The Struggle

The human struggle is a despised thing.
Oh, don’t try to deny it. Look at us. We spend our days trying to ignore it, fix it, cover it up.
I’m not broken, I’m fine. I’m strong. I have things under control.
Oh I don’t deny I’ve messed up in my past. I’ve made my share of mistakes but thank God those are behind me now and I’m none the worse for wear. I’m forgiven, hallelujah, and I’ll never make those mistakes again, would you like some tea?
Who needs help? Not me. Ha, no, I’m good. I’d be glad to help you though, would you like some help?

It’s destroying us.

I knew a girl once.
She looked pretty strong, like she didn't care what the world thought of her. like she had an inner strength that left them inconsequential in it's presence. And she did.
She lived in a place she had come to call home, but had very few friends.
She seemed to be on a different page than everyone around her, including her best friends.
She lived in a world of her own.
I worried about her. She didn't seem to be in touch with reality.
She never really connected with what was happening.
She was like Anne of Green Gables, always off in her own dreams. talked a lot, but never really made contact with earth.
And then one day she crashed.
Unexplainable fear filled every day and night, she had come face to face with the world and it wasn't nice.
Something had happened, one of her few good friends had been revealed to be someone she didn't think he was. Someone horrible.
She found out who he really was, and the shock of it brought her world down.
She couldn't trust anyone.
Her dreams were shattered, and so her world was broken
Slowly, her world pieced itself back together, but she was drastically different.
She still walked a thin line between dreams and reality, but lived much more on earth than before.
She retreated to her dream world only when necessary for survival.
She was cynical of everyone.
Oh, a couple people were let in, but only a couple.
She thought no one knew. She was a princess, pure.
She put up a great front
She thought no one knew.
Except her teddy bear. He saw her cry at night.
His fuzzy little head got wet a lot.
A few years went by.
The betrayal seemed like a distant nightmare.
She had friends again, but she kept them at an arms length, the scars of trust remained and she trusted slowly
One friend worked his way in.
She didn't know how it happened. She warned herself many times as it did.
But, in the end, the damage was done. She trusted.
Oh, foolish girl.
He didn't betray her. No, her life did the deed this time.
Life moved on, and she had to leave him.
She left the two or three friends she had, and the one she trusted.
She left the other two people she trusted.
Even they didn't know her secrets.
She started over with her life, telling herself things would be better now.
No-one who knew her. She could be anyone.
But she wasn't anyone.
She was herself. She could not escape.
And her teddy bear still felt saltwater on his fuzzy head.
She looked pretty darn perfect.
Many people told her that she was amazing. She was strong. She didn't play by the world's rules.
She kept going, and she met a boy.
Doesn't every girl?
Oh, she fell hard.
She had never trusted fast, not since the betrayal. But this... oh this took her by surprise
She knew it was foolish. She knew from experience.
But surely... this would be alright... but she didn't fool herself. She never had been fully able to.
She made a decision.
She would trust him. She knew she would be hurt. She knew... but it was worth it. She was, indeed, strong, but she was tired of being strong on her own. And just now, she didn't feel so strong after all.
He was there for her.
He was strong for her.
And she was crumbling.
Because the moment she had thrown her strength at his feet, it had begun to leave her. She began to rely on him, blind to the fact that it was him who was the source of her crumbling. Did I say that moment? But it wasn’t, was it. No, it was much much earlier. From the moment that she thought she was strong. From the moment that she began to walk on her own, she had been running full-tilt for disaster.
She was a cutter. It gave her a sense of power. She didn’t need a razor, no, she had strong nails. No one would suspect, since she didn’t use a knife. What a sense of power, a rush. Pain. Blood. She had control.
But she didn’t.
No, she knew something was wrong. It was hard to deny the human struggle when she was curled on the floor of her dorm room, screaming. It was hard to deny the human struggle as she watched herself bleed.
And the further she fell, the more she leaned on him.
He was a good guy. Not strong enough to hold two people though. No-one is.
He was afraid of what it would do to her for him to pull out. He wanted to be her friend... but he just couldn't be this.
Finally, he told her. They broke up.
She told him it would be fine.
She was strong, after all.
So very strong.
So... strong.
Her teddy bear was very wet that night.
She crumbled completely
She screamed through the night, not even knowing where she was anymore.
Day after day went by like this.
It was hard for her to deny the human struggle. It was hard to pretend… no, not hard. It was impossible. It was impossible to pretend to herself that she was fine. She was, after all, bleeding. And blood is hard to ignore.
One day, as the voices screamed in her head, as her world spun, through her screaming she cried to someone. Someone she had believed in all along, but who she hadn’t thought would be here… surely not here. Surely not.
She cried to God.
She rocked on her bed, crushing her teddy bear in a soggy embrace, asking what was going on. where was she supposed to turn to now?
He didn't seem to answer.
But she knew the answer already, didn't she?
She was supposed to turn to where she had been supposed to turn all along
Slowly, she did. She turned to God.
Not just in the abstract.
She clung to him almost tangibly.
And there, she found him.
He did not take away the pain. He did not fix the break.
But he was there. He held his hands against the wound.
She felt his screaming agony as he cried with her.
As he bled with her.
It dawned on her then, as it never had before.
He bled for her. With her. He bled to stop her bleeding.
Slowly, she began to let go of her game of pretend.
She began to embrace, for the first time, who she really was.
I began to acknowledge who I am.
And he began to take my hands off of my life. And he began to write his Love on my arms.
He began to teach me what I had needed to learn all along.
Never, never, am I supposed to draw all our strength from another human. Never can I draw it from myself. I am deeply, intrinsically, essentially broken.
My underlying strength needs desperately to come from God.
The interesting thing is, I thought all along that I was drawing my strength from God.
And at times I was.
But I wasn't fully… I was running back to him when I couldn’t hide the brokenness anymore, asking for a band-aid to cover the gaping, bleeding wound.
I used a lot of band-aids.
I was drawing my strength from my parents, from my surroundings, from my friends, from my boyfriend, from my amazing skills of an actress of life.
And as long as I was doing that,
I could never draw it from God.
It took this.
It took this struggle. This brokenness. This bleeding.
But he was there. He stopped the bleeding. And wrote His Love on my arms.
God help me if I turn back now.
God help me if I deny the struggle.
God help me if I deny the brokenness.