I'm thinking back to a time when I was in the middle school..about 6th grade. There was a girl there who was so desperate for an answer to her very difficult question.. what's the point of life? I think about her now and wonder what happened to an 11 year old that gives her thoughts like that? She would go on to say that everything was meaningless.. we wake up, we go to school, we learn, we go home, then go to bed, and then do it all over again.
That never left me. And the reason it hit me as hard as it did was because I always wondered the same thing. Some people would say that those who thought that way were suicidal. But I disagree. I didn't want to die. Sometimes I messed around with the idea because I couldn't see a future for myself that I could attain. All the things I wanted in life were so far from my reach, or just too much work.
Life took on no meaning after that, and I was just sort of on autopilot. No purpose driving me, no meaning to fulfill my heart. So I thought I needed what the shows I was watching had.. a boyfriend. That's why my life had no meaning! I needed a man! But then there was this other side of me that didn't believe that, and I just didn't have the guts to be that boy-chaser, so instead I sat in my lonely misery.
Did I ever tell you how I came to know Jesus? I was 16 years old sitting in a youth group that my friend had brought me to with her boyfriend (I was forever the third wheel...it was awesome)(that was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell) the only thing that stuck out was that I had just found out I was pregnant. Yep. I'd rather not tell the story because it's not my shining moment, but I will. I had met a boy through my sister who seemed to like me. The night I got pregnant I had chosen to go back with him instead of walking my sister home. The reason I feel so guilty is because it was all over the news that night that there was a convict on the loose behind my house where I lived... and I chose to let her walk home by herself. Instead I went with this guy I had just met, who brought me back to his room in a basement with a mattress on the floor and nothing else. I had no idea why I was with this guy. And I really didn't want to be there, but he liked me, so I shut off that part in my mind that was screaming at me to get out of here and the next thing I know I've just lost my innocence. I can't really explain what happened because I'm not really sure myself.
So weeks later when I find out I'm pregnant I was shocked. Or maybe you could say I was in shock. I had no emotional reaction except for the one I forced myself to have. My friend was in the room with me when I found out and I felt like maybe being emotionless might look like I didn't care, so I pretended to be really angry.. but really I didn't feel anything. I had been floating along in life at this point with no real emotion towards anything. I had been told multiple times by family that we don't cry, and shown that emotions were bad. So now I take you back to that night in youth group, as I was kneeling at the alter. There was a woman who had come up to pray with me and asked me what I needed prayer for. I told her I didn't know how to tell my parents that I was pregnant, but the truth is I didn't really care about that. I just didn't know how to live life anymore. Things were happening and I was going the direction they were carrying me, like I was being swept away in a current and I wasn't fighting it. The woman that prayed with me gave me a scripture that night. One that I'm sure she was trying to give me to keep me from having an abortion, but what really happened was my eyes were opened to something else.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,a God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you. Psalm 139:13-18
A woman that was a stranger to me was answering a question that I could never answer... and it was found in the bible.
The question? Am I meaningless? Do I matter?
That's when it started. Life was taking on this shape.. it started gaining meaning. Instead of being this bag of bones walking around without purpose I was given a purpose in life.. I was given a goal to strive for.. to know this God who had created me and loved me. He became my direction, and as long as I went toward Him good things happened. My desire was to find Who was speaking this to me. And year after year I got answers. Sometimes they were harsh, and hurt, sometimes they were comforting.. but they were answers nonetheless.
Life isn't over yet. There are more ways to know God, and that's just mind-boggling for me.. the fact that I can never fully understand or know God. But I know one day I will see Him, face to face, and we'll have a long talk, and finally I'll see the point.
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