You Make Me New

You cannot be multiplied enough to be shared. You can only be broken enough to be shared. 

-Robert Benson

And now I know that Mr. Benson was right.

I just got back from taking 9 of my high school friends to Frontier Ranch in Colorado.

We truly had the best week of our lives! (for me, every new camp experience is better than the last)

My sweet friends found Jesus on that holy ground tucked away into the Rocky Mountains. 

They heard of His massive love for them, how He willingly went to the cross, not as a victim but as their Savior, how He loves them before they ever even have to change, & that because He loves them, they can change.

It was a beautiful week.

I was especially impressed with them as we met up after club every night for cabin time.

They were open, vulnerable, & honest right from the start. 

Which I assume is impressive to me because I remember what I was like in cabin time during my high school YL trip.

I was that kid...

Oh I was listening, but you couldn't have paid me to open up & actually talk about my personal life in a room full of girls who I barely knew, didn't know, or just didn't trust.

Maybe it was also because the people in my life that I should have been able to lean on, were in fact the ones that had hurt me.

Things were a mess at home.

I hated my dad.

There was no relationship between us.

He had fallen short of what I expected & I was in the middle of carrying out my plan to hurt him just as badly as he had hurt me.

And I was good at it.

I was also not about to let people know I was as unhappy as I really was, lost as I really felt.

I was tough, I could handle it.

I was not a pitiful baby like my dad always said.

But then Rachel, my leader, asked me to talk 1 on 1.

I knew as soon as she did that my carefully constructed walls could protect me from a group, but not when one person's energy was completely focused on me.

We sat down at a picnic table on the porch behind the office.

I remember that boys were walking by the whole time because we were sitting next to a frisbee golf tee-off.

I remember her reaching across the table & touching my arm.

I remember that she asked me if I was ok.

I remember saying yes, but I couldn't look her in the eyes.

I remember her asking if i was really ok.

I remember laying my head down & crying.

Right there in the middle of all those guys playing frisbee, I let it out.

I knew she loved me & I knew she could tell me how my life could be different.

And I couldn't handle the pressure of keeping it to myself anymore.

My relationship with my dad got worse before it got better.

So did my relationship with myself.

7 years later, I found myself at a picnic table next to the snack shop with one of my friends, then in a rocking chair gazing off the cliff, also on the side of the pool near the slide, & with another under the seemingly endless starry night sky.

7 years later, when I posed the question "When was a time in your life that you have felt entirely alone, empty, or like your walls were crashing in on you?", I heard 9 different stories about girls & their fathers.

Stories of pain & guilt & shame & heart break & emptiness & brokenness.

And I got to be the one to tell them of a heavenly Father who would never leave them, never disappoint them, & never break their heart.

I got to share all of my brokenness concerning my dad & thankfully, I was able to end my story by telling them of the healing Christ brought to that relationship.

Hope. For them all.

I wasn't brave enough to share while I was a 17 year old, but I am so glad they were. 

And I am thankful that I have been broken enough to be shared with them now.

Praise be to my Lord!

To God Almighty!

Whose great plan for my life is revealed in His time.

Who is making everything new.

Who met 9 high school girls during the best week of their lives.

And who meets me every day.

Hallelujah!