The Story of Four Girls

Dear readers, this post is quite a bit longer because it contains a four different stories. All of these girls are fictional characters with invented struggles that I think are relatable to everyone. I hope it encourages you and brings you hope in your trials.



Cameron:

One foot in front of the other. Take it five minutes at a time. Just keep pushing on, persevere, there is a prize worth fighting for. Cameron repeated the words over and over in her head. A prize worth fighting for. She was told she could make it through this “rough spot”. Only, no one seemed to understand that the rough spot had lasted seven years. In Lamentations, Jeremiah wrote about forgetting what happiness was like. Cameron could relate. Just like Joseph in the prison, she waited in darkness for some glimpse of hope. She had heard all the analogies: she was a sword being beat to perfection, a boat in a storm with an anchor that would never fail, a runner in a race, a climber on a mountain, a diamond being formed, a soldier in a battle. All of the analogies were there to give her hope. For Cameron though, they sounded nice but still left her empty and desperate. She blamed it on her impatience, part of her personality that made her hate delayed gratification. Though she had worked on patience her whole life, it seemed she was stuck with her personality. That personality told her that seven years was too long to wait for a real laugh. Too long to fake a smile.
Emotions kept attacking her and she was ready to be done with this war. The most recent blow had struck this evening and it had brought Cameron to her knees. Thoughts swirled too quickly to interpret, but one stood out: “Enough”. She had had enough. Joseph made it out of prison, Jeremiah still wrote about hope, Paul waited it out during his arrest, but Cameron was not a Bible character or a figure in an analogy. Her armor was bent and torn, cracks evidenced all the battles she had lost despite fighting her hardest. She genuinely believed there was a prize worth fighting for. She dreamed of dying and standing before shining gates to a kingdom she could only imagine the splendor of.
Cameron believed she knew the King of heaven and His Son that had died for her. Through the last seven years of battle she had taken Biblical counseling, immersed herself in Scripture, and prayed until she ran out of words. Even though she had fought with doubt regarding her salvation, R.C. Sproul’s “Chosen By God” had convinced her of her walk with the Spirit, slow as it may be.
Now, all she wanted was to go home.
A home where she knew she was loved. Home to a place where every tear was wiped away. To die is to gain an eternity of joy. Cameron wanted it now. This “phase” of suffering had lasted too long, she had fought too hard, peace on earth was too far. Walking to the nearest bridge was easy, she had dreamed of this moment so many times that her feet moved instinctively. One foot in front of the other. Cameron hurt too much to see the hope through any means besides an impatient jump.
That night, a soldier was lost in the fray.

Catelyn:

Failure. That’s what the piece of paper she held in her hand meant. She had failed. To anyone else it would have been disappointing, to Catelyn it was devastating. Her standards were high and anything short of perfection was failure. She blamed that on her family. The mindset her parents had drilled into her still shaped her goals today even though she was almost done with her first year of college. Of course, she had never been told she had to be perfect, but it was generally understood. Her older brother had handled that expectation, he had always been exactly what their parents wanted and earned a full ride scholarship to Harvard.
For Catelyn, perfection didn’t come as naturally. Queen Elsa from Frozen became her hero and lines like, “Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, be the good girl you always have to be, conceal don’t feel, don’t let them know” became her philosophy from a young age. Her parents always stated that they were raising adults, not children, and everyone was expected to act like it. She thought back to 6th grade when she brought home a report card with a B+ and was terrified to show her parents, at least it was a B+ not a B- which she had hoped would help. They hid their disappointment well, but Catelyn was sure it was there. The next year she had started changing her grades before bringing them home. An 86% was scratched out to become a 96%. C’s turned into B’s before her parents could see them and a vertical line was added to any minus symbol. As hard as she tried, as much as she lied, it was never enough.
In her mind, she was never enough.
She had scraped her way through high school as best she could, never losing the façade she thought her parents wanted to see. Now in college, Catelyn was an excellent student and well pleased with her grades which placed her in the top of every class. Because she demanded perfection of herself, everyone around her gradually came to expect it from her. They had never seen anything less from Catelyn. By any standard, she was far above average. Now, though, all of that disappeared. This failure couldn’t be hidden. A failed test was too far from perfect for Catelyn. A failed test. She failed. Failure. Her thoughts moved logically from one conclusion to the next. She couldn’t hide this from her parents. Her brother had never failed a test. What would her peers think now that she had fallen so far below their expectations of her? She would have to redo the class which meant asking for more money from her parents since she hadn’t gotten a scholarship. How could she ever face them? She was so disappointed in herself, how could she ever be so stupid? Pondering her options, Elsa’s words again came to her mind, “A kingdom of isolation….no escape from the storm inside…conceal, don’t feel…” She was so sick of being what everyone else wanted, tired of living the isolated life of a perfect princess.
Catelyn wanted to let it go. Wanted to never fail again. Everything in her life pointed to one option, it made sense, it was justified. Failures don’t deserve a second chance and there was no other way. The fairy tale world everyone thought she had crumbled before her eyes.
Only one task was left for Catelyn, and this time she didn’t fail.

Cassidy

Her whole world was being shaken and she just wanted something to hold onto. Wave after wave of change, hardship, and tragedy struck her in endless blows that left her gasping for air. Cassidy only wanted an anchor in the storm, a rock that wouldn’t move. As she suffered, she was dimly reminded of the God she had been told of as a child who was sometimes described as a firm foundation. The people at church seemed to find stability in Him, maybe she could too. But no. That God wouldn’t have her, not like this. She couldn’t stop crying much less kneel and put together eloquent sounding words that would bend His ear. Besides that, she hadn’t been to church that week, life had gotten busy and she simply couldn’t make it.
No, she didn’t want that God.
She blamed her church for that. Of course, no one ever knew that. In church, she was the quiet girl in the back. Tired of hearing about God, tired of feeling like she knew everyone but no one knew her. If she had ever been asked her testimony the answer would have come easily, just like she had rehearsed, “Oh you know, I was raised in a Christian family and prayed the prayer at a young age, I’ve been part of a reformed church ever since”. But she was never asked. To Cassidy, that seemed normal. She didn’t think someone in a church should ever ask such a personal question, people only told their testimonies at baptisms. She was fine with not being asked just like she was fine with never having to pray out loud. Prayer didn’t come easily for her; Cassidy hated sitting perfectly still, hands folded, eyes closed, head bowed, speaking eloquent words laced with Scriptures ending in a solemn “amen”. The only prayers she really said were muttered through sobs as she lay on a mascara stained pillowcase in her room at night.
She wished God was more like the God people sang about, the Father who would stand up from His throne and open His arms as He called out her name. This God would have more love for her than there were drops in the ocean. For Cassidy, music had made her feel closer to God than any sermon or family devotion ever had. Those wishes for a God of love were drilled out of her head by a father who implied that God hated Democrats and a pastor who taught of a God that predestined some people to burn in Hell. Cassidy rejected the God she was taught about. Convinced that He would reject her, she would not run to God. Everything else had been stripped away when her world was rocked by explosions that pierced her heart. When the tears had been shed and the dust settled, Cassidy found nothing to hold on to. Her hands were empty except for the pills gathered in a pile on her palm. There was nothing left to hold on to, so she decided to let go.
The tragedy that struck her in endless blows finally ended in a last gasp for air.

Cara

180 days left. Half of a year. Cara couldn’t do it, something needed to change. She was counting down the days until she could go to college and start a new life, but it was too far and she didn’t think she could make it. She had tried her whole life to be perfect, to be who everyone else wanted to see, but she failed. Cracks had formed in the façade, her mask was slipping and that terrified her. Anything less than perfect was devastating. She blamed her family for that. Though she had been told over and over by close friends that perfection didn’t have to be her standard and even though she sometimes believed them, it was still hard to live out.
She wanted so desperately to be perfect.
She was reminded every day of how far short of that she fell. Dimly, Cara was reminded of what she truly knew and believed: that God loved those that fell short.
Her Savior loved her and defined her as priceless.
It wasn’t always easy for Cara to see that though, she blamed her rough start with God on her church. It had been so easy to pretend that she knew God for so long, she had never been asked her testimony and the picture of God she heard wasn’t always appealing to her. Prayer seemed stressful and formal, Cara couldn’t string words and Scriptures together as eloquently as everyone else. For such a long time, she simply existed on the outskirts of church, feeling pushed away and choosing to push God away. Music had changed that. When Cara learned that God’s love for her was more than the drops in the ocean and that He would stand up from His throne and open His arms as He called out her name she knew she wanted to believe in that God. She finally began to read her Bible devotedly and learned that even broken prayers, the ones she muttered through sobs while laying on a mascara stained pillowcase, were acceptable to God. Now, she believed.
Though she remained in the same church, Cara had started looking for other girls that felt as she used to and trying to help them. Her life finally had hope, she felt accepted. But even that couldn’t stop the rough moments. Those were the moments when Cara simply wanted to go home. Home to a place where every tear was wiped away. She had fought faithfully for Christ, and now was ready to quit the battle. Joseph made it out of prison, Jeremiah still wrote about hope, Paul waited it out during his arrest, but Cara didn’t want to be them, she was tired of waiting. She blamed it on her personality. Impatience was a character trait she hadn’t ever conquered, that part of her that demanded instant gratification.
Maybe she was a sword being hammered to perfection, but she was tired of that pressure. Perhaps she was a diamond being formed but Cara no longer wanted to take the heat. She was a soldier fighting in a war, but felt that it was someone else’s turn, she had won enough battles. Surely she had earned the prize by now, she wanted so desperately to see the kingdom full of splendor, light, and joy.
Cara could simply be a soldier lost in the fray. She could set only one more task before her and this time not fail. Cara could choose to let go and cease gasping for air through the pain she felt. To die is gain. Gain. To die is to gain. Paul’s words repeated themselves in her head. To die is gain. But. But to live is Christ. To live is Christ.
Thoughts swirled faster but one stood out, "Enough".
Living for Christ was enough.
She was enough to Him.
That was enough.
180 days left. Life could change completely after that, but God never would. In that half a year, she could change. Oh to learn to serve like Christ served, to teach like He taught, to love like He loved. Cara knew she would never be able to do it, but she would give everything to glorify the God that loved her in spite of her pain, scars, tears, broken prayers, and sin. So one step at a time, one day at a time, she would grow into a better little-Christ. To live is Christ. To live is to serve, love, give, glorify. There was nothing left in her life worth holding on to. So she let go and gave it all to God.
She chose life.

You know one of these four girls. Maybe even all four. They all just want someone to give them hope, show them love, and accept them. On their behalf I beg you to do that. Perhaps you are one of these girls, maybe their story resonated with you. If you’re Cameron, remember that we can find joy in running the race faithfully until God calls us home to a perfect place. Catelyn, you are not a failure, you are priceless in the eyes of God and He will accept you as you are. And Cassidy, search for the truth about God and you will find that He loves you and chose you. Cara, keep fighting for what you know about God, keep battling the struggles, keep taking life one day at a time. Choose the One Who is Life every moment of every day. 

Reaching for the bar

I've always been told to begin with the end in mind. Does that sound familiar? The question is though, what is the end? Is it achieving our goals? What if it's something even better, what if it's failing at what we thought we wanted and reaching something higher? What if our goal is too easy and we find ourselves challenged by something completely unexpected instead?

For the last two weeks I have ridden my bike to the same spot, parked by the same swings....and... failed at the same task.

This park isn't far from my house and is my favorite place to go swing (yes I'm still a kid and love to swing) because the swings are set higher up off the ground than most. Recently, I brought a friend to this park and he challenged me to jump up and grab the bar that the swings hang from. I couldn't. As much as I tried, I failed again and again. The bar was simply too high. 

When it comes to goals though, I don't think you can ever set the bar too high. Excellence is to be strived for and caught hold of, dreams are meant to be seized, standards are there to be met and set even higher.
I believe that we should set lofty life goals, dream big even if we feel like it's impossible, because those big dreams lead us to work hard and become better.

The Bible has quite a lot to say on hard work and excellence, we are also warned against the opposite: laziness. Proverbs 6:6-8 says, "Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest." The New Testament tells us to do all things as though we were doing them for the Lord, which ought to be a huge motivator to strive for excellence. Often we're told that losing is ok, we shouldn't be competitive cause we could hurt someone's feelings, or that winning isn't all that valuable. While I agree that we need to be ok with losing and winning isn't the only valuable thing, I still think there's a place for the kind of challenge that comes through trying to be the best. "Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another" -Proverbs 27:17. Trying to be the best at whatever we do cultivates a mentality of excellence that Christians should desire.

I heard an illustration a few weeks ago that talked about how hard we work on assignments for professors who grade our work. The professors that aren't super strict, are annoying, or don't command much authority make us not want to work as hard on their assignments. The more we respect the professor and the more we desire his approval the harder we work on the assignment. So if you're professor is God, how hard are you going to work on the assignment? Is it just enough to do things to check the box and get it done? Or will you push yourself constantly to become better and chase higher goals?
Let's be competitive, strive to win, work hard, and become the best we can be because that's what it means to work as though you were doing it for the Lord.

Set your bar as high as you can. Desire to do something significant, from there you can take baby steps. But don't make the baby step your real goal or lose sight of what you really want to accomplish. Keep things doable, set the next step, but don't get bogged down in the details and let go of your dreams just because they feel so distant. What is it you really want to achieve in life? Not like in the next semester or the next week, but in life what do you want to get done? Often in life, the little things consume enough of our time that we think they are the big things, getting a great job becomes the end goal rather than using that great job to achieve your real goals. Yeah, we all want a great job but we should want that job so that we can do the other things in life that we want even more, the big dreams we have. And when we reach the bar we've set, let's aim even higher.
In the pursuit of excellence we should set goals that seem almost impossible, standards that actually challenge us and push us to the next level. We ought to never settle for where we are.

After two weeks of biking to this park and jumping as high as I could (I'm sure people thought I was crazy), I finally caught a hold of the bar that held the swings up. No, this didn't really count as a life goal but to do something I thought was impossible felt really good. One of my life goals is graduating college when I am 18, I set that when I was only 14 years old. It felt impossible and it was definitely crazy, but now I'm only two semesters away from graduating with my Bachelor's degree in business. People have so much potential that often isn't realized because we fail to reach high enough. Let's set our goals high and reach for them until we get them. Never ever give up on dreams regardless of how impossible they seem. 

aWkWaRdNeSs

Dear awkwardness, 

You go by many names, disguise yourself in many ways, yet you constantly lurk in the corners of our minds and haunt us to no end. Embarrassment, self-consciousness, shame, guilt, self-doubt, fear, they are all just tools you use to convince us of something that is simply not true. At every large gathering you cause at least one girl to hide on the outskirts of the crowd. At tournaments, you make people wander away alone for long periods of time. You pester people with petty questions and make them sound significant, convincing people that they aren’t smart enough, pretty enough, cool enough, normal enough, strong enough or good enough. You’ve wasted our time and stuck us in the corner in shyness. You tell us that everyone else is laughing at us, or will if we slip up even a little. Our imaginations run wild at all the horrible situations you could make for us. 

So we create fake personalities and pretend to be “cool”, whatever that means. 

You try to stop “just friends” from being friends, tarnish relationships, and haunt breakups. In silence you scream words at us. Every person thinks you’re only plaguing them, you isolate us so well and befriend us until you’ve consumed our thoughts all the time. 

You tell us we don’t belong here when in reality you are the intruder. 

Somehow you make us tell ourselves we are only a street rat, we are the riffraff, unfit to stand in the presence of others. You make us out to be the bad guy, the raincloud on a sunny day, the one haunting everyone else but you are the real monster. 

Defeating you only takes a simple mindset shift, a realization that everyone feels awkward at times and we can easily push through it. You are broken when we have the humility to laugh at ourselves, the love to look beyond ourselves, and the confidence to own who we are. 

Awkwardness, you would rather me not spill all your secrets but we both know that a simple smile can drive you away. C.S. Lewis detailed instructions for your demise when he penned the words,
“Be weird, be random, be who you are because you never know who would love the person you hide”.

The self-doubt that surrounds us in your presence causes us to hide what makes us beautiful but we will still fight you at every turn. We are chosen. We are special. We are loved. Regardless of the lies you spit in our ear, our hearts remain priceless. We belong here because this is where God put us. Awkwardness has no place in a mind that is set on Him. As ambassadors for Christ, we will spread the message of hope and belonging until no one feels your presence any more.

The Moments We Fight For

Thunderstorms hit everyone.

For some, they last forever: stretching on and on, turning spring into winter and joy to sorrow and leaving us in a state of perpetual darkness. Distantly, we can remember the twilight, the last glimpses of happiness before the sun set, and anxiously we look ahead to the time when the clouds will be blown away and the skies clear. In that waiting though, we start to forget what happiness felt like. We only feel weight, rain, and wind pushing against us. We trudge forward, wanting to hope for something better but afraid of the disappointment that chills our hearts. Then one day...we see daylight. Dawn appears and rays of feeling break through our emotional numbness. We feel....different. Happy. Those memories of darkness are never far from our minds but we cling tight to the present moment and realize suddenly that this is why we kept moving forward. We walked through the winter so we could feel the sun on our skin again. And that moment when we do is amazing.

Like a firework exploding, joy finally fills every part of you again. Your soul soars higher somehow, as though a weight has been lifted from your shoulders. Chin up, you feel like you can face the world. A song on your mind and a smile on your lips, you march out to seize the day. All of a sudden, you can get out of bed easily again, you had forgotten what that was like. You look in the mirror and realize the smile on your face isn't forced. You hear your favorite song and it doesn't make you cry. When you see old friends they say you look different. Finally you can breathe again, laugh again, hope again. This is the moment you fought for. This is a moment worth fighting for.

I recently heard the trials of life described as a wave, they come in and cover us, we have to swim hard to just stay afloat as the hardships hit. Then the wave draws back. You're left on dry ground again, looking out over the water. A moment passes and then another wall of water comes at you and you go under again. The moments where you can stand on your feet are worth the ones when you are swimming for your life. That's a lot like how life is. For much of our lives, we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, telling ourselves over and over that it will be worth it when we get out, we just have to keep going. When you reach the other side and you're on the peak of a mountain it suddenly hits you that this is why you kept going. This moment, this feeling, made all of it worth it.

I don't know what part of your journey you're at right now.
Maybe the sky has just now cleared for you and your taking in the moment of relief. Perhaps you're underwater, fighting for every breath. Wherever you are, take a chance to remember all the best moments of your life, the times when you were incredibly happy and felt tremendously blessed. Cling to that feeling. Memories of those perfect times will help you get through the dark nights. The next time a taste of heaven comes, thank God for getting you through what felt like hell, thank Him for making it all worth it by renewing your joy, soak up every bit of relief you feel and just enjoy the moment.

If/When you're struggling against a storm that you don't think will end, remind yourself that joy comes in the morning, it always does. It's watching a sunset over a mountain, sitting under the stars in silence with friends, dancing your heart out with an awesome group of people, graduating in the back of a pickup truck, slow dancing to the perfect song, being with all your favorite people doing exactly the right things, it's pausing for a second and realizing that nothing could get better right now.

These are the moments we fight for.