I am Thankful for

I am Thankful for…

My Brothers

Since before you were born, I have been praying for you. My hopes and dreams for your futures have been like that of a mother’s, because I feel that I’ve helped raise all three of you.

When I was 13, my world got turned upside down. What you grew up with as “normal” (I know it was anything but that), was one of the worst things to happen to me, but it was also one of the best. I thought growing up that as your older sister I would be the one teaching you and guiding you through life. What I have learned in the past 10 years is that you have all taught me more than I could have imagined.

You taught me how to take care of someone besides myself.

Those early mornings when mom was still at work, I pulled myself out of bed an hour earlier than I had to, to make sure you had clothes ready for the day, breakfast, and lunch for at school. When I got my car, I expected to have freedom to go where I wanted and be with my friends. I did, but I also got the responsibility of driving you all to and from school every day. I know I may have seemed annoyed (and I probably was at the time), but I was always proud to see you all go off with friends and be greeted by teachers who were excited to see you, because you guys were/are so great.

You taught me to have patience and not to stress about petty things.

You will never have any idea how much I appreciate this. From breaking dishes to pushing trash cans against the house to climb on the roof, your shenanigans were a huge source of anxiety for me. Not only because I knew that I would be in trouble because I was the person responsible for you, but because I genuinely cared about your safety. Regardless, some things were just too ridiculous to get truly upset over, and the laughter you provided was so very welcome.

You held me accountable when no one else could.

I’ll keep it real. I was a young, damaged girl. Our mom worked strange hours. I had every opportunity to do what almost any other kid in our situation would: drinking, drugs, sex, you name it. But even without constant scrutiny from our parents, there was still something keeping me out of trouble, and it was you guys. A lot of my time was spent taking care of you. When I had time free, or was given the opportunity to go a little wild, I thought of you three, and remembered that you looked up to me, depended on me, and that you needed me to be 100% present so that you could all be successful in life. I thank God for the fact that I felt so much responsibility for you three, because I might have had a very different life if I hadn’t.

You taught me that I had value.

No matter what other kids at school said, or what boys hurt me, I knew that I always had love at home. No matter how depressed or alone I felt, I knew I needed to be around for you three. You guys created a real paradox: you drove me crazy, but at the same time, kept me sane. You had enough inconsistencies in life already for me to create more for you. You needed someone who was strong and stable, and I knew I needed to be that person in case something happened to mom. I knew I had to keep going for you.

You were my support when there was no one else.

There are things that we went through together that no one else knows about. We understand each other more than is possible for any person to ever be able to, because we have experienced life through the same looking glass. Though our hardest times were spent in silence, simply looking at one another without any idea of what to do, I knew that our feelings were all the same, and that solidarity is what kept us and keeps us together still.

So this year, now that we’re finally going to have a normal holiday season of thankfulness, joy, peace, and love, and all that other hippie holiday stuff, I want you all to know how truly thankful I am for you and that I would want no other four people to be my siblings, even if they were sisters.You've all grown into some wonderful human beings with your own personalities, knowledge, and strengths that few people as young as you can say they possess.

One Year

This is something that has been weighing on my heart a lot lately. It is a part of my testimony that I have chosen to keep private from nearly everyone I know for the past year because I was afraid it would change how they see me as a person. I don't like to be pitied or felt sorry for, so I waited. However, I have come to realize that by sharing this, I may be able to help others. At my church recently, it was said, "if you have a burden in your heart to share news, then go." This is my way of going. 

Last year around this time, I had an incredible experience with a customer at my job with Dutch Bros. Coffee which I had started just months before this happened. You can read about that here. 

One year ago today, my greatest fear became a reality. 

It was an event that I knew would happen eventually, and as much as I tried to discount my expectations as simple anxiety, the life that we had been living for the seven years preceding was proof enough that my greatest fear would become real at some point, and until recently, I haven’t felt comfortable discussing it publicly.

My greatest fear was that the security in my life would crumble - violently. There never actually was any real security to begin with, but the illusion I had of it being there was better than what could have been at the time. My greatest fear was that I would be the last remnant of stability in my family (me being pretty unstable myself), and that something horrible would happen to my mom or brothers.

 For years, my mom had been too sick to work; my step father was too mentally ill to work. We had money, but we were always on a precipice of uncertainty.

Our home was essentially a hospital: Since my last years in high school, my mom’s health had been so unpredictable that it was more surprising that she hadn’t gone to the hospital by the time the month ended. My step father was mentally unhinged and increasingly physically and emotionally abusive and manipulative towards all of us. If anything happened, I was the one who had a reliable income and the physical and mental capacity to take care of everyone else.

We went through periods of financial insecurity in which I was the only person in the house with an income to support the seven of us.

There were days I would drive my brothers around town after school for hours because it was too dangerous to bring them home.

Every night I went to bed, listening to the sounds from the room above or on the other side of mine, waiting for the inevitable shouting, the sound of someone falling.

When I was finally able to move out, my anxiety came with me. I tried to convince my parents that moving so far was a terrible idea. I couldn’t handle the thought of my mom and brothers two hours away. I had been the person there to take my brothers somewhere safe when home wasn’t. Without me, where would they go? Every time I visited, I left with an uneasy feeling which ate into my core.
Finally, it happened: at a middle-school football game, our step father became so uncontrollable that he began to threaten other people - including children. He went home to try to find weapons, but was stopped only after being shot.

And I was two hours away, unable to be the safe place for my brothers to run to.

For all of my talk about trusting in God throughout all of the various incidents, horrors, and scares we had been through before, I sure wasn’t trusting when it came to this. In fact, in the past, I only began to trust Him after something happened. I had allowed myself to sink into a mindset in which I was expecting the worst to happen, and it wasn’t healthy in any way, especially not for my spiritual health and relationship with God. While it was true that in my lowest moments, He provided me with strength when I had absolutely none left of my own, there was a point in my life that I didn’t know how to have a relationship with God without existing in a state of complete fear and sorrow.

It’s incredible to witness what passes in the span of a year. It’s all the more incredible to see the impact of a year’s worth of growth on your perspective of an event.

One year ago today, what I thought was my greatest fear turned into my family’s greatest blessing - freedom.

Part 2:

Run

Just about the only time you'll catch me running is when there's a storm. There's something meditative and purifying about rhythmically striding through curtains of cold drops of water and the scent of creosote bushes in the air. It's much more of a spiritual exercise for me than a physical one.

One thing I miss dearly is being able to run to the feet of mountains on a whim; to take myself and my thoughts into a desert amongst stones and sand. To glance up and catch tongues of lightning lashing the tops of mountains silhouetted against a dark sky.

To listen to the chattering rain and fall into step with its beat. To step through tiny streams of water running off the path. To intersect with that rogue beam of sunlight that decided to peek out at me as a I embrace creation and am reminded of the fact that I am not alone; that there is a God greater than I and my circumstances.

Tonight, I was exhausted. But tonight, I ran.

It's been a while since I felt some kind of motivation towards much of anything. I didn't feel particularly bad about anything, but there wasn't anything I felt quite high about, either. It was a sick feeling of neutrality.

Neutrality is a worse feeling than pain, in my opinion. I long to be on fire - for my faith, for my passions, my dreams, for life. Because even when a fire is extinguished, it can still smoulder, burn, and reignite as I have in my lowest times of life. I was not on fire.

Tonight, I felt a flare.

I struggled to find an actual point behind writing this particular post. I just wanted so badly to share my feelings on something beautiful, but didn't know how to make it relevant. It turns out, that is the purpose. In life, we are taught that we must know 100% what our purpose is from the start, and that we must, by all means, have a plan and follow it to a T lest we become a burnout.

In my life, I have seen stories unfold, but I have never once seen a story end. We grow up hearing stories with happy endings in which the protagonists go on to live happily ever after. In real life, we expect that from relationships, from the latest resolved conflict in life. I used to tell myself, "this was the worst it will get, we'll be fine now", and without fail, a worse situation would come up down the road. Despite our best efforts, we are not the authors of our story. What we plan for ourselves comes true 0% of the time. The purposes we appoint for ourselves may not actually be our real purpose in life. Another favorite verse of mine says, "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand." (Proverbs 19:21) 

No matter what I do, that purpose - the purpose of the Lord - is what I am here for, and what I absolutely will accomplish. I'm not saying to shut down, send everyone home from the office early and call it a day on your dreams. But we need to take a moment to relax. I've been racing towards a perceived "end" for 7 years, and I've ended up exactly where I started. I'm not any better or worse off for my accomplishments, but I'm not where I planned to be, either. This has been something that I've struggled with accepting, and I'm starting to realize that perhaps what I had planned isn't exactly what I'm supposed to do right now.

I didn't wake up yesterday and say to myself, "I am going to run in the rain at 9 pm tonight and try to figure myself out." In fact, when I woke up yesterday, my plan was to go straight to bed as soon as I got home. Something changed in those 15 hours in between. Something changed from the moment I began running and the moment I stepped back inside completely drenched. Something changed from the time I started writing last night and now, as I am finishing this entry.

I will never actually complete my plans the way I  intend. Life is not a blueprint of a building, set to be constructed and completed within a time frame that we have decided. There isn't a finished product until we die, because until we do, we will always be planning, and we will never be satisfied because we will never resolve those plans.

I'm not trying to sound futilistic here. I believe that every life has a purpose, and that that purpose is laid into our hearts and minds to work towards. But take a piece of time to stop when things don't seem to be panning out the way you had hoped. If, like me, you're stuck waiting, enjoy that time - do something that fills you with light, and love, and everything you want to share. Enjoy it because it won't always be there. I should be grateful for how relatively peaceful my life has been lately, and instead I've been reeling for the chaos that I was once scrambling to escape from.

When I ran last night, amid the chaos of a storm, I was reminded that I am not in control of my circumstances. Normally, this would be a torturous realization for me. I'm addicted to having control. It's been a huge problem in my Christian walk as well as in my personal life. Last night, it was liberating. I will continue to work towards my goals, but I won't shake my fist at the sky in rage or chastise myself when the going is slower than I'd like.

Instead, I will run in the storm purely for enjoyment.
I will make music, and art, and inspiration.
I will be at peace with a steady fire burning within.

Overwhelming Joy

How immensely wonderful it was that the morning after attending a bible study in which we focused on God's sovereignty, emphasizing that He was, has been, and is always in control of all things, I finally heard some good news from my mom.

For the past eight months, we have been living a life that was more full of uncertainty and dread than ever. While my family escaped a horrible situation that we had been in for years (I had been moved out for about four months by this time), we found new troubles waiting in the aftermath. Let me just say that my mom is the strongest individual I know. She has been through so much in her life, yet she has been a testimony of faith to myself and my brothers nonetheless. I am so incredibly blessed to have her as a mother, because if it wasn't for her example of steadfastness, I might have lost my own faith long ago.

It's difficult as humans to remember that God's plan is perfect, despite the hardships we may undergo in life. We want to take control, and when things go wrong, we cry out, wondering what happened. I find myself struggling with this all the time, doubting and scrambling for control, and I am subsequently humbled by God every time. Psalm 42:5-11 is a section I return to frequently to remind myself of this:

⁵ Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation ⁶ and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
    therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
    from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me.
⁸ By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
    and at night his song is with me,
    a prayer to the God of my life.
⁹ I say to God, my rock:
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
    because of the oppression of the enemy?”
¹⁰ As with a deadly wound in my bones,
    my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
    “Where is your God?”

¹¹ Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation and my God.

So I am now full of overwhelming joy: my family is out of danger, my mother can live free, return to school, and live her dreams happily; God has again shown his endless mercy despite our own shortcomings. We cannot understand what He has designed for us. We can only cling to Him in times of joy and suffering and rejoice in the peace that only He can bring. As the Psalm says, "I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God". And I am certainly praising Him.