Where I Belong

November 11th will mark the third anniversary of the death of my older brother, Nate. So, with less than two weeks until this anniversary, my mind has been flooded with memories and a lot of reflection on life in general. It also reminds me of the death of my youth leader, Leroy, this past January. Both of these events were those core-shaking, life-altering kinds of moments that you never forget. And the wounds from both are still so fresh that it hurts to really think about them.

I took the time last night to consider my brother's life and my relationship with him for the first time in over a year. I tend to push it aside and pretend that it isn't a part of who I am, but without this event or my brother, I would not be me at all. I don't really feel the need to go into detail about our relationship. If you ask, I'll tell you, but as this is a public forum, I don't feel that it's entirely appropriate. I will say that it was a tumultuous one, as was my brother's life in general. He was just so angry and hurting. I never quite figured out why or what that had to do with me, but I did notice one glaring difference between the two of us. He didn't follow God.

Now, you can call me a Jesus freak or whatever you'd like, but it is my firm belief that God is the only way to have an abundant life. And Nate, well, he knew of God. He'd grown up in church, he learned the stories, and I think that deep down, he might've loved God in some way, but he didn't have the relationship. This difference was evident in the way he lived his entire life. Unfortunately, I am left with the regret and guilt of not ensuring his salvation. Right, I know, it was his choice. But imagine truly having no idea whether a loved one went to Heaven or Hell. I like to believe in a merciful God that sees the heart, but I don't know the final state of Nate's heart either, and I wish that I had tried harder to help him find God.

I think what breaks my heart is that Nate had so much potential. He was so smart and hilarious. He could have been a famous scientist or a famous comedian, either way, he had that charisma and genius that is so rare. And imagine if he had put that charisma and genius into the kingdom of God. He could've made such a difference. He could have had joy and happiness in Christ, but instead, he lived a hard, sad life. So short a life, but so full of pain. It shouldn't have been that way. It breaks my heart.

Now, Leroy, he was the greatest person that I ever met or will probably meet. He was so funny, loving, Godly, intelligent, etc. If the church is the body, then he was the heart. And that's how it feels without him, like we're missing our heart. I can only imagine how his four young daughters,wife, sisters, parents, nieces, and nephews feel without him. I spend a lot of time with them when I'm in PA, and I can see the heartbreak. I know how heartbroken I am, so I can't even fathom their heartbreak.

But the difference, again, between Nate's life and Leroy's was God. Leroy had this joy and happiness that I have never seen in anyone else. I know that he is rejoicing in Heaven without a doubt. Nate did not have joy or happiness, at least, not beyond the surface. God makes all the difference in this life and where we end up in the next. I have this peace with Leroy's death that I never have found with Nate's. I think it's because I know where he is and that he was ready.

I keep listening to the song "Where I Belong" by Building 429 on repeat. It basically says that this world isn't our home. We are made for Heaven, and this life is just a temporary holding place for that greater paradise. It's an important song for a couple of reasons.

Three days before Leroy died, we went to Winter Jam, where Building 429 played. It's basically a huge event with an assortment of Christian artists. It's pretty fun. But I was standing beside him during the event, and when they played "Where I Belong", I remember being in awe of his sincerity in singing the words. Like he knew that he wasn't meant for this world and that he would be home soon. After it was over, I heard him turn and say to his oldest daughter, "Lauren, this is not where I belong." He said it playfully, but I know he was serious. It's something I will never forget experiencing. I can still hear him singing the words, "All I know is I'm not home yet. This is not where I belong. Take this world, and give me Jesus. This is not where I belong." He meant it with his entire self, and I can only wish to mean that like he did.

It's also something I've been thinking a lot about lately. I see so much pain in this world, and I experience a lot of pain. Not any more than anyone else, but sometimes it gets overwhelming. No one can dispute the fact that this world is not the greatest place to live. And I remember in the midst of some of my most difficult experiences just asking God to take me away. This world is so full of suffering that it's gets exhausting. But this song inspires me so much.

I don't think that in writing the lyrics, the writers meant it to be a plea to die. No, I think it's meant to help us realize that even in this world, we can have a piece of the other world. That's what Jesus did for us. This suffering, this terrible pain, is not what we have to define our lives by. We can have the abundant life that God intended for us even before we die. We can have joy and happiness like Leroy did. And beyond abundant life here, we have hope in knowing that we haven't even made it to our home yet. One day, we will finally be where we belong. There's a reason this place is so hard to fit into; it isn't where we belong.

It gives me hope. One, because Leroy is finally where he belongs, and in that, we can rejoice. Two, because even though Nate never experienced that abundant life and may not be in Heaven, I can learn from his life. I can be different. For a long time, I let his death ruin my life. It destroyed me. But now, I realize that it should be a lesson more than anything. I want what Leroy had. I want what God has for me here, but I want to be so found in God that if I died, I would know not only that I was going to Heaven but that I would finally be going home. I don't want to be attached to anything of this world, because none of it matters. And once I am entirely found in God, that joy and happiness will follow.

Even beyond Heaven, I belong in God. He is my hiding place, my refuge, and my shelter. He is my home, so even in this world, I can have a taste of home through Him. And I don't need anything else to satisfy me.

Don't Choke

I am a horrible communicator. I really am. Yes, on paper or online, I can write, but when it comes to face to face interaction or even to being totally honest about my own feelings in any communicative form, I just can't seem to do it. I've been struggling a lot this past week for various reasons, and it's really hard for me to be open with others about it. I absolutely love listening to people and giving advice, but when it comes to talking about myself or even following the advice that I give them, again, I lack...something. I have no idea what it is that stops me.

I am the type of person that thinks all the time, about everything. So, I have plenty of time to think about how I'm feeling. Most of the time, I know exactly how I feel about things, simply because I analyze everything constantly. Theoretically, I could, at any given moment, tell you exactly what I'm feeling, but then I open my mouth and.....nothing. It's like the words get stuck somewhere or my voicebox gets disconnected from my brain temporarily. I choke. It gets really frustrating.

I wouldn't mind this so much if it weren't for the fact that communication is so key to relationships. It's one thing to be able to listen, but it's also necessary to be able to talk. It's a dialogue, a give and take. This summer, I parted ways rather viciously with a group of friends that I loved dearly. One of the problems was that they felt no intimacy with me. I was so closed off to them that they felt no connection emotionally. I could listen to them or give advice or even talk shallowly all that I wanted, but even after years of friendship with the majority of them, they still felt that they didn't know me. This, at first, made me so angry. How could they say that? Did I mean nothing to them? But then it hit me. I really was in the wrong.

My tendency is to think that by not communicating about my feelings I am being strong or less burdensome or even superior. I think, "Well, I am so strong that I don't need to talk about anything. In fact, I must be stronger than my friends, because they do talk about things. Plus, I don't want to burden anyone. My problems really aren't so big."

One, I am weaker. Strength is not in doing the safe thing. Being closed off is easy and has no risk. Strength comes through being open, being vulnerable, taking risks. So I am not strong through silence. I am weak. Two, I am not superior. This is ridiculous. Communicating has nothing to do with superiority or inferiority. Yes, it's a skill, but if I judged superiority based on ability to communicate, I would come up inferior. I really need to keep my pride in check with this. Three, without realizing it, I became even more of a burden because I withheld information. They had to work so hard to reach me, and it exhausted them, so much so that they couldn't take it anymore. If it's a true friendship, it isn't burdensome to be intimate. It's what creates the bond and keeps it strong.

Why do I say all this? Because I'm at another point where I have to make choice: be closed off as always or open myself up. I am making such good friends here at college, and I don't want to ruin more relationships by being emotionally unreachable. The problem is that, even with this strong desire to change, I don't know how to make the words come out. How do you force them out?

I guess, right now, my best and only idea about that is practice. I can't talk, because I refuse to try. I make excuses and justify my lack of communication to myself, but have I honestly tried so hard? No. Honestly, I haven't. It will just take getting over that very first face to face talk. I think in time I can develop the skill. I just don't know where to begin.

I Dig It

I have been wanting to blog for a few days now, but I'm clean out of inspiration. In fact, I have no motivation to do anything lately. I think it's a textbook case of the blues. Yep, I'm in a rut. And getting into a rut is never good, particularly because it leads to deeper problems. By that, I mean you dig yourself deeper. Now, we often say that we are in a rut, but I want to look at it from a different angle. I want to talk about what it's like to create a rut in our life and what that can turn into.

First it starts as a rut, which is a small indent, generally from a tire. Not a big deal, right? It isn't very big at all. It doesn't do much damage. Right? However, the thing about any amount of indention is that it displaces material, leaving room for debris from the environment to land in it. Trash, leaves, rain water. You name it, and it'll most likely find it's way in. So, even though it's small, it begins to collect litter. Not to mention that it's easy to create one. Once the ground gets even a little bit weak or soft from the rain, it doesn't take much pressure at all to create a rut.

How does this relate to our lives? Well, I think of a rut as the chipping away of our defenses, of growing weary, of beginning to let our guards down. We soften ourselves just like the rain softens the ground. We become susceptible to the influences and pressures outside of us. It isn't long before those negative thoughts that used to bounce off of us start to creep into our minds and get rid of the positivity that we once had. It rarely takes much for frustrations and discouragement to displace hope and perseverance. We let our guards down, the difficulties that we face remove the positivity with in us, and from there, the "debris" from around us is welcome. The negativity in the world begins to influence our attitude, our treatment of others, and our relationship with God. But still, it's just a small change, right?

Wrong. A rut in the ground, if the erosion continues further, can become something even bigger. A small indention can turn into a ditch. The biggest problem I find with ditches is that they begin to cause more issues. Often, car accidents are caused by or end in a ditch. Either the driver drives into it or in the midst of an accident, they land in it. And even more so than with a rut, it is hard to get out of one.

The analogy again relates back to us. A rut in our lives can be dealt with early on. When we start to lose hope or get weary, we need to recognize it and ask for God's hand to get us out. At that point, it isn't so hard to get ourselves back into the right mindset. However, if we let that discontent continue to breed within our hearts, we dig ourselves deeper, displacing more positivity. Remember, anything positive within us is from God, so when we remove it, we also begin to remove God and the influence that He has in our lives. Again, that makes room for more negative influences.

And it becomes more difficult to climb out of it, because you can't make use of those tools you would normally use to help you. All of those positive influences of God were displaced, so you leave yourself morally destitute and confused. Imagine that I, someone with very poor vision, threw my glasses out. Now, I'm blind and stuck. Maybe the tools that I need are right in front of me or maybe there's a ladder, but I can't see anymore. That's what it's like to remove the influence of God. It blinds us. The tools are there, but we can't make use of them without Him to help us see.

Going back to the driving analogy, also consider how a ditch in our life can cause others to fall. By being negative, we can cause others to follow our lead. We are examples. Like it or not. We were made to lead, and we do, even if we are unaware of it. People are already watching us for what to do and following us for that matter. If I fall into a ditch and you're following me, before I realize it, you might be right next to me. I also don't want to cause further damage if you're already in the midst of an accident. Landing in a ditch will not help your cause. I have a responsibility to the people behind me to make sure that I am not leading them astray. My attitudes, my behaviors, my speech... everything can hinder other people if they are not used in the proper ways. When we create a ditch in our lives, we create one for others too.

So, do you see how a small rut can grow? It becomes a ditch, and it won't stop there. It will just continue to get deeper and harder to get out of. I need to nip this in the bud so that I won't dig myself even deeper. Honestly, I've been there before. It took years to get out of it, and I realize now, more than ever, that I don't have years to waste.

Have you ever created a rut or ditch in your life? How did you get out of it? Are you in the same place as I am right now?

I Love Me Not

Today was a struggle.  A lot of the time I bottle up how I feel. In fact, I deny it, even to myself. So, there are days in my life where my mind can't take the strain of self-denial any longer, and it just lets loose. It was one of those "hide out in an empty classroom and cry for no reason" days. I just feel so much pressure. Pressure to be perfect, to be someone else, to reach this impossible standard. But the problem is that I don't know who's setting this standard. Who is creating such high expectations for me?

It has to be from myself. My mind tells me that it's everyone else pushing me, but then I think about everyone in my life, and all that I recieve is encouragement. Honestly, people are so generous to me. In love, in kindness, in praise. I don't deserve an ounce of it, yet there it is waiting to build me up. Only it doesn't help. All that encouragement? To me, in my warped mind, it feels like empty flattery. Not because they don't mean it but because I simply can't believe it. So, here I am with these wonderful, accepting people in my life, and I still feel such a burden on my heart all of the time.

Tonight, the message was about self-love. Not the conceited, prideful self-love that breeds selfishness but rather, the kind that comes from knowing who you are in God. And I don't think that it's just about knowing in the sense that we often use it. It has to be about much more. It has to be a knowledge that penetrates our very being.  I can know what the Bible says. In fact, I could be able to recite it, but is that true knowledge? No, I think real, absolute knowledge is the kind that is transformative. It changes how you think about yourself, your world, and God. So, knowing who you are in God is less about quoting the scriptures and reciting lines and more about an assurance so strong that chains of insecurity and self-hatred are broken.

That said, I clearly don't know who I am. If I did, I would not feel that way that I do. Now, I understand that being assured in God does not promise a life without struggles. There are triggers that can cause even the strongest to stumble. But this is not so simple. I have never experienced the true knowledge of who I am. I know what I'm supposed to believe, but in searching myself, I find nothing but doubt and disbelief.

I cannot remember a time in my life where perfection was not my goal. I grew up in home where there was so much hate and destruction, and I thought that if I could just be perfect then I would deserve to be loved. I felt like all of the things that happened to me were because of some innate deficiency that I could work to get rid of. I tried so hard to be the "good" one. I didn't want to be the one causing all of the pain. I realize now that I could not have caused the dysfunction in which I grew up. I was simply born into it, something I could not change. Yet, despite this realization, that need to be perfect remains. I cannot break the cycle that only seems to break me.

There is this constant war in my mind. I am tormented by everything I am and everything I'm not. Every mistake that I make resounds in my head, and I mean every last one. I torture myself from morning until night when my exhausted mind gives up the struggle. I feel like a failure 100% of the time. For a lot of my life, this torment took me down some difficult roads, and I dealt with it in the wrong ways, ways that only further destroyed an already broken person. In the past months, as I have been changed by God's love and forgiveness, I have struggled less. Yet, today, it caught up to me.

I drown in my self-hatred. Hatred for what I see in the mirror. Hatred for a person who is mean, judgmental, selfish, and spiteful. Hatred for someone who falls so short in everything she does. As I worked at my music today, I felt so worthless. I questioned my place here at all. I felt called to come here to pursue music. I know this, in part, because I would never do something so bold without God's prodding. But now that I'm here, I realize that I am truly nothing. A nobody. And this feeling should make me more reliant on God to fulfill His promises for my life and to guide me through this desert. Instead, it tempts to be angry with God.

There have been many times in my life in which I have been so angry with God that I nearly left Him entirely. Most of these times revolved around how I view myself. I'd shake my fist at the sky and question God. Why would He make me like He did? Doesn't He know what a mistake He made? Doesn't He know how much pain He has caused? Right now, I feel those same questions welling in my throat. "Why, God?" is the cry of my broken heart. But just as I feel myself sinking into that place, I have to jump back and reassess.

I was there today on that edge. Ready to be angry, to question, to wallow. But the service tonight made me think a lot. Again, who has set such high expectations? Who tells me that I have to be perfect? Who says that I am worthless, incapable, and talentless? I do. I say all of those things and more. It's always me. I'm always the problem, not God. What good does it do to turn against the one that never fails me? That never leaves me. That rescues me from danger, even the danger that I am to myself. What I need to to do is turn away from myself. To die to myself, in order to live in God. And honestly, good riddance to that person. It's so exhausting to keep her around.

My prayer today would be that I take my knowledge of God's love for me and let it transform me. That it would create such a change that self-love would be possible in my life. That God's love would soften and break every wall that has kept me from true belief in Him and His word. And just imagine. If I could love myself, perhaps the hardest person on Earth to love, then how much more I could love others. And that is my heart's desire.