Pieces

WARNING: This post is less me telling you a lesson I've learned as much as it is me processing and figuring things out. Or at least attempting to. Random changes in thought pattern and/or reasoning may occur.


Anyone who is a fan of the group RED might notice I borrowed one of their song titles for my post today. Well, it is somewhat on purpose. Lately, I've been struggling here at home to figure out where I belong. As one friend might say, I'm restless.

I have longed to come home from college since Christmas, and now, here I am. And now, I wish I was back at TU with my friends. I miss them. I feel as though I don't really belong here in Buena Vista, like the solid roots I thought I left here were shallower and more fragile than I knew.

I feel like I left my heart, or pieces of it, back in Indiana. And as the saying goes, "Home is where the heart is." Ironic how now I wish I was back. I missed my family here in Colorado, but I also feel like I left family back at Taylor. It's strange to think of myself as having at least two homes now. I've only ever had one before now.

Although I think there is something I need to say real quick though. While I believe I left some pieces at places, I also believe some of the pieces I left with people.At least I think that's where some of the pieces from Taylor are. I left them with friends I made there.

But even knowing that I left pieces of my heart in Indiana, I know that I left pieces of it here in Colorado too. Now I have to find them. I wish it were easier, but at least I know now where to start.

Tonight I worked in the Kitchen at Spring Canyon, the camp where I live. Working there felt normal, routine. Wonderfully familiar. At home, I have to live in the basement since my grandparents are staying with us for a few weeks, and then my uncle will come out with his family for a visit. My normal room was turned into a guest bedroom, so I live downstairs.

Now, why all the background there? Because having said all that, My house feels abnormal now. Strange. Unusual. I try to remember that it is home, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel, well for lack of a better term, displaced. So working gave me a sense of normalcy again. And I believe I found one of the "lost pieces" there.

I know there are more though. I pray God will help me find them. I pray I figure out who I am again. I used to have an identity here in Colorado before college, now I have another one after it and I have to reconcile the two, preferably before I go back to Taylor.
So I guess it's like part of the chorus from the song.

"I come to You in pieces, so You can make me whole."

That's where I will find wholeness, really. I need to go to God with these pieces of my heart so he can put them together again. He saw me when I left it and know exactly which piece goes where. But it's hard. I know some pieces I have left and I can never get them back, like the pieces I left in Romania when I went there last year.

But I will choose to have faith in God. He will bring my heart back together. I will find wholeness and rest from my restlessness in Him. I hope. I pray. God is faithful.

He is holy and He is worthy of my praise.

Leaving

Well, it's official. I have finished my first year at Taylor University. I am now a sophomore. Now, admittedly, I should be rejoicing, but I'm not. In some ways, I am happy. I finished one year of college. That in itself is an achievement. But there's something else that overwhelms the miniscule feeling if victory. It is the feeling of loss.

This year, I made quite a few friends. Some of them were freshmen. Some were graduating seniors. All of them I will miss. Especially those graduating. While I have some assurances that I might see some of them again, it still feels like in some way, I'm losing my friends, like I'm losing a piece of myself.

It hurts. I see my friends go, most of them still living in the Midwest, while I have to pack up and return to Colorado. I feel the separation ache. The pain is too mellow, too slightly expected to cut or stab. It throbs instead.

Facing this pain, which is all too familiar I must confess, I find myself asking, does saying goodbye ever get to the point where it doesn't hurt, at least as a college student?


Does it ever get any easier?

I wanted to go and ask a professor or one of the seniors this question, but I never did. I never asked while I had them here to tell me. However, after slightly stewing on this question for a few hours, I discovered the best person to ask this question would be myself.

Now before you think I'm getting pompous or arrogant, let me tell you why I think that.

I'm a military brat, and I have never lived in any one place longer than 4 years. You say goodbye often that way. For the four years I went to high school, I lived at a summer camp. Every single I would say goodbye at least twice. Once to the first month's summer volunteers, next to the second month's volunteers and the paid staff.

I also graduated High School a year ago, almost to the day. I had many goodbyes to say then. I had to say goodbye to my parents when they dropped me off at college.

Suffice to say, I've had to say a lot of goodbyes in my life.So, if you all are still interested in my answer, here it is.

It never gets easier to say goodbye. In fact, the more you invest yourself in your friends and the deeper the bonds you make, the harder it gets to say goodbye.

I say this from personal experience. I missed my friends from camp a little, But as I look forward to the summer, the more I wish I had my friends with me physically. The more I long to have my close friends near.

So this summer might be hard. I have to go back to good friends, but I'm leaving some of the best friends I've ever had.

However, before my heart begins to despair, and thus make me begin my summer the crappiest way I could, I need to remember something,

Now, forgive me for sounding cheesy, but the truth is the truth, Jesus is the friend who will never leave me. Never. I can't move away from Him. He won't graduate and be forced to move on past college and thus past me. He will never be living anywhere I'm not.

He is always with me. I tend to forget that so easily, possibly because I have this nasty tendency to rely on myself.

But there is nowhere I can go to escape His love. While all my other friends must move on and we must spend our summers apart, I will remember that God is still with me. That Jesus is right beside me, being everything and more that my friends can't be.

Holy is He and Worthy of praise.

Scars

Hey all. Sorry I'm late this week. it's finals week, so I got a little behind. 

As I've talked about in other posts, I've been dealing with identity issues. One of those issues has been Whether or not I am lovable.

I'm really good at going back and forth on this one. I know at times that God loves me, but other times I feel completely unworthy of His love. Not in a humbling sense but in a wretched sense. More like I'm too horrible for Him to love and I don't deserve it.

Right now part of the issue I'm dealing with is my scars. Not physical ones, though I have plenty of those. I'm dealing with scars left from past wounds and pain. While the pain has healed, scars remain, deforming my heart.

When I look in the mirror, I see a scarred, broken, ugly man. When I see myself, I cry out in agony because I feel as though I have lost all claims to beauty in anyone's sight. Even God's. How can I be a wonderful creation of God when people run and hide at the true sight of my deformed visage. How can I be beautiful in God's eyes when I know people would cower if they saw the darkness in my soul and the scars crisscrossing my heart?

I feel like a two-faced person. Half of my face looks fine, with smooth skin covering my features. But the other half, the half no one sees, is deformed by scars from the wounds of cruel sadistic claws raking my face and soul.

It's a battle to find the truth. While I know countless verses telling me how much God loves me and how precious I am in His sight, I have a hard time truly believing it. I want to believe. But I hear another voice whisper in my ear, one that tells me of my scars, tells me how ugly and horrific I am. How unlovable I am. I've heard the voice so long it begins to sound like the truth.

How do you battle against lies that sound like the truth? How do you fight something that is branded on your soul? How do you win when your enemy has you pinned to the ground, impaling you in the dirt? How can you defend yourself when your sword is knocked away, your arm immobilized, while your enemy tortures you by whispering seeming-truths in your ear telling you how he's won the battle?

While I know you readers might be hoping for answers, I have to admit I'm still questioning at this point. I want to fight. I want to reclaim the beauty of being God's creation. I want answers. But I wonder if I'll get them. Or if I'll be able to hear them over my enemy's victory screech.

One day, I know I'll understand this. One day I will see God restore beauty to this scarred man. And for that I wait and pray.

Holy is the LORD and most worthy of praise.

Adopted

You ever wonder what it's like to be adopted into a family? It's a very strange feeling. Especially when you already have one family and find yourself invited--make that adopted--into another one.

It's a completely different experience. At least for me. I'm used to feeling love from my own personal family, the one with whom I share blood. But being invited to share in the love of another family? I have never felt that before. Not until this year.

Now, I'll be the first one to tell you, my family is extremely loving. We love everyone we can and invite others to be part of our family. My mom has many "adopted" children and loves them all. But I have always been one of the natural children, not the adopted one. I never expected anyone else to adopt me. Never.

Then came college. I moved to Indiana, 20 hours by car and two time zones away from my family. It got a little lonely at times. My parents have very little money, so it's not like they can really come out very often. They usually save their money just to fly me home.

Maybe I shouldn't say a little lonely. Special events like Parents Weekend were torturous for me because I was one of the few students who couldn't have family come. Small breaks when my close friends would run home and spend time with their families left me longing for home and my family.

Loneliness hurts. It digs into your soul and makes a nest in the center, feeding you lies of how unloved you are. It even feeds me lies of how unworthy of love I am. Unfortunately, after a little while, the lies start becoming the truth.


But I was given a priceless gift recently. I was adopted by my best friend's family. Not in the court-order-slash-certificate way, but in the we-love-you-enough-to-make-you-part-of-the-family way.

I had no idea how to react to that. It was humbling to feel so utterly and completely loved, though I hadn't done anything to deserve it. It was a gift.It was given totally and completely unselfishly. I mean, when you're invited to come celebrate with your best friend's family on your best friend's birthday, even though he hadn't seen his family very much, you know you're loved.

For me, it's very strange. I have always been on the giving end when it comes to loving my friends, but receiving love and being adopted into a family is something totally different than giving. I was rendered speechless. I still am speechless in trying to express my gratitude and awe.

Now that I think about it, it's a lot like the way Christ treats us. We don't deserve love in any way, but He still loves us enough to adopt us into His family. We are loved by God, not just earthly mortals. I am loved by God. That's something that amazes me even further when I compare it to the love I already feel.

God's love is so astounding. So is my friend's. Maybe one day I can hope to in someway repay my friend for the love he has given me. I know I can never do that for Jesus.

Holy is the Lord and He is most worthy of praise.

New ID

Identity. Seems like an easy concept. In the military, you are issued a card with your name, birth date, Social Security Number, and picture, among other things. Sounds simple. But as I've painfully found out, it's not simple.

This last year, I've been forced to recreate my own identity. Some parts I've kept, but I've had to redefine who I am in many areas. It's not easy.

Half the process is tearing down the old Identity. Any lies I've assimilated or accepted as truth have to go. That process in and of itself is painful and difficult. It's like ripping off old wallpaper in a room to find the walls underneath.

Maybe not. That's a little too easy by comparison. It's more like peeling dead skin off a really bad sunburn on your back. Painful, disgusting, and messy. And you have to be careful not to rip off some living, healthy skin, since you can't quite see which is which. You can feel it, but you can't actually see it.

While dealing away with all the lies, I also have to find out the truth. I have to find true pieces of my Identity to put in the places the lies took. That's hard too. I have to test each one, make sure it's true, and then accepting it into my Identity. Of course, That's a lot like getting an organ replaced. In real life, you might have to take anti-rejection drugs to stay healthy and keep the organ thriving. I have to do that a lot with my new ID. Except I don't have anti-rejection drugs, which makes the process a lot more difficult.

This last week I've struggled with my ID a lot. Mostly with part of me, a very big dominating part, wanting to reject vital parts of the truth I have to live with. Parts of my Identity are painful and ugly. But I can't change them. The problem is I want to.

I have never tried to claim I lead a normal life. In fact, I have often thought of the word "normal" with a mental sneer. But after seeing what "normal" is, and how different and attractive it is as compared to my own life, I have to admit I want it. Even thought that would mean changing so many things in my past. No one is completely normal, mind you, but some people are closer to "normal" than others. They're closer to an ideal type of life, though that may be ideal only to me.

It's torturous to want to change the past to remove some of the vital parts of your ID. Changing the past is impossible. But that does nothing but make the desire to change it stronger and more painful.

Even worse is seeing the ID you want in your friends, coveting it for your own. It makes the pain less bearable because you see and know exactly what you want, but it is eternally out of reach. And if you're a Christian like me, it makes you feel guilty and worthless because you're coveting (and yes, that's EXACTLY what it is) something your friends have and breaking one of God's commandments.

That is my struggle for this week. And for Lord only knows how much longer. Hopefully, my identity will be complete one day. But until that day comes, I will be trying to love God with everything that is in me.

Holy is He and worthy of Praise.