Dear Me

This is a letter that is basically advice from who I hope to be in the future to the person I am now. Enjoy!

Sweet Girl, 

I want to first start by telling you I know you will get through this. When things are bleak and seem hopeless, God is always by your side. I know you think that is so cheesy. You can’t see God, He can’t physically touch you to comfort you like the many men that have been in your life. But He can touch your heart, your soul.

He is with you those nights you are crying from a shattered heart because another guy has let you down.

He hears you when you ask why He puts desires on your heart that he hasn’t filled.

He sees you desperately trying to do anything you can to find joy and pleasure only to be disappointed the next day.

Be patient. I know you hate hearing that. You’ve been patient for years. Everyone around you seems so happy with their lives, they have boyfriends, fiancé’s, husbands, and children. Everything you think you want right now.

But you aren’t ready.

Use this time to read your Bible, even when you don’t want to. Get on your knees and pray. It will feel awkward at first, but it is so freeing. I know you feel like you don’t want to be around people or go to church. You don’t feel like you belong there because of your tainted past.

Know this, you are forgiven.

Those people love you and care for you far more than you can ever know. And even when you don’t want to be around them, do it anyway. You will thank me later.

Be diligent and do these things and you will find God, your father, your friend, and bring you more joy than you can imagine.

You are beautiful, smart, funny, loving, talented and you are the daughter of the King.

Never, ever, EVER live as if you are anything less. 

Consequences

Sooner or later, there are consequences to our actions. I see my roommate living how she wants to, sleeping with two different guys, getting drunk almost every night, and she has no one to hold her accountable, and has not had to experience any repercussions to the way she is living.

Sometimes I envy that about her, but then I quickly become thankful that there are so many people in my life that I have to hold me accountable and to keep me responsible for my actions.

Lindsay came over the other night and I had to confess to her the parts of the contract I had violated. Most recently it was the drinking. As a youth leaders we sign a contract saying that we will not get drunk, which I clearly violated this past weekend and a number of other times this year.

Another rule we have is no co-ed sleepovers and no sex out of marriage, which I also have violated numerous times during the ministry.

To me, this makes me feel like a terrible person, but one thing I’ve been told multiple times this week is that I’m worth more than the way I’m living, and God wants so much more for me.

Lindsay and I spoke about what the next steps were in this process to help me heal and come back to the youth ministry.

The first step will to be to meet with Mark, which is very intimidating. However, I broke the contract, and I need to ask for his forgiveness and tell him how I plan to change.

Overall, the talk was great, it’s nice to know so many people care and want to help me and that they still want me to be apart of this ministry that I love so much.

As I said before, I’m trying so hard to focus on God and I have been constantly asking Him to fill me and for me to have a true desire to spend time in prayer and in the Word.

Consequences honestly just suck. There is no better way to put it. But I PROMISE, it’s much better to learn sooner rather than later, because trust me, the time will come when we will ultimately have to answer to someone.

That Night

In my previous post I wrote a bit about a night that recently turned my life around. For those who have grown up in the church, we’ve heard that our God is jealous. How true I’ve come to realize that is. I’ve seen how he has stripped me of friends, men I was involved with, even my position in the church, ultimately to bring me crawling back to Him.

Losing my position in the youth ministry is what has hurt the most during this process. I loved the girls I was mentoring and the feeling I got from serving them. I’ve seen that even good things can get in the way of our relationship with God. Just because something is “good” does not mean it can replace our relationship with God.

That Saturday night I went to a bar with my roommate and had far too much to drink.

I remember talking to a few people, getting a couple of free drinks and then everything gets fuzzy except for three distinct scenes.

The first was fighting with my roommate and her leaving me at the bar.

The second was throwing up on the bathroom floor.

The final scene I was on the phone with my friend,  Samantha, throwing up on the sidewalk, sitting next to some guy I met that night.

Then I was laying on my couch in my bathrobe Sunday morning.

A friend came and picked me up to help me find my car and I spent the majority of the day on the couch in and out of consciousness.

I received a text from the man in charge of me at the youth ministry later in the afternoon saying we needed to meet and that’s when I knew I had to confess. I called my Bible study leader, Jessie, and told her what had happened even though she had already heard from Samantha. She encouraged me to meet with Lindsay, the woman mentor at the youth ministry since I was too scared to meet with Mark, the man who ministers it. I called her, and told her what happened, even though she already knew. I told her I knew I could not lead my small group of middle school girls honestly and had broken the contract that I signed at the beginning of this year and my time there last year.

What happened the next few days will be saved for the next post, since this one is pretty long already. But I will leave you with this: One thing I know is I am worth more than this, and I’m looking forward to when God will be more than enough for me and I won’t need to indulge in worldly pleasures to occupy a void I know only He can fill.

Inspiration

I am a terribly broken person. Only a few people would know this because I, like many people, have hidden it so well. I would say just recently I hit rock bottom, but I don’t want to say that for the fear that it could always be worse. The story of my self-destruction will be for a later post. I would, however, like to share a passage from Hosea that I read after the whole ordeal happened. One of the mentors at my church that I ran to recommended I read it, and as I did, I saw my reflection in the words.

“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations; her yearly festivals, her New Moons. Her Sabbath days – all her appointed feasts. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot, declares the Lord.” Hosea 2:9-13

That has been me, the past week, month, and year. I have forgotten the Lord and sought satisfaction in everything except Him. I’m like a child who doesn’t listen when their mother tells them not to touch the hot burner on a stove. But I can’t help it, no matter how many times I get burned, I continue to reach out my hand.

The next verses in Hosea are more promising, more uplifting.  It’s the promise God has made to me, the promise I’m now taking comfort in. I think part of me is still resisting, still recovering.

My Bible study leader, Jessie, has told me numerous times she needs God to break her before she learns to rely solely on him. Until a few days ago, I didn’t realize I too needed to be terribly, terribly broken to start this journey back to the one who is forever pursuing me.