Bonds of Love

I once wrote a post about how, for me, sharing memories is like baring a piece of my soul to someone.  It's revealing who I am, making myself vulnerable by telling you a very personal and specific story from my past.  This blog post is exactly that.

For the past few weeks, a certain memory has been on my mind.  I have no idea why.  Nothing significant has happened to bring this memory up, but yet, up it has come.  It's from a very hard time in my life, and I suppose its purpose is to remind me how close my ties to my sister are.  Because this memory stars her.

I was sixteen years old at the time.  I had been cutting for several months already.  Depressing had started, and was growing stronger and stronger, accompanied by suicidal tendencies.

Being around people was difficult.  I always found myself anxious, jittery.  Needing to constantly move, or escape and cut, just to wake myself up from the nightmare I was living.

This one particular night was no different.  I was in the town next to ours, at a youth/college group with my sister and her friends.  I went to this place a lot with her, but they were always her friends, them being her age and knowing her better then they knew me.

It was a really rough night.  I felt like I was suffocating being around these people.  Nothing wrong with them, just my inability to handle human interaction at the time.  Which actually, was odd, because I needed to be around people to distract myself from the darkness that surrounded me, but being around people seemed to make it worse at the same time.  Huh.

Anyways.

I couldn't take being around them any more.  So, like always, I escaped to "go to the bathroom," and took my razor blade with me.  My security blanket that I carried around with me everywhere.  And used it everywhere.

I was sick of being alive.  I was depressed.  I didn't want to go to sleep that night, because I knew it meant having to wake up the next day and continue life.

I sat in a stall in the bathroom and held the razor blade in my hands.  Contemplating slitting my throat.  Wondering how deep would I need to cut (could I cut that deep?) in order to be able to bleed quickly and die soon.  Thinking about who might find me and who would have to clean up.

I continued to sit there.  Should I do it?  Can I do it?  I don't want to die, though.  But I do.  But I'm terrified of death.

I was tormented.

As close as I was to slitting my throat, I didn't.  I say - and this is true - that I didn't because of my fear of death was stronger than my desire to stop living.  But I am completely convinced that this fear (while all fear is not of God, and thus from the enemy) is what saved my life.  An ironic situation created only by the grace of God.

The decision not to slit my throat being made, I opted to cut my upper arms several times on both sides.  And after doing so, I just sat there and cried.  Sick of life, sick of facing life, sick of my inability to end it all.

I was gone for a while.  My sister, after 20 minutes or so, finally came to check up on me.  She, being the sort to avoid intruding, stood outside the stall door, talking to me, asking me what was up, to come out and join everyone else, etc.

I was sitting on the floor, and my feet could be seen from the other side of the door.  I quietly unlatched the lock and just let it sit.  I didn't respond to anything she said.

After another 10-ish minutes, she finally opened the door.  And she saw me.  She saw my arms; saw the blood.

And then she did what she did next.  Took some paper towels, dampened them with water, and cleaned me up as I continued to sit on the floor and quietly cry.

She cleaned me up.

And this is the memory that has been haunting my mind for several weeks.

People may or may not wonder why we're so close.  But we are.  She's my best friend.  (She didn't used to be.)

But when you share your life with someone in a long season of darkness and struggle, you create a bond with that person.  A bond that not many people know the strength of.  Or how it came to be.  A type of bond that is not easily or quickly created, nor one that can be broken with a soft tug.

We're close.  We're sisters.  Best friends.  And I'm convinced that we wouldn't have the relationship we have today, if it weren't for her being by my side for most of the length of the darkness I went through.

I remember that moment and it pains me.  What she had to see, to deal with.  But it also speaks to my heart in ways that nothing else can.

She saw me at the lowest of lows, and instead of turning away or becoming sickened by the sight of what I had done, she stayed.  She made it better.  She used her actions to show me how much she loved me.

Her actions that night will never be forgotten for the rest of my life.

Grace I've freely received, grace I will freely give.

Sometimes you need to be reminded of things that have happened in your life so you don’t forget where you’ve come from. How you’ve gotten to where you are today. And, in my case, why I’m still alive.

Now and then people will come along in my life, or situations will take place, and I find myself sharing my story. What has happened to make me who I am today. Where I’ve come from. What I’ve struggled with and how, by God’s miraculous grace, I am still here.

And people who hear my story will thank me for sharing. Some who know it have told me, and then reminded me again, how what I’ve gone through is a powerful thing, and it will impact people for good. Which is a wonderful thing to hear.

But I, as everyone else who lives and breathes and exists, sometimes struggle with doubt. What makes my story so great? Why do people keep telling me that my story is a powerful one? What makes is that way? How do they know? It’s just me. My past, my struggles, my redemption. There’s nothing special about it.

I have to remind myself, though, that by the telling of what God has done in my life, it will influence people for the better. How? I have no idea. But simply by sharing the dark times that I’ve experienced, and then showing how the Light shattered the darkness, it can make a difference. It’s not that my story is a unique one, but there’s redemption. There’s grace. There’s hope. There’s life after the darkest moments.

It’s not something I share a lot, and definitely not something I tell everyone I meet. But every time I go through the details of when this happened, and then that happened, by the time I’m at the end, I have to step back. I look at my life and what it was, and I am reminded that God’s grace saved me. Because I know – I know – that I wouldn’t be alive right now without it. I wouldn’t be who I am without it. Without Him.

And it is just something that keeps me in awe. I find myself lacking in words; my heart overwhelmed with…with thankfulness. And I am drawn to tears. Because I see the grace of God in my life. I know it’s there. I know it’s in my life now. And it is not something that I ever want to take for granted. Ever.

So it’s good for me, to tell my story. Perhaps it may be a blessing to others, but I think it is a blessing even more so to myself. I need to remember, to never forget, His grace. And even more, I need to take the grace that I’ve been given, and extend it to others – to an even fuller amount than what I’ve received.


“But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”   Acts 20.24

Honesty Hour

It's almost 4 in the morning, and now is about the time when my thoughts become brutally honest and my guard of what I may or may not write is let down.  I try to avoid extremely personal topics due to the amount that I value my privacy, but this is something that I just need to write out.  Perhaps by doing so, it'll cease plaguing my mind for a while.

I am not the kind of person to get emotional and wishy-washy about romantic things.  It's a bit of a contradiction, but I consider myself to be a hopeless romantic and a stone-cold realist.  Because you can, believe it or not, be a hopeless romantic without liking things of the typical romantic nature.  Really, it's actually possible.

I have no desire to get married.  Ever.  After seeing how marriage changes people and their behaviour, I've become disgusted with its lack of "good qualities" that so many people claim marriage to have.  Marriage changes people (and not for the better from what I've experienced), it's a case of take a lot, give a little, and creates its own seclusive club to where if you're not married, people won't talk to you, because you're not in the "marriage club."

In my eyes, there are just too many negatives in relation to the effect marriage has on people, and I want nothing to do with it.

When I say to people "I'm never going to get married," I try to make it come across as a light joke.  But honestly, I speak that statement with every ounce of good intent to follow through on it.  I have too many issues with matrimony that would ever make it possible for me to consider it at this point in life.

I'm not inclined to sentimentality.  I don't cry over wedding videos or cheesy romantic comedies.  I'm not easily wooed.

But every once in a while, my guard is let down (it must be), and I find my heart yearning for something more.  To have someone look at me as if I'm their whole world.  To be held in the strong arms of a man who loves me immeasurably.

And then after a few moments of experiencing this lack of judgement and sanity, those feelings pass, and my guard is up once again.

Lately though, I don't know what my problem is.  My emotions have not been as in control as I would like them to be, and I'm completely baffled as to why this is.  Perhaps it's because of things happening in my personal life that I have no control over, and not being able to control some things, it causes me to lose focus and thus lose control over the things that I actually can control - like my emotions.

More and more these moments happen.  And the fact that this is so, irritates me to no end.  I don't have time to dream about a life that I don't want.

I know that my heart is hard.  I know that this isn't healthy, and isn't supposed to be so.  But I will not sacrifice logic and friendships for something like romantic love and marriage.  The exchange is not worth it.

Still.  With a hardened heart, and walls built a mile high, how am I supposed to be vulnerable?  How am I supposed to learn to fully love those who are in my life, as well as letting myself be completely loved in turn?

I can't.  It isn't possible.  There is no both/and.  In this case, it is either/or.

So do I choose to let down those walls, and let my heart once again become soft and vulnerable to pain in order to let Christ wield me to grow as I need to?  Or do I remain closed and protected, keeping both pain and unconditional love from affecting me?

Obviously I know the answer.  Because what other choice is there, if I want to be fully and completely surrendered to God?  There really is only one option.

And perhaps I'll make the right choice someday.  Let myself become susceptible to the possibility of pain - and love - again.  Right now though, is not the time.

Because I know why I've shut myself down.  As a preemptive strike - they can't hurt me if I'm guarded against them.  But also because love equals loss, and loss equals pain.  And I've had enough of that for one lifetime.  I don't want to experience the pain of losing a loved one again.  It was too much the first time, and I don't know if I could (ever) handle it again.

I can't say I don't know what to do, because that'd be a lie.  I do know what to do.  But I don't have the courage or strength to actually go through with it right now.

I just...need to not focus on this for a while.