stronger.

"My moms going to be mad, she said to come straight home!" I was blind folded and Emily & Abby's hands were gripped to mine, guiding me around in what seemed like circles.
"This will be quick, it's a small surprise," Emily said, "we're almost there," she added.
I had just came back from being away for a month, we had went out to catch up when suddenly I was blind folded on the car ride home.
It should have been obvious that we were on the way to my house but the idea of a surprise party never crossed my mind.

They untied the blind fold and my family and classmates were revealed to me, all screaming "SURPRISE" in unison.
 It's a wonderful thing, to feel loved, to feel missed, to feel wanted, and accepted.
I had just left camp feeling all those things from people who had been strangers to me and I came home to the exact same feeling of overwhelming tenderness.

My happiness status was ridiculous (if that's possible), I was on a spiritual high.
Every page of my journal was overflowing with gittiness, words went from print to cursive in sheer eagerness to get it all down.
That summer was blissful.
I had wrote it down, from exact words that left peoples mouth, to the exact jump in my heart when I saw my niece again.
As I read over all of this, I caught six words that did not pinpoint joy.
Six words that predicted the next school year, six words that should have sent my knuckles to wood for even letting them escape my thoughts on to paper.

"I'm happy and that scares me."

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and through all the good my insides were feeling, there was indeed a tad room for fear.

Now, almost a year later.
I'm standing in the rubles, the aftermath, of what came crashing down shortly after.
It's like I started all over, if God was testing how genuine I was being with my faith, I would say I  failed.
Month after month I told myself that it was almost over, that the struggle was about to end.
I told myself to hold on a little longer, that Jesus was coming to my rescue.
When my sweet grandma died,  my shoulders sunk and I wanted to scream, "NO MORE."
I had returned to that place of darkness in my head that I had fought so hard to get out of.
I cried every night, my heart, it ached so much.
The feeling of loneliness came swarming in again, inviting itself back in my system, making itself at home.
I was angry and wanted to know where all those friends I had went?
Let me tell you something, I learned a lot about being a friend, when I only had two who could physically be there.
Isolated in my anxiety that was consuming me.
How could all those great feelings just be ripped out of me so quickly?
It was sad to say the least and I almost felt sorry for myself.

I was not doing well and people knew what I was going through but no one saw just how truly I was struggling inside.

I'm coming out of that, I'm now rising from that.
I'm putting the pieces back together..
My outer appearance has never changed but if you saw the inside of my head, you'd be afraid, it's been a terrible place lately.
Jesus never left me,
his love,
it was over, it was underneath, inside, in between, in times of confusion, in chaos and pain, there in my sorrow under the weight of my shame.
I'm holding on to that again.
Bouncing back up,
10x stronger.


I knew you before you were born. As my hands formed you, I whispered purpose into your bones. I can’t not love you.