Where it Begins

There were only so many roads to take, and only so many paths that she could have crossed along the way in this life. She could have gone down the expected road; she could have chosen to take the path that everyone thought she was going to take. Her life was set before her, and everyone assumed she would end up just another simple girl, teaching students day in and day out. She’d graduate, go to college, get her degree, maybe have a couple boring jobs along the way, and then she would teach. But the world had different plans for her life. The world was determined to derail her and lead her to her inevitable doom, while God was determined to make wonderful things transpire through all the heartache and all the storms.

            Her mind was set, and while she herself was still just a child, she knew she would work with children. She had a heart that longed to serve, and that, as she would learn, was a heart that the enemy wanted to destroy the most. He was after her, and he was relentless, but God was so much stronger, and so much bigger than any of the bumps she would hit along the way.

            So she tried to do as everyone expected. She graduated high school, and went on to college, she began her pursuit of her degree while working at the local Target store. But where her heart was, while she was doing these things was not in the school work, and it wasn’t in the idea of teaching kids how to write proper sentences or stories at some point in her life. No, that wasn’t where her heart was. Her heart was with the teens that she did youth ministry for. Her heart was with the kids that called her or text her in the middle of the night, crying and asking for advice. Her heart was actively pursuing the happiness of kids, while her physical self was trying to walk down a road that was expected.

            What she was beginning to learn about herself, though, was that she was never meant to be what everyone expected. She was meant to do what God wanted her to do, and she was meant to do it with a passion and tenacity that wasn’t present in most people. Some thought she was crazy when she put her heart into things, because when she was in, she was all in.  She loved people fiercely, and she gave her heart openly and willingly without fear of getting hurt. But she did get hurt, and she did get beaten down. That was the tactic of the world, you see? In the heart of a girl, becoming a woman, so eager to love others, and so eager to share her heart and love with everyone she came into contact with, the world was determined to make her cold and afraid of love. It almost succeeded once, but, somehow, while drowning in her own tears and physically feeling her heart bleeding inside of her, she rose to her feet and stretched her hand out to someone else and helped them to stand. In pulling them up, though, she realized that she was being pulled up, too.

                        Who is she? I guess you may be wondering at this point. Her name is Melody, and she is me. And she was no longer going to hide her heart; she was no longer going to act as if she was made to be a cookie cutter person, made to blend in during her life here. I am no longer going to blend in. I wasn’t meant to be the same. I was never meant to love small or carefully. I was born and designed to share love in a big way, and to do so without fear of the future or of getting hurt. Because there is no amount of hurt that I have ever gone through that is bigger than the love that God has for me, and the love He has placed in me to give others. Sometimes, with big love comes big pain, but with big pain comes even bigger strength, formed and rooted deep within.

            This is what I know, and this is where I am. This is the beginning of a story of a girl that was placed on this earth to love relentlessly and to be a constant to people in a world full of inconsistency. The world tried to change me, but through the storm I found the light and I found my way out, and I breathed in His love once more, so that I can breathe it out to others with every second that passes through the day.

           

            So this is where I found myself, and this is where my story begins.  

Finding Yourself

Self-worth. It's something we all have to discover on our own, and something I am beginning to gain again in my life.

I was always the girl that loved everyone. I didn't judge people and I made friends easily. I was also easily loved, but, at the same time, I was easily taken advantage of. I wasn't naive, exactly, but I just have a heart that wanted to see the good in everyone, and believed that everyone was inherently good, even if they didn't know how to show it sometimes. I liked to consider myself an eternal optimist about people, rather than naive. Maybe I was wrong.

Over the course of the past two and a half years, I became a shell of myself. I became insecure and felt worthless, simply because I was told constantly that I was unattractive and unintelligent. I went from being told that for a year, to being treated that way for another year. I was told I would amount to nothing and that I was going no where in life; that I had no real skills and that I made bad decisions with my life to get me to where I was at that point. I was constantly reminded that I had no true worth and that all the things that had happened to me in the past were my fault. Then, in the midst of it all, I was abandoned, only to move on to someone else who made me feel insignificant and and small. I somehow lost my voice.

I spent a lot of time over the last 2.5 years angry with God.  I didn't recognize that He was only trying to grab my hand and pull me through the darkness that this world had placed me in. You see, we don't battle against flesh and blood, but we battle against the forces of darkness in this world. I spent so many nights in Louisiana crying, quite literally, until I either threw up or passed out. But I spent most of my days praying and talking with a dear friend on the phone. On the worst night, when I didn't think I could take it anymore, I was laying on the couch, falling to pieces, wanting it to be over somehow, and then Kenobi walked over, climbed on the couch, and began to lick my tears away. He snuggled with me and placed his head on my shoulder, eyes intently on me. And, though I didn't feel I had anything in my life at that point, I remembered I had Kenobi, and that I couldn't imagine him waiting for me to wake up, and it never happening. God saved my life a year and a half before I knew it needed saving.

Then one day I woke up and I took a step forward. One step lead to another, until I eventually began to like what I saw in the mirror again. I began to realize that I have so much to offer this world, and I have such a good heart. I love people, beyond their mistakes and beyond the exterior. I don't judge people, and I give my all to everyone I come into contact with. This world tried to isolate me and make me feel as though I had nothing, but God wouldn't let that happen. He placed so many people in my life that would constantly remind me how loved and missed I was; they reminded me how valued and wanted I was.

What I have grown to understand, though, is that my happiness isn't based on others. It isn't based on a relationship, or on any child or friend. My happiness starts with me and how I choose to live my life and what I choose to let in. I refuse to ever be mistreated again or told that I don't matter. I refuse to ever let anyone pull me away from my family or my friends. I refuse to let anyone talk down to me and make me feel inferior or small. I know who I am, just as I always have, I just lost sight of it along the way.

You see, I'm simply me. I love people, and I love them hard. I give my heart away and I do so willingly. I love to serve and help others, and my happiness is in doing that. I want to help kids, and just about anyone that comes into my life. I may not completely understand everyone's specific situations, but I can say that I have known darkness and I have known pain, and there is always a way out; there is always a hand outstretched, waiting to pull you through the darkness and into the light again, we just have to be willing to take it, and to hold on. The journey to recovery is not easy and it isn't pretty, it tends to get worse before it gets better, as cliche as it sounds, but it does get better. One day you simply wake up, and though the world may be the exact same place, you are somehow happier in it. You begin to see yourself again, and not who the world has painted you to be. You see past the scars and past the pain, you look beyond the memories and beyond the hurt, and you remember who you were, and what you have to offer. And it is in finding yourself again, that you are able to find real purpose and value in this world.

Finding the Cure

I had a heart that was designed to love, in a world that was designed to stop it.

I knew as a very young girl that all I wanted to do was love people. I knew that all I wanted to do was be a friend and make other's happy. It was easy at first, when our friends only want simple things. When they want a CD for their birthday or a slumber party on a trampoline? Those things are easy to provide. But when requests get loftier and one persons wants are conflicting with another's, that's when choices have to be made. I've never been good at hurting people, I've always had a soft spot for the broken. What I understand now, though, is that if you spend all your time with broken people, unwilling to be fixed, you'll start to view yourself as broken too.

There are things in this life we go through,  things that hurt is, thicken our skin, and sometimes damage our self-image, but nothing can truly break us. That is what I understand now. We can choose to be broken, or we can choose to pick up and press forward. The trick is, we have to choose. I would give my life to make others happy. But, in having that mindset, I've actually hurt more people than I've pleased. All the while, I was putting my journey on hold and postponing the most important part of this life; I was postponing the part in which I discover who I am, and what motivates me.

Is my motivation to make others happy driven by a desire to simply make a difference? Or is it more selfish? Is it that I was seeking approval, no matter what I had to do to get it? I know now it isn't the approval aspect,  as I have never worried about gaining approval, but rather gaining and sharing love. My motive to try and make others happy was more derived from an overwhelming desire to share love with everyone. Sometimes, though, we need to hold that love back and not trust everyone with it.

I suppose it was because I saw a lot of kids growing up who didn't have love in their homes, and I saw many families struggling to even share a kind word. Mine wasn't like that. We had our ups and downs, we had some hard times, but the core of everything was love. My brothers were my best friends and my mom was my confident. My dad was, and always will be the strong provider and the person who quietly understands my heart the most, under his thick skin.

What this time has taught me is that I can't simply give my heart to everyone and I can't expect everyone to accept or embrace choices I make in my life. But, what I can do is love the people who are placed in my life and love them with all that I have. I can love others from a distance, and keeps those that matter close. If I strengthen the bonds I do have, and spread love in that way, then some way or another it will make a difference. Some way or another it will be the light in someone's dark place and the strength in their weakest moments.  I suppose my real desire,  then, was to make a difference. That is why I went after so many broken people in my life and why I would stop everything to try and fix them. If I was able to be their light,  then maybe, just maybe, that would fix things in me.

But, at the end of it all, I was the only one who could fix me, and I'm finally happy to say I have taken the right turns to get there.  Just like it is up to everyone else to fix themselves. Not from being broken, because we are never truly broken, but just a little mixed up and in need of fine tuning.

Anyway, just rambling.

Cheers.