For You

So excited to be doing the A to Z Challenge for the second year in a row! I will be posting each day (besides Sunday) this month. I'll be posting things I've learned throughout high school.

Today I discovered a poem I wrote March of my junior year (about a year ago). It really touched me because it captures an awakening that was going on within my soul...

That January, I had realized that I wanted to be so in love with Jesus that nothing else mattered. I also realized that I wanted to do everything I possibly could to attain this relationship. That was when my faith really became active. My knees hit the ground. 

I made a commitment to pray every day...again. I'd made that commitment so many times. This time, however, it was coupled with a burning desire. I had seen what my life was like without God. I was feeling pretty alone in life and as I was growing closer to God, I was noticing that I was drifting a part from a lot of my friends. Not that any of them are bad people at all...I really believe that God just wanted to purify me and have some "just Annie time". 

Anyway. A lot of people (myself included at times) get really angry at God for allowing them to go through certain things. Personally, I know I questioned Him a lot about why He had allowed me to grow so distant from Him sophomore year. I have come to actually be grateful for that time. I hate that I sinned...but it really gave me a huge heart for sinners. Who is a sinner? All of us!

I have learned that God lets us go through everything for a reason, even sin. I genuinely believe this. 

Let me again share Sirach 39:21:

"No cause then to say, 'what is the purpose of this?' For everything is chosen to satisfy a need."

Because I know what it's like to run from God, I want to spend my life leading people back to Him. Because I know what it's like to hate one's self, I want to spend my life sharing how each person is individually created, called, and crowned. Because I know what it's like to feel rejection, I want to spend my life showing Christ's love and acceptance. Because I know what it is like to use, I want to spend my life teaching the dignity of each life. 

I don't find my value in bringing people to Christ, however awesome and humbling that might be. I don't feel like I have to "make it up to Jesus" by "saving people"-- Jesus already did the saving and any Truth that I might share is His.

But I have seen brokenness. I have seen it in myself. I have seen it in the eyes of a girl who had been so used that, by the age of fifteen, she thought that she was completely worthless and unlovable. I have seen it in a boy who had been so rejected and abandoned that he cut himself to numb the pain. I have seen it in the lifestyle of a girl who didn't know how to come to God with her pain and so numbed it with drugs and alcohol. 

If high school has taught me anything...it has taught me that everyone is broken and everyone has a story. It has taught me that my heart longs for Jesus, that He alone can satisfy me. And it has taught me that I long to share with others the infinite, healing love of Christ.

So! This poem. I wrote it at a time when I was finally really understanding how very much we all need Jesus. Also, I was so devastated by the lies that the people around me were buying into...it's so interesting how much people change in just a couple of years. I was seeing the choices that people I love were making and how they were leading them away from Jesus...and this poem came to be.

For You

All around me

I hear cries of "where is love"

screams of desperation

alone

cold

drowning

We've all broken our hearts

placing them in paper shredders

and playing with knives

and yet we wonder

why we're always bleeding

I look around me

seeing weary eyes

tear-stained cheeks

sliced arms

Does anyone see 

what we've done

to each other

In our search for "love"

we've rejected Love Himself

And we want someone

to hold our hands

But He's holding us

We want someone to sit beside us

But He's running with us

We want someone who will stay forever

But He'll lead us there

God I'm so broken

so tired of forgiving 

of trying to love

and failing

But you knew my words

before I thought them

You hold my heart

Heal my soul

I sit here and wish for love

But I already have Him

He's got me

Love that came

was torn

beaten

wounded

for you

Who died

for you

Who came back

for you

Who 

will

never

leave