October 28, 2007

It is okay to not be okay...

As I sit in this bedroom so familiar and safe I come to remember a time that neither faith nor strength could be found in me. A time when I gave up on what could be and what would be and wallowed in my own self and grief. Everything I once knew and believed in was no more and everything I thought I was, was gone. I couldn’t understand how God could bring me more pain.
After all my surgeries and all my faith I was with nothing. Sitting in my room I remember writing my last journal entry to God.

Dear God,
I believe this is the last time I will ever write you. My writing has become more like journals and less like prayers. I believed that you would get me through this and look at me now. Everything I was going to be is gone and I have nothing. You’ve taken away everything that I ever truly cared about and left me all alone.

This time in my life was scary. I know with no doubt that I was at the lowest place any teenager could be. I was depressed, distant, and hurting. Crying out for something to bring me back to what I once knew. I couldn’t play sports anymore, the pain in my knees way too hard to handle.

Tears rolling down my cheeks like raindrops on a rainy day. I couldn’t take the pain, but was so afraid to tell anyone. My fear of letting everyone down caused me to resent God more than I would ever like to admit. The pain that I kept inside ate me alive because I had always thought of crying as a sense of weakness. No one saw me cry, I was like the royal guards at the palace.

I remember the day I finally couldn't take any more pain. I cried in front of everyone revealing everything that I feared them to see. The day I quit hockey was one of the worst days of my life. Krystina Meyers the athlete was dead and everything I knew was going into a big black bag that had became my connection to everything I thought I needed in life.

Everything I knew and loved started to crash around me. My family was on my side, but every friend I had ever had turned their back on me. It was like a horror story and I was the victim. No one knew the pain that I was going through because I had never shown my pain inside. Everyone talked about me behind my back, calling me a quitter, a coward, and an alien to them.




A couple of months ago I finally came to this revelation...

As I sat in my hospital bed and my body went out of control, I couldn’t mask the lack of control I had. However, I found strength in a higher power and trust. I knew my promises in God and knew that I would never be anything without Him. That fighting for the control was silly because His plan is what I want. His plan is what I desire to strive for.

Either I can walk with Him and find beauty in His plan or I can find myself in this very familiar bedroom crying myself to sleep as I fail to fit the mold I thought I needed to fit.

I’m saying life is hard and never truly easy. God’s plan is never the same as yours because He has bigger plans. We need to come to the realization that we are going to have hard times in our life, but truly that is when we should find the strength in God to keep on. It is okay not to be okay, but you can’t stay there!!!

Remember that people may not show their pain. Thinking that you have more pain than someone else is a lie. Pain comes in all sorts of ways and because we have felt pain we should learn to lean on the strength that gets us through it. We should learn that because we know pain we should be like Jesus and be considerate because others could be going through something much worse. Life is hard, but never as hard as it could be without Him. We are of blessed people and God doesn't leave us alone like I wrote... He helps us through when we believe!

Stand in faith my brothers and sisters. No valley is too deep, no mountain too high. We have all gone through our share of pain, but because of that pain we need to learn that we are blessed and He Never leaves us in those times alone.

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