I've always known that I wanted my life to be different. I've always wanted to be vibrant and outgoing, drawing others close to me so that I may touch their lives in a significant way. When I was little, I think I was closer to this dream of myself than I have been since. Before I started school, I was the oldest in my family, which meant I had a lot of authority (or so I thought) over my little sister, Kenzie, my best friend, Stephen. Those were pretty much the only friends I had before school (along with my new friend from preschool, Jess), and I was perfectly happy with it.
But then I started kindergarten and I made friends with Tricia and she kind of took me under her wing because at school I wasn't the girl I was at home. I was surrounded by new people and in a huge school I'd never been in before. It was a whole new world, and I was frightened by that. Tricia, Jess, I ended up all being in Brownie Girl Scouts and there we made friends with Dani. In first and second grades, we all became friends with Kara and Naomi - and that formed what my mom calls "The Six". We became best friends and we did everything together from Girl Scouts to campouts to birthday parties. Our mom's all became friends, and this new friendship was a great blessing to us all.
We began middle school the same close-knit circle of girls, but soon started making new friends. Throughout middle school, there were people we befriended and drew very close to, others we befriended and eventually drifted away from. I think middle school was when I began to lose myself. It's no one's fault at all and I blame absolutely no one. I simply started to fade into the sea of faces I joined as I walked those crowded hallways; I was quieted by the loud drone of voices that seemed to follow me everywhere. So, I became shyer and quieter, and that's how people knew me.
As much as I wanted to be more vibrant like Jess, more outgoing like Kara, more outspoken like Tricia, more everything like everyone, I found that it was just too hard to do, so I decided not to. And so I remained quiet and shy and I think I became more painfully so before it began getting better.
With the beginning of high school came the frightening realization that I was going to high school. Once I got there, I quickly understood that being different was not a good thing. You could be made fun of for anything that was out of the ordinary and, while most people say that middle school is the worst time of a person's life, high school beat out middle school for me. I was ostracized by many for "being a Christian" and, while I was taught to be proud of that and not care what others thought of me, being 15 and being told two totally different things by my parents and church and my classmates and society, I was hopelessly confused. I decided that I didn't want to be different if this was the price I'd pay, so I tried to blend in. It wasn't hard per se, being as shy and quiet as I was, but it's hard to change a reputation after you've gotten one. My reputation wasn't bad; I was known as "the Christian", but sometimes it seemed more like a death sentence than the life sentence that I knew that it was.
As I write this out, I laugh because all of this really doesn't seem that it should have been such a burden for me; it doesn't seem like it should hurt as much as it did. But I guess 15 years old is young and naive and tender, and I've always felt things deeper and stronger than most other people. And I've decided that that is not a bad thing. I always thought that it was because I cry at EVERYTHING - sad movies and books (or incredibly happy ones...?), emotional songs, etc. I hated this about myself for a long time, but now I don't. This deep sympathy and feeling has allowed me all kinds of blessings through the Lord.
I have cried as I discovered the plight of over 27 million modern-day slaves around the world today. I have laughed with children in the Dominican Republic as I made balloon animals and giggled with children in Mexico as I lay on the cement floor of their church, coloring countless pictures with them. I have cried as I prepared to leave both of these places for my far too comfortable home here in America. My heart has broken for the women in the Marysville Women's Correctional Center as they have apologized to me for corrupting the world in which we live. I have felt my heart swell to the point of bursting when I got to hold little Nakiah, a toddler that my friend Stephen's parents adopted from an orphanage in Uganda, and let the truth of what they have saved her from sink in.
I think that there are far too many people who care less in this world. I will care more. I don't care how many times my heart has to break in order to do so - I will do it. And, after all of the drama of middle school and high school that I so desperately wanted to escape but now laugh at despite the hurt it caused me, I am ready for my life to be different.
"For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
- Jeremiah 29:11
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