a new title! My purpose is not changing, just the title and, hopefully, you'll see a stronger outpouring of my passion here.

Last week, I served as a camp counselor for a high school camp. I was very excited for the week, but, let's be honest, I was mostly excited because I would get a week of being away from home and around people I love. Things had been getting rougher at home, with more panic attacks and urges to injure myself, so I desperately wanted to be anywhere but there.

Saturday, I headed home, since camp training started on Sunday. By the time I got home, I realized that I'd forgiven myself. Still, a part of me wondered if God had actually forgiven me. So, when camp began, I was feeling forgiven, but skeptical, and far from important or worth anything.

Then, I gave my testimony on Monday morning. It was the first time I'd spoken publicly about attempting suicide. It was hard. And honestly, I walked away from that experience feeling better for saying it, but also feeling as though it was stupid to have done it, that nobody would be impacted. I also lead a workshop that focused on being "perfectly broken," emphasizing that God uses our broken places to minister to others. Still, I was not sure that I was actually being used, that my broken places were useful.

As the week went on, more and more campers came to me with their stories of brokenness, of self-injuring, of starving themselves, of feeling ugly, of attempting suicide, of being raped, of horrors I can't even begin to imagine. I prayed with them, hugged them, cried with them, shared the source of my hope, gave them Bibles, encouraged them to find help in their home communities, and did my best to offer them hope. When I had no words, words came anyway. Fellow counselors began commenting that I seemed different, more hopeful and happier, than I had last year. Forgiveness finally made sense to me. I finally realized that I was forgiven. For real.

It breaks my heart to know that so many of our youth are going through things similar to what I've been through and then some. It breaks my heart to know that most of them feel as though they have nowhere to turn and that there is no hope. However, this week has also lead me to find a new depth of passion for high school and college students, in particular, and for anyone dealing with depression, anxiety, self injury, eating disorders, suicide, rape, etc. So please, if you have nowhere else to turn right now, email me or leave a comment below, because I love you and I want to show you why.

I'll leave you with the words one of my campers and I whispered back and forth from inside an intense hug once we discovered that we'd both attempted suicide in March: "I love you, and I am so glad you are here. You were meant to be here."

We Have this Hope

Yesterday, I decided to read in the book of Matthew, for a change of pace. Remember that hope I said I was looking for? I found it!

I read chapter one, which, honestly, I have often skipped in the past because it's the genealogy of Jesus and, well, if you know your Bible you know how Jesus came to be. Or do you? See, I had decided to study the scripture, to really dig in and ask questions, like I would of any other piece of literature. (Of course, the Bible is much more than a piece of literature, this is just a study technique.) It occurred to me that, while the people of the time would have been accustomed to hearing the men's names in the genealogy, and probably didn't even give a second thought to who they were beyond identifying where their own lineage factored in, the mention of five women would have been highly unusual. The people would have paused there to remember the story of that woman's life. Let's take a quick look at these women:

Tamar - pretended to be a prostitute so that her father-in-law would get her pregnant, since her husband was dead and her father-in-law refused to marry her to his next son, as was the custom.
Rahab - prostitute who helped Joshua defeat Jericho by sheltering his men during their recon mission.
Ruth - entered the threshing floor (scandalous at the time!) to seek marriage to Boaz
Wife of Uriah (Bathsheba) - King David committed adultery with her and subsequently had her husband killed. In my opinion, she is referred to by her husband's name because her presence in the genealogy is more to point out David's transgression than to shine a light on her.
Mary - found to be pregnant before marriage, thus bringing shame on herself, her family, and her betrothed (Joseph).

I found that I had an inordinate amount of hope after reading and researching this genealogy. You see, none of these women (or the men, for that matter) were perfect. Many of them had HUGE character flaws, enormous sin issues, and enough personal problems to last a lifetime. Yet God used them to bring about his plan. God blessed them. In many cases, God used their weaknesses, their flaws, their sins, for good. Their weaknesses became the reason they were able to be included in the genealogy of Jesus and, for some, the reason they were able to minister.

Now, I have this hope (well, I've had it for awhile, but now it's stronger) that God will use me out of all of this mess that is my life. It's a vague hope, in that I'm not 100% certain how he will use me yet, but, as my therapist says, "Vague hope is better than clear guilt." Amen!