It’s late Sunday evening. Chapel has just been dismissed at my small little Christian school, and I make my walk to the library, where I have been employed since my freshman year, to open it up back up for business after the few hours we had been closed.
I type in the key code and enter through the side door. I punch my time card in and I flip the switches to start making the library bright and open again.
Only tonight, my heart couldn’t follow suit.
I didn’t understand what was happening. I had just had a wonderful birthday weekend with my family and friends. I had never felt more loved in my entire life than I did in that three-day time span. The way everybody important in my life had gathered around me to help me celebrate turning the big 2 - 0 was everything that a person could dream of.
So what went wrong?
I sat at the library desk contemplating it. For the past couple of months, I have been going through a period of my life where I have felt disgusted with myself. Not in the way where you think you weigh twenty pounds too much or your face has broken out like a pepperoni pizza, but in a way where your spirit doesn’t quite settle.
My whole life, I have been content with keeping all of my problems to myself. None of my friends ever knew when something bad was going on because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to be embarrassed. My pride got in the way of ever having closure about anything. So, I tried my hardest to be the absolute perfect person, to build a little utopia for myself and pretend that I was good.
When my father would scream awful things at my mother every night? Nobody knew. When I would cry for my mom because I just wanted her to be happy? Nothing. When I developed an eating disorder and my parents were separating (only to have them get back together a year later?) there weren’t a single one of my friends that had a clue. They didn’t need to know. I was happy and cute when we all went out to Applebee's on Friday nights and that was all that mattered.
When I finally came to Sterling College for my freshman year, I carried a lot more than a heavy backpack. I carried guilt, shame, anger, pain, and regret. I was a horrendously selfish and naive individual—stuck in my own ways and not wanting to change. I had learned nothing from high school and once again placed myself in the role of “perfection.” Just smile and wave and everything will be alright.
Now, sitting pretty halfway into the first semester of my sophomore year, my heart and spirit are in crisis mode. Thousands of thoughts swirl inside of my head by the second, and panic attacks have become frequent. I have always been a Christian, and rededicated my life to Christ this past summer, but the feelings of the past have come roaring back, and this time there is nowhere left for me to hide.
But perhaps that’s the point.
Stop hiding away and get rid of the pride. The only one who can truly fix your heart is the Lord, and in a time of crisis, when you feel as if you have nowhere left to go, He’s your only hope. Christ doesn’t like to be put third, or fourth, or even second. Relationships, friendships, family; they all have to revolve around Him, or it’s going to fall apart at the seams, and you will have no way to glue it back together.
Right now, it’s difficult for me to believe that things will be okay. I constantly feel that I have to be the one to fix all of my own problems and be “perfect.” I have to, or else my little world, this little utopia that I tried so desperately to create, will fall apart. But the reason it’s become this way is because I attempted to fix everything myself. Don’t be selfish with your problems. Always look towards Him. That will get you much further than anything you could’ve cooked up yourself.
As my best friend always says, “Use what brings you down to help build yourself back up again,” and right now, that is the only plan I need.
