"home is so many things now. but now home is a meal that tastes like grandmas, a figure that reminds me of grandpa, friends that remind me of my siblings, we aren't linked by blood but we're family all the same."
This excerpt is from an old high school friend, T-Fish. I read this post he made last week as he was packing up his dorm room and left his sophomore year of college behind. I couldn't help but be burdened by the apparent need to accept it as truth in my own life and experiences the last two years.
We all left graduation 2 years and 1 month ago so bright eyed and bushy tailed. However, behind the curled hair, fresh cuts and black gowns is where both fear and excitement resided. Fear of the future and excitement of a fresh start.
We traveled all over the country and some of us, the world, in search of ourselves. Who were we without the guiding hands of our parents? What were we going to live for? Who were we going to stand beside? Some of us left to forget, escape, create, transform. Others left with purpose and direction.
I have come a long way from the people pleasing partying church girl that I once was.
I am a completely different person now.
I look back at pictures, read journal entries, remember how certain friendships were obtained and I don't even recognize that girl anymore. The girl that wanted so badly to forget that she turned to alcohol. The girl that wanted to be a 'good time' and wouldn't turn down a drug. The girl that was so insecure in herself that she would settle for cheap lust and empty sex with men.
I wasn't just your typical dumb blond that liked to party and kiss people. I was smart. I knew that the alcohol would only shove life to the side temporarily. I knew that drugs would only make me crash in a matter of time. I knew the men spoke nothing but empty promises. I've heard it and experienced it all. The emptiness that I would feel was inevitable. So why did I keep up this destructive behavior?
I didn't have any answers. But I knew I needed a dramatic change in my life. I needed to forget, escape, create, transform. So naturally, I moved to the Midwest.
---if only my life was glamorous, then I could say I ran off to New York or out west to Cali---
I attended a college I had never visited and that no one I knew attended.
Slowly, but surely I was beginning to fall in to the same crowd. Only now it was riskier. Staying out all night because we missed curfew. Going to parties that could have gotten me expelled. Hanging out with the bad boys of a private christian school. It was high school all over again. Just a little more forbidden. A little more unsatisfactory.
Then everything changed. The desires didn't change. However, I had the determination and will power to say no.
For once in my life it was all settling in. The puzzle pieces were all coming together. The sermons, the books, the honest words of good and kind people. I was worth more than I thought I deserved.
Once this began to resonate in my heart and mind, in my very being, everything began falling in to place.
What I wanted to do with my life. How I wanted to live my life. Who I wanted to live my life for.
That's when I found myself at Central Bible College.
My degree is in Intercultural Studies with a concentration in Islamic Studies.
I want to travel the world.
I want to impact and change lives.
Not just in the now, but eternally.
I want to study indigenous people groups in the Middle East. I want to document my discoveries and publish it so the world will know how to reach these people, how to effectively pray for these people.
I want to go! I want to do!
I graduated two years ago and left to run. Now I have arrived and I'm planting roots. I'm growing solid in who I am, what I stand for and how I'm going to live my life.
I don't need alcohol, or drugs or sex anymore.
I have a purpose, a cause.
I have Jesus.
And as elementary as that may sound it's truth.
On this road of self discovery I have found more than who I was and who I am now. I found who God created me to be.
And that's a world changer.
