What we're meant to be

"You're as skinny as a bean pole!" my mom exclaimed admirably to my younger cousin. I jumped in front of her eagerly. "What about me, Mom? Am I?" She hesitated. "No," she said slowly. "You're built more ... stocky." I don't think she realized those worlds felt like a shotgun to my heart. From then on, I viewed myself as "stocky," a word which I associated with other words such as "fat" and "ugly." It became my identity in a sense. Strangely, I don't even think that is the word my mom used to describe my build. I think the word she actually used at the time was "sturdy." But "stocky" is the word that I took; "stocky" is the word that seared my heart and burned into the back of my eyelids. It is strange to me that I did not ever go on any diets until I was 17 years old. I hated my body and considered myself fat, but it never occurred to me to go on a diet or exercise....

I just found a scrap of paper I wrote on after coming back from my mission trip to Russia. "I cried in the car. But I have not cried since. It's like all of my emotions froze up. I laugh and tell everyone how my trip went. I tell the funny stories, and I talk about the things we did. But I haven't said anything about the kids. About the tears I cried and how hard it was to say goodbye. The way they laughed when we twirled them in circles, or the antics we used to get them to understand us without an interpreter. All the gesturing and pointing. Or the gifts that the sweet, quiet little boy gave us. He always had gifts. All these things, I say nothing. I say nothing because I feel nothing. Nothing I could say could make them possibly understand how I feel. I could try. But . . . I've never been good at explaining, and my family doesn't talk about feelings. I want to go back, but they won't understand why unless I tell them everything. There are thousands of o...

Hello. Maybe I need an introduction. Maybe I don't. Here goes. I am a girl who believes that life is worth living. I believe that God created us for so much more than all that we have settled for. To me, life is exciting. It hasn't always been. Before I began my relationship with Jesus Christ when I was 15 years old, I wished for death, and found pleasure and hope in nothing. To describe my life before I met Jesus, I was listless and hopeless, and literally felt like I was drowning in a dark black hole, and it was swallowing me up. These last five years have been a journey. I look back and can see how much I've changed and grown. How my identity has slowly formed into who I am and who I'm becoming. I see how much I still need to change and grow. Life is about growing. Life is about living.   I am creating this space because I need to. I jump for joy because of Jesus. I writhe in pain because of the struggles that still haunt me. Maybe if I write what I am going thro...