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.