Jesus and me.

Lord, take my future and my dreams. Take who I am, who I was, who I want to be. Hold my heart, cradle it carefully, see the him-shaped hole and fill it with you. It’s a small hole, that one, but its still a tiny gap that needs your glue.

Lord, I know you remember me at thirteen. The teen of fourteen who was always compared, the fragile child of fifteen, the strong sixteen-year-old, the 17 year old on top of her game and then the one who came crashing down. I’m pretty proud of how I held my head up, how though he had eyes that looked through me like I didn’t exist,  how I clung to you. And although I am healing, I will never forget his eyes. Help me to forget those eyes, Lord.

At eighteen, I wonder how you see me. Its not like I stop to pause, though, when I know I should rest and reflect on you, with you. Lately I’ve been challenged to rest in you, to be in your presence and ask you questions, instead of asking myself, or society, or anyone else. Lord, how do you see me? What do you think of where I’m going? Why did you give me love for the things I do love? Why did you give me talents for the things I am good at? And why did you bring me.. here?

Lord, I know you love me. I know this because you have healed me. When I see my friends still hurting from boys long gone, I look at my story and can see change. I can mark days, nights, prayers, when you came through and when you took away the memories. I know you love me because when I had no money, you always provided. When I was in pain and in need of a doctor, the correct amount of money arrived in the mail from an anonymous sender. When I stood shaking in a plywood shower in my fear of forgetting my towel, all I had to do was peek out of the curtain and see a white towel hanging there. When no one was around, how could it be anyone but you? When I couldn’t afford clothing, clothing came. When I needed a home, the right one came - in your timing. When I lay alone in my very best dress and clutching a wallet with no money, you told a friend to call and send me through funds to get me through the week. How could I deny you? Your financial provision has been remarkable, and I thank you for the home I was born into. Having to trust you for everything has shown me your goodness even more.

Lord, your unending acceptance and love has always sustained me. When I couldn’t let go of the scales, when I wrestled and wrestled to give up what we came to call ‘George’, I got on my knees and again you gave me strength. Now I am in marvel that I eat three healthy meals a day, and its so normal to me. How did that happen? It was you, Lord, you and love and good people. And time. When I lay crying in front of the cross, clutching two bits of paper - one marked ‘Grades’ and one marked ‘Achievement’ and crying over and over and over NO I will not surrender them to you, somehow you gave me the courage to nail them to that cross. And from then on, things became different, and school wasn’t my definition of my worth. And I got better grades, because I had given them over to you, and they didn’t define me any more. It was as if “Worth=what God thinks of me’ got into my soul and began to breathe life and love into me. When the boy I gave almost everything to gave me ten seconds to talk then walked away forever - you were there to pick me up, and the right people came along to guide me through.

And here I am! Eighteen years old and whole, happy, healed, and able to help others. I do not carry shame, anxiety or fear, and I can look the world and the past, in the eye and can speak straight to its face. I look at the fifteen-year-old girl I once was and I want to tell her that she will not be hurt forever. And I see my beautiful friends - guys, girls, Christian, not-Christian, and I see that so many still carry deep levels of hurt, shame and anxiety from when they were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and fragile. They carry memories that haunt them daily, when they’re sitting in church and when they’re trying to sleep, memories they cannot shake. And I see me in them! That was me! But Jesus took that all away. And I want to introduce them to my Jesus. The one who looked at me and said: “Sonya, I do not condemn you. I love you. Come, follow me.”