I hope this is okay to post. It's sort of ranting, and definitely personal, but it kind of explains a little about me, who I am, and why I am like I am.
I recently went on a youth group mission trip, and on "Emotional Night", I started thinking, about why I'm not close to God. It might seem like I am, I don't know, but I'm not. I'm really, really, REALLY NOT. I rarely pray, and when I do, the prayers are deep, but very short, and usually when I'm in bed going to sleep, so I end up dozing off.
Mostly, that's because I'm angry at God a lot. For reasons that seem very petty, too, but they aren't to me. Things that would roll right off some people really bother me, and still do.I know loving someone at 12/13 is supposed to be impossible. Loving someone *really* at least. Having crushes, of course, anyone can have, but really, honest-to-goodness loving someone doesn't happen until at least your teenage years. Or so people think. Or so I thought.
I really loved someone, you guys. Maybe you won't or can't understand, but I really loved this person. It wasn't mushy, I didn't have a crush on him, I just loved him so much. I didn't even realize it. I'd known him since I was 8 years old, and I didn't even know that I loved him. He was a part of my life, a precious, irreplaceable part that I so took for granted.
If this helps you understand, he was like my older brother. I don't know if you know how much I wish I had an older brother. It's the one thing I would wish for if I had one wish. It's what I think about when I blow out my birthday candles. It's what I want when I see a shooting start. It's how I close my prayers at night. I want an older brother, and for 5 years, I had one.
Five happiest years of my whole life. I was finally fulfilled, finally, whole, finally happy. He was like my brother. I loved him like a brother, and he treated me like a sister. He explained things to me, he made me laugh, he protected me. He was everything I could have ever asked for a million times over. I loved him a lot, but I never thought about it much because I figured he would always be here. He was like the rest of my family, I could affored to take them for granted because there would always be time to appreciate them later.
I didn't realize that he meant so much to me until he left.His family stopped coming to our church, they stopped coming to my school, and his mom was unhappy at my family and our church for a reason that I don't know to this day.
All the sudden, after five years of having my dream, loving someone so much that if I thought about it, it hurt, he was gone. I stopped seeing him, and only then did I realize how much he meant to me, how much I depended on him.
I was shocked by the pain of losing him. Love like this doesn't happen at twelve, I scolded myself. You can't hurt like this at my age! Stop being so dramatic!
I told myself I was being ridiculous, that it was hormones or something, but it still hurt, almost physically. I didn't want to think about Him, but I didn't want to forget Him either. It was a constant battle of mind vs. heart every day, every moment.
I cried myself to sleep every night. I prayed so hard that His family would come back to our church. Every time He wasn't there, I had to go to the bathroom and force back tears.
All this sounds stupid, ridiculous even to me, but I can't begin to stress the truth of it to you. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not being melodramatic, although my friends told me I was for years.I finally told my parents what was wrong more than a year later, and they actually believed me. They were the first people to really get it. They told me that what I was experiencing was a kind of unconditional love that the other girls my age were just having trouble understanding yet. Knowing that I wasn't crazy made a world of difference, and I didn't cry that night after I told them.I was better for a few weeks, but the pain kept coming back. It was better, but still there.
This whole aftermath thing has been going on for 42 months, and I've learned to hide the pain very well. My friends got tired of listening a long time ago, and eventually my parents even started using the generic responses, "I know you miss Him, but just give it more time. Don't try to hold on to this, Kendra."
I was actually doing very well with this until Wednesday, Emotional Night. I've learned to push this back into my mind, where it's still there, but I don't have to think about it. It's not a bad way to deal with this, it's practical and helpful, but as I sat at the foot of the cross, I just couldn't really pray with it lurking over my shoulder.
I was angry at God. Too angry to really get close to him. Why had God taken Him away from me? God had given me the one thing I'd always dreamed of, let me taste it, and then ripped it away from me again. Why on Earth would a good God do that? Ellie B assured me that God was there for me, and he wanted to help me. I believed her, but it's still like someone punching you in the face, then offering to get you some ice. If they just hadn't punched you in the face to begin with, you wouldn't need their stupid ice!
Ellie B helped me think back to that post I wrote a while ago, about trusting God, the author of my story. Bad things happen to me, but God knows the ending. Even thought I can't tell what he's doing, he has things worked out in the end. I don't know the ending, but I know it's good, and I know losing Him plays into that somehow.
I'm still struggling with that, and He still holds a very special part of my heart that I don't know if I'll ever get back, but I think I'm starting to really work through this. I'm starting to trust God a little more, and believe that he really does have my best interests at heart. I know God loves, and I know he has the end of my story already outlined, I just have to trust him that he knows what he's doing.
