My stake stuck in this ground

"You may not can control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them"  Maya Angelou

If you have been reading any of my posts then you would probably realize that I love qoutes and songs. Sometimes I can't find the right words to express myself and then I stumble upon a qoute or song that sums up my feelings as if the writer penned the words specifically for me. This is one of those times. "Roll away your stone" by Mumford and Sons speaks to me louder than any song I have ever heard. But this post is not focused towards me; it is aimed towards those troubled individuals who are batteling in between two different constructs of themselves.

If you never take any other advice from me please accept this;  always be you, never compromise, and do not be forced into someone or something you are not.   The apostle Paul wrote in Romans, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God", (Romans 12:2,KJV).  Four years ago I started my slow dark journey down this road of "losing myself" and there is nothing rewarding or easy about it. Emotional scars still linger and I'm not sure if they will ever go away. I do know though, that through many years of searching, I have finally rediscovered me. But the easiest way to find who you truly are is to never lose oneself in the first place. "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishmen," Ralph Waldo Emerson. I mainly work with high school students and through being around them for long periods of time combined with my own personal experiences I have come to the conclusion that losing oneself  happens mainly through being bullied and through imitation; therefore, for this post I am going to talk about those two variables.

Bullies are despicable. They pick on the weak or those unlike themselves. Through my own observations, I firmly believe that bullies are narsosistic fools.  Bullies tend to be power hungry and therefore use disgusting tactics to try and completely control their victims, (which gives the bullies the power they so desperately crave).  They chose thier prey not due to weakness of the body, but strength of thier victim's mind. Intellectuality causes bullies to be afraid and look into thier own insecurities. I believe they bully to merely hide thier own insecurities and lack of confidence. Bullying is meant to demean or belittle the victim to hopefully bring the victim down to his own level of the darkness in which he calls life. They thrive off of the reaction of the victim and likes to see them suffer and fall apart emotionally. Bullies themselves think of themselves as Alphas and do not like to be challenged. So don't. I know it seems crazy but the more you play into his/her game the more you lose critical pieces of yourself until you can't recognize yourself at all. I have found that by continually showing no emotion, no anger, no tears etc, the bully will have no reason to pick on you. This takes strength but is extremely effective because the bully bullies for the gratification of seeing you visibly upset. Without that gratification all he/she has is thier own insecurities. "When people hurt you over and over, think of them like sand paper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end you end up polished, and they end up useless" Chris Colfer.  Do not seek revenge on bullies.  The Bible tells us to pray for our enemies and God tells us that one day he will have the final say.  As a christian, do not feel sorry for your beliefs.  During Jesus's sermon on the mount he said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of rightousness, for thiers is the kingom of heaven," (Matt. 5:10).

The second way I see teenagers (and adults) lose who they are is through imitation. Some say imitation is the greastest form of flattery. To me, and again I have experienced this, imitation is a slow journey of you changing into a person that a mirror cannot recognize and thus begins the slow death of your old self, which includes your morals and what you believe to be truth. People imitate others for several reasons: to fit in, makes them think they are more beautiful, to try and raise thier social status, and to avoid getting bullied. The latter is what I went through and it has taken its toll on my mind and heart. I tried to imitate the people that were not being bullied and surely but slowly I lost myself and everything I stood for. Please just be you, there is only one you and do everything possible to protect YOU. God created man, and God is perfect. Everybody is different for a specific reason, a specific purpose. If God wanted everyone to be the same, then there would never be great advances in science, math, technology, etc.  If he wanted us to be the same then all men would be amazingly handsome creatures that look exactly like me. Don't ever doubt who you are or what you stand for and never let anybody take you or your beliefs away from you. It is a constant fight that we must face and with His help we will win. E.E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."  There is only one person that anyone should try to imitate..Jesus Christ our savior.

I am writing this mainly as a warning of what giving yourself up to someone other than God can do to man. As I said before, a lot of times I can't find words to express my feelings, so I turn to outside sources such as the Bible, books, poems and songs. The song I alluded to earlier is one that is so powerful to me because I did everything the wrong way. I allowed myself to be bullied and I used imitation to try to avoid being bullied and in the process I lost the only possession I have that means anything in this evil world...my soul.  Instead of looking for answers through God, I was trying to find worldly solutions.  So I will leave you with these words from the song "Roll Away Your Stone" that really hit home for me and I hope anyone out there who finds this can find some type of peace and a greater acceptance of the importance of who you are as a person.

 Stars hide your fires

These here are my desires

And I won't give them up to you this time around

And so I'll be found

 With my stake stuck in the ground

 Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul

 But you, you've gone too far this time

You have neither reason nor rhyme

 With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine

My stake is finally stuck firmly in the ground, is yours? Thanks again for reading and your support. Please feel free to share these posts on Facebook if you think some of your friends would enjoy reading any of this! And if you like this please feel free to go back and read my other posts. And comment, even if it is annonymous, it truly does help and I like to hear other's opinions.

Breck

The Devil will get you

On the way home from our first family beach trip, Cooper hated the beach by the way, I saw a sign on the side of the road.  For whatever reason this particular sign, even though I had seen it before on my many trips to the beach, made the wheels in my mind start turning and I began questioning the purpose and reasoning of the sign.  Written on the sign was, "Go to church or the Devil will get you".  What in the world does that even mean?  The longer I drove, the more the saying irritated me.  What exactly is this sign implying?  That if we go to church we are automatically disqualified from being affected by the Devil and all the evil that comes with him?  Or is it not implying anything?  Maybe it means exactly what it says, if you don't go to church the devil is going to get you.  Either way I find this sign utterly ignorant.

My thoughts were in part stimulated from the book Desire by John Eldredge that was recommened to me by a friend and I would recommend it to others who enjoy reading these types of books.  Not only is it informing, entertaining, easy to read, but it makes you think.  It opens your hearts and minds and allows you to ask questions about your christianity, which is not a crime by the way.  The book is basically about our deepest desire to be the person that God wants us to be.  Desire has consequences and rewards, but we must listen to our desire.  Eldredge wrote, "To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down our hearts is to die altogether.".  This to me was a very profound statemnet. But back to the sign.

Let's pretend for a second it implies that by going to church we are free from the evil of the Devil. I can't even think of a good adjective to how glaringly wrong this view is. Gary Ridgeway was a deeply religious man. He frequently went door to door to spread God's word. He would often cry after sermons and church services and he was at every service. If his name sounds familiar it might be because he is also known as the Green River killer. He was convicted of raping and killing 48 women in the '80s and 90's. Ridgeway later confessed to more murders, doubling the amount he was convicted of. For those keeping up, that is around 100 women that were victims of disgusting crimes this great church going man committed; he has the highest body count out of all American serial killers. But I don't get it, he went to church so how did the devil get to him?  All of the victims in all of these tragic events in past years;(Columbine, Virginia Tech, World Trade center, pentagon, now the movie goers in Colorado) are you really going to tell me that none of them with church goers? Of course not, so the sign can't possibly imply that if you go to church you are untouchable from the devil. So it has to mean exactly as it states.

If it does mean exactly what it says then it is written in complete ignorance.  I am not a biblical scholar or any type of scholar for that matter, but since when does God want us to sit mindlessly and completely numb during church?  The sign uses fear to make us go to church.  Whatever happened to going to church for love?  God wants us to love Him unconditionally, not just sitting through a service once a week.  We have to want to love God and have an undying desire to love and please him and even then we are not freed from the temptations and evil of the Devil.  However we will have an ally, someone to lean on, someone that will never leave your side or give up on you.  This is why we go to church, not so the Devil won't get us. We go to church for our desire and love for God and the desire for a perfect eternal life. I believe churches in general focus too much on do's and dont's instead of passion. After all isn't that what Jesus was all about, compassion for others and passion for his father. Take the woman at the well for example, he did not chastise her and belittle her, he simply asked what she truly wanted, what she desired.  Desires can become worldly desires,which is where we as Christians stumble.  I believe God wants us to follow our true desires and be happy and he is there to steer us in the right direction.  But love for God and our unwavering desire to be who we are as people is what God truly intented.  Not for us to belittle those who don't go to church and use fear as a tactic to get them there.  So for the people who put the sign up I pose to you one question:  What is it that you truly desire?