Midnight Thinking

So, I have had a really crumby day, and I can’t sleep because my brain is a real jerk sometimes. I just haven’t been feeling very motivated to do anything lately, and even though I’ve been trying to get in shape and get healthy and feel good about myself, the past week or so has just made me feel really insecure about my body, and today it all built upon itself and I feel terrible. I don’t like my body. It’s springtime and that means that there are a lot of people who are wearing short sleeves and shorts and dresses and all that happy fun stuff, and I have (stupidly) started comparing myself to all of the skinny, petite girls I see on campus. And that’s not healthy and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t do it or that I find it easy to ignore it.

Let’s face it. I am a girl who has grown up in a western 1^st world country, in which the female ideal fed to society is that of being skinny, blonde, long-haired, and clear-skinned. I am none of those (well, at the moment. I am a natural blonde and I do not enjoy my natural color, and long hair looks weird on me.) I am chubby, I gained more weight than I care to admit in the past year I’ve been away at school, my face has been breaking out lately, and compared to every other girl I see I do not feel beautiful.

And that is the key, I do not feel beautiful. I know that I am, but lately, it’s been incredibly hard to believe. And while I am sitting here watching Daredevil and looking at workouts and feeling sorry for myself and lying in bed covered in self-hatred, I decided to write. Because writing, in all its magic and mystery and power, is the most cathartic tool in my self-care arsenal. And I don’t know what I am writing, I don’t know why I want to write, after all this time of trying to write a number of different posts and coming up blanker than a painting of a rabbit in a snowstorm. I don’t know why I want to write about my body.

Truth be told, I hate my body. I hate my hair, how straight it is. I hate my hair, how it doesn’t hold a curl or hold any sort of shape whatsoever. I hate that my hair doesn’t do what I want it to do. I hate how I hold so much of my self-worth and my self-esteem in my hair. I hate how I don’t trust anyone but my hairdresser to touch it. I hate my face, I hate the shape of it, and I hate that I have gained weight on it. I hate how I have too small features, and how my forehead always breaks out first. I hate that my eyebrows don’t arch naturally and that they look like straight lines running toward either ear. I hate my eyes and how they are so boringly brown. I hate that I can count the number of people who have ever complimented the color of my eyes on one hand. I hate my nose, how one side sticks out a bit from where I ran into a telephone pole in middle school. I hate that it is constantly covered in irremovable blackheads that will not go away for anything. I hate that I still have dark inner corners under my eyes, and how they will probably never going to go away. I hate how my cheeks get terribly red when I get nervous, when I get embarrassed, when I work out, and how they don’t go back to normal until it is two hours later and I look like a flushed, drunken girl. I hate my lips, that they are too small, and how I will never be able to project my voice loud enough to take a lead in a song because I cannot open my mouth any wider. I hate that my jawline has disappeared, and how nice and tight and clean and straight it used to be. I hate that I tilt my head down slightly and I make a double (heck, sometimes even triple) chin.

I hate my neck, how at the back of it there’s a lump above my spine that sticks out horribly. I hate that a muscle in the left side is always hurting. I hate my shoulders, how one doesn’t fit in place properly, and how one fits a little too properly. I hate that all I have to do is move it and it pops. I hate my back, for being so crooked and bent and broken that it hurts. I hate that my back causes every part of my body to be crooked, and how nothing is even anymore. I hate my collarbones, how I can’t see them anymore, and how nice they looked when I was smaller. I hate my chest, how it breaks out in acne for no reason at all. I hate my lungs because they can’t hold all the breath I need them to and how they are the first to act out when I have an anxiety attack. I hate my stomach for not being able to eat before 9 am. I hate that my stomach isn’t flat anymore, how it’s bloated and clinging to the fat and the sugar and the other foods I have tried to stop eating. I hate my uterus, for extracting revenge on me every month because surprise, surprise, no baby has been made. (Woman’s body want baby, woman doesn’t want baby, woman’s body takes revenge) I hate that it puts me in pain.

I hate my thighs, how they are so big and covered in stretch marks. How they run into things constantly. I hate my knees for bending the wrong ways, and for popping when I stand up, and for hurting for no good reason at all. I hate my calves and my muscles for tightening up when I walk and for cramping up when I’m lying in bed. I hate how I have to constantly shave to keep them looking decent. I hate my ankles for being dry and flaky and gross. I hate my feet for being too big, for being calloused and discolored. I hate my toes for bending funny and pointing in weird directions. 

 So, I have had a really crumby day, and I can’t sleep because my brain is a real jerk sometimes. I just haven’t been feeling very motivated to do anything lately, and even though I’ve been trying to get in shape and get healthy and feel good about myself, the past week or so has just made me feel really insecure about my body, and today it all built upon itself and I feel terrible. I don’t like my body. It’s springtime and that means that there are a lot of people who are wearing short sleeves and shorts and dresses and all that happy fun stuff, and I have (stupidly) started comparing myself to all of the skinny, petite girls I see on campus. And that’s not healthy and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t do it or that I find it easy to ignore it.

Let’s face it. I am a girl who has grown up in a western 1st world country, in which the female ideal fed to society is that of being skinny, blonde, long-haired, and clear-skinned. I am none of those (well, at the moment. I am a natural blonde and I do not enjoy my natural color, and long hair looks weird on me.) I am chubby, I gained more weight than I care to admit in the past year I’ve been away at school, my face has been breaking out lately, and compared to every other girl I see I do not feel beautiful.

And that is the key, I do not feel beautiful. I know that I am, but lately, it’s been incredibly hard to believe. And while I am sitting here watching Daredevil and looking at workouts and feeling sorry for myself and lying in bed covered in self-hatred, I decided to write. Because writing, in all its magic and mystery and power, is the most cathartic tool in my self-care arsenal. And I don’t know what I am writing, I don’t know why I want to write, after all this time of trying to write a number of different posts and coming up blanker than a painting of a rabbit in a snowstorm. I don’t know why I want to write about my body.

Truth be told, I love my body. I love my hair, how I can easily experiment on it. I love my hair, how I can use it to express myself and my creativity. I love that I hold my self-esteem in the state of my hair, and how a good hair day equals a good day sometimes. I love that I value and respect this part of my body so much that I only trust one person to take care of it. I love my face, how it makes a wonderfully blank canvas to apply makeup and create art on. I love the shape of it, that it is versatile and has a captivity about it.  I love my forehead, how it is neither too small or too big. I love my eyebrows, how they do not fit the status quo or the fashion of the time, but rather how they fit perfectly within the proportions of my face and sit strongly above my eyes. I love my eyes and how they are so deeply brown. I love that they are beautiful but often overlooked, only noticed by those who make an effort to see them. I love my nose, how it fits perfectly with the rest of my silhouette when I turn to look at it in profile. I love the vein you can barely see against the skin under my right eye and how it will always be there. I love that my cheeks tend to give away my feelings, and how they show me that I have worked hard to keep the color in them after a workout. I love my lips, how they are perfectly set on my face and how they are perfectly shaped, not too full and not too flat for me. I love that my jawline is still visible and that in some moments it is still strong and tight and beautiful. I love that I can entertain myself and love myself, even with two or three chins.

I love my neck, how it helps me keep my chin up and my head held high. I love my shoulders, how they are strong and broad and able to carry the weight of more than I will ever be able to imagine. I love my back, for keeping me standing tall even when I do not feel like I can stand with confidence. I love my collarbones, for sticking out ever so slightly, and for helping me look healthy. I love my chest, how it keeps my lungs and heart inside and safe. I love my lungs, how, after all this time, they still do not stop working. I love that my stomach doesn’t hurt when I eat anymore. I love my stomach because it is not flat, it is not concave, and it is healthy. I love my uterus because one day it is going help me bring a beautiful life into the world. I love that it works just like it should.

I love my thighs, for how strong and sturdy they are. I love that they keep me standing and they do not let me fall. I love my knees for helping me walk and run and jump. I love my calves and muscles because they just look so. dang.good. I love my ankles for working and bending and twisting properly. I love my feet for keeping me grounded and for helping me feel the earth beneath me. I love my toes for helping me keep balanced and to help me go on adventures.

Because at the end of the day, it’s good to write down what you don’t like, but it’s good to counteract that with what you do. Because even loving yourself is something that I figured out a while ago, it is still a constant process and something I still have to learn every single day. 

Learning to love the body God gave me, 

Emily E. 

The Desire for Community and the Joy It Brings.

It's amazing the way things you knew before are reinforced throughout your life. As a child, I was taught that community is important, first with your family, second with your church, and third with your friends. And I feel as though the past couple of weeks I have been seeing this exemplified.

Spring Break has come and gone, my online classes are over, and I got a job (YAY!) I work 8:30-4:30 the days I go in, and that leaves me with a considerable amount of time to do stuff after I get off, and I get done with classes around the same time on those days. And it gives me the opportunity not only to take care of and focus on myself when I need to, but to also engage in the lives around me. I love to encourage and uplift people. It brings me joy to see other people happy and healthy. Seeing others praise God fills me with a desire to praise God. The community you surround yourself in will definitely influence the way you see life and the way you feel from day to day. But you also have the same ability to influence those around you.

My first day of work, I decided I was going to start working out. What??? If you know me, I would rather do anything else than workout most of the time. But this idea that I have an adult job in an office now and I have more adult responsibilities have given me a push to get into better shape I guess? I think a part of it is that I turned 20 over break and that was a hard thing to handle. I'm the second person in my close group of friends back home to age out of the teen years and that's a hard thing to deal with. But I decided to step up and go ahead and take care of myself now when I am already moderately healthy then try to tackle a bigger problem later. And one of the biggest reasons I've stuck with it for almost two weeks now without quitting is that I have a giant support group encouraging me to keep going and not give up and I want to keep up the work to prove to them that I can do it. Not in a prideful way, but in a "You encouraged me and I don't want to let you down" way. Having that community of people who will hold me accountable has helped me to keep going.

Within all relationships and communities, you must first uplift and take care of others, and they in return will uplift and take care of you. And throughout all of this mutual encouragement, God is constantly being praised and uplifted. And through community we become strong enough to handle tragedy, big or small. Community is the most important aspect of life for the Christian and is something the church of Acts understood very well.  They gathered together on the day of Pentecost (2:1) and were constantly meeting every day (2:46-47).

Gather together under the banner of Christ, rejoice with praise, bow in prayer, and love one another in community. Because at the end of our lives, all we have is Jesus and the community of Heaven.

In Christ, and In Love,
Emily E. 

Breaking a Paralyzed Heart

This week has been absolutely amazing so far. For those who do not know, Christine Caine, the founder of the A21 Campaign, one of the largest anti- trafficking organizations in the world, is launching her new project, Propel Women, this week and has chosen to kick it off here at Liberty. I will be writing a post on Saturday summing up the entire week, but I want to talk to you all specifically about tonight.

Tonight Christine spoke at Campus Community (previously named Campus Church), and it was a message straight from God. I feel like there is a lot I don't know how to get out in a way that makes sense, but I'm going to at least try. First I want to share some points I got from her sermon, and then what God revealed to me tonight.

• So many Christians live far beneath the freedom Christ died for.
• God needs and is looking for a generation that not only sings songs that say "no going back" but who believe it and is willing to act upon it.
• God is looking for and going to use unlikely people in unlikely places using an unlikely plan to gain an unlikely result.
• You don't know what God is going to do with you and where He is going to do it.
• We treat God like He doesn't know what we don't have, as if God doesn't know who He called. 
• The thing that makes you feel unqualified is the same thing God is going to use to bring Him the greatest glory. 
• Do not limit God's supernatural ability in and through your life.
• I do not have it all together, but God does have it all together.
• Would you just trust God?
• Begin the walk into freedom.

Tonight was, to quote Mrs. Caine, "awesome". But there was a lot to take in and a lot of realizations to wade through.

First, my heart has become paralyzed with fear and anxiety and doubt and worry. And all of these things have caused my heart and my spirit to become hardened and overwhelmed and this has caused me to push God away to a point. I have lost sight of the God and the heart of Jesus that I saw two years ago. The one that loves me no matter what.

Secondly, I've been trying to fix myself and my problems on my own again. Again. I've been trying to solve everything on my own. Take these oils, do these exercises, eat this not that, read these books. And while none of those are inherently bad, none of them are God. But when did I stop and pray? Where in that did I sit down and open my Bible? Why did I let my independent spirit push away the biggest Helper I have available to me?

I have lost sight of my long term vision. I have become so caught up in school that I've forgotten why I came here in the first place. I have forgotten my heart's true passion to help people. That is all my heart wants to do when fueled by the Holy Spirit. I want to help people, no matter what or in what way. And I can't help people when I have forgotten who it is who fuels that passion. I have gotten caught up in the waves of busyness and learning and discovery.

And I will call upon Your name

And keep my eyes above the waves

My eyes aren't above the ways. I can't even see the sun. How blind and ignorant I have become to my own pain and confusion.

That being said, I have come to the point where I cannot handle this on my own. I am not able to manage this by myself, but I don't know where to start in being able to get back on track. I will be looking into the school's counseling services. I've heard excellent things from other students who have benefited from their services and I believe this is what I need. I do not know how to handle myself anymore. 

I have lost sight of the me that Jesus sees. I have missed the passion that I had even a few months ago. I have lost sight of my Christ identity. It is going to be a journey to find it again, and it is going to be a struggle to repair my relationship with Christ again. But for me, I know that it will be much better to ask for help from the right people now than the wrong people then. 

So. Pray for me. Pray for the rest of this week on campus, and for the beginning of the Propel Women movement. 

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I do not have it all together, but God does.

I DO NOT HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER, BUT GOD DOES.

Emily E.

My ADHD Story

My name is Emily.
I am 19 years old, and I was diagnosed with ADHD in 1st grade. After meeting with a child psychologist for six weeks, my mother did extensive research on how to best raise a child with ADHD and how to best equip me to live my daily life. Lately, I have been feeling the need to share my personal experiences of living with ADHD.

First of all, what is it? What do all the letters stand for?
Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity
Disorder

I put the first two together because it is meant to read like that. (Really, it's supposed to read AD/HD) ADD is a lack or concentration and attention. ADHD has the added behavior of hyperactivity within the brain and nervous system. The Amen (Ah-men, not Ay-men) Brain Clinics have done extensive research on the brains of ADHD patients and have reconstructed the way it is studied, diagnosed, and treated. They have wonderful resources, including an online comprehensive test to help point out which type of ADHD someone has, as well as, the option of going through a 30 day plan that will guide someone through learning to cope with their personal type of ADD. I recently took the test, and I have a combination of Over Focused, Temporal Lobe, and Anxious ADHD.

"Over focused ADD is typified by cognitive inflexibility, trouble shifting attention, being stuck on negative thoughts or behaviors, worry, oppositional, argumentative, and a need for routines."
"Temporal lobe ADD is typified by a short fuse, misinterpretation of comments, periods of anxiety, headaches, and abdominal pain, as well as memory problems."
"Anxious ADD is typified by inattentiveness, distractibility, disorganization, anxiety, tension, nervousness, and a proneness to physical symptoms of stress, such as headaches and G.I. (Gastrointestinal) problems." All of these put together make a lot of sense now.

After I was diagnosed, my mother and my pediatrician decided to try flax seed oil pills to see if that had an effect on anything. I took those for about a year while my mother tried a new drug called Straterra to see how it worked and if there were any negative side effects associated with this new class of drugs. After a year of being on it and having great success with it, mom asked the pediatrician if we could try Straterra for me. I did very well on it, and I stayed on it for nearly 10 years. Last August, I stopped taking it (not because I wanted to, but because I kept forgetting, imagine that), however, I felt it was doing more harm than good on the days I did remember to take it.

After a few weeks, I had a really hard time breathing one night. We couldn't figure out what it was, and we thought maybe my asthma had resurfaced. I went to the doctor a few days later and she said everything sounded fine.Turns out I had my first anxiety attack. So on top of learning how to cope with no medication, I now had to learn how to cope with anxiety issues. It's been a...hard year and a half, but I think learning this all now in college is better than in the workforce where there is no sympathy for mental illness. I think this year and a half is just the beginning of my journey with this, and I already know so much more than I did.

I've learned how to describe ADHD to people without it. Think about your brain as a standard door. It opens one way to let things from the outside in, and the other way to let things from the inside out. For most people, this door closes appropriately; not so for people with ADHD. For people like me, the door never closes. There is a constant wave of stimuli flowing into our mind, and our mind is desperately trying to read it and react to it all while trying to focus on our own thoughts as well. Yes, this means our brain is working in what could be considered overdrive.

All the time.

Always. Forever.

And we can not make it stop.

ADHD is like have a Ferrari motor and bicycle brakes. Stopping just is not a thing.

This often leads to our brains working overtime while we are ready to go to sleep and be done for the day. Which means insomnia is quite normal. It could also mean that since the day has calmed down, our own personal, creative thoughts are able to thrive and we feel the need to work them out. I spent many nights awake writing, reading, and painting in high school. I did not have a regular sleep schedule until this semester, and even then there were some nights I didn't get to sleep until 3 am. And you know what? I was an absolute disaster those days. My inattentiveness was at an all time high on the days I didn't get much sleep. I am moody and much more susceptible to anxiety attacks when I am not rested.

People with ADHD also tend to jump from one project to the to the next without finishing the first project. Which means our work and living spaces may be a bit...cluttered. Or messy. Or it might just look like a disaster area. But please, please don't ever, and I mean EVER move something without telling us you are and where you are putting it. We remember where we put everything. Except our keys and ID's. We never remember where those go. If you find them, please tell us. And yes, we have every intention of completing every single project.

However, we also tend to hyper-focus on a single task. So while we may not work on just one project at a time, we will obsessively focus on one until we burn out and hit a wall with it. Then we will drift around trying to figure out what thing to do next. We might possibly get depressed at this point because we don't know why we can't make any more progress, and now we don't know what to do next. We start to feel a little lost. And that's okay. When I hit a wall, I get really tired and I become very lost and whiney. This is also where the anxious part comes in. If I am not doing something I see as productive, I get very, very anxious and worried that I have forgotten to do something. Which leads to an anxiety attack. This is not a problem for the majority of the people with ADHD, though.

Because our brain is constantly going, we will forget about a lot of things. And I mean, I will forget you answered my question literally three seconds after you answer me and I will ask you again. My poor roommate has reminded me to not forget the tea I made more times than I care to admit. My friends will remind me of what time we are meeting at least three times in a conversation so I only ask them again once.  My mother reminds me of things I need to do  a half dozen times and sometimes I still forget. I'll go to respond and my words will come out nonsense after I jumble up my actual response and my other thoughts. I get stuck on a word and stutter it until my words catch up and my mind slows down a hair. Sometimes I completely forget what our conversation is about...in the middle of the conversation.

I know this is not a comprehensive list of things ADHD people deal with, but it is what I have dealt with from day to day, and what I have seen in my various family members. (Also, all of us that have been diagnosed have very large, outgoing personalities, it makes family get-togethers very interesting). ADHD is a very personal, moldable thing, while the main symptoms are the same in most diagnoses, the things people struggle with vary greatly and can be incredibly personal. How someone copes with ADHD is also very personalized and what helps one person could further mess up another.

I am still learning how to cope without medication even after a year and a half, but I have figured out some things that personally help me. First of all, before anything else, you have to have the mindset that ADHD is not a disorder or a learning disability, it is an abnormal wiring of neurons in your brain. You have to believe that there is nothing wrong with you, you aren't broken or messed up; you have a different way of viewing the world. You have to not think of ADHD negatively, and think of it positively. I think that is the number one most important thing you can do when you decide to start positively coping with it.

Secondly, put yourself on a consistent schedule. Your brain needs routine more than a non-ADHD person. This has been my biggest help this semester. The first half, I really struggled with keeping a clear schedule and it affected my ability to get everything done and my ability to get everything done and my ability to focus on my work.(*Editor's note: do you see what she means? I purposely left that error in her writing.) This cost me some serious grades in my classes. But once I started writing out everything I need to do for the week, the day, the morning, night, my grades went up, my anxiety levels went down, and my sleep improved.

Third, change your diet. This is something that I've known, but haven't done, and I really need to start focusing on it. It is (or at least should be) commonly known that the food you put into your body affects how your  brain and body performs. With ADHD, it is imperative that you treat your body and brain right. Cut out refined and processed foods, sugary foods, up protein intakes, especially plant proteins. Also, I have heard that exercising daily helps as well. This sounds as it should be done in the morning before you start your day to get rid of any excess energy. Like I said, I absolutely need to start working on that aspect myself. Many times, the healthier your physical body is, the more likely your mind will be healthier.

Some of these things I have figured out on my own, some things my mother has shared with me, and others I have discovered through research. The past year and a half been all about discovery, and I have no doubt I still have much to learn. New research comes out all the time, and I am not in a constant state of being. But hopefully I've helped at least one person understand ADHD better, and maybe even understand themselves.

Constantly learning,
Emily E.

As a child, I was selfish, I was greedy, I was mad when things didn't go the way I wanted them to. That is my heart. That is my humanity, it is my nature to want everyone to work their lives around mine, because I am the most important, I am the most valuable person on the planet. I think everyone else is inferior. And that is how I normally think. That is how I normally live. That is my human nature. My sinful, twisted human nature. I don't inherently like people. I think people are ignorant and ugly and rude and annoying. People irritate me to no end. I defined love as people waiting hand and foot on me and appealing to my desires and then leaving me alone. I walk around with a perpetual face of murder. This is how I have been for a very long time.

But then I fell in love with Jesus, because Jesus fell in love with me, and then, not only did He fall in love with me, He showed me. He wooed me, and He pursued me. He ran after my cold, dead, twisted, sinful, hateful heart. And He won it. I accepted the gift of Salvation when I was six, but until a year ago, I played a game, I treated Him like I treated everyone else. I used Him when I needed Him. And He let it happen for so long. But when I saw, when I truly saw, not with my mind and my eyes, but with my heart and my soul, that Jesus loved me so incredibly, selflessly, and completely, it changed my entire life. Now, I see myself as nothing but equal to everyone else on the planet. I have lowered myself and to some point, I have elevated everyone else above me to a degree. I find other people enthrallingly intelligent, beautiful, kind, and pleasurable to be around. I have come to love people (because let's face it, some people are really hard to like). People are a minefield of knowledge and experiences and it's beautiful. I now define love as me giving and pouring out to people, and seeing others do the same in return. I pull out of myself and I give what I can. I learn, I research, and I give my knowledge as much as I can. Granted, I still walk around with a face of murder, but some habits are hard to break. And I am still learning how to live like this.

Love pursued me, loved wooed me. Love saved me. And I can't hold in this love I have. Because this love I feel, I can't not let other people have a chance at feeling it and being saved by it as well. The entire world deserves to know that Jesus loves them. All of them. All the Atheists, the pagans, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists. All of them do not worship Christ, because they do not know the truth about Him. The downtrodden, the needy, the weak, they do not know the power and strength and hope that love and Jesus has given me. It is by the hope and peace of God that I do not go insane, that my life is not worse than it is, that I do not torture myself because of all that goes on within me. It is that same peace that I wish to give to people.

That is the biggest difference in my life now. I want to give to others, instead of having others give to me. I want to invest in the lives of individuals, instead of ignoring them or meet them in passing. I want to reach out and minister to those who need it the most. I want to give my life as an investment into theirs. And I don't think I want anything in return. The joy of knowing that I have tried to help someone else, and maybe even succeeding in helping is all the payment I need.

Growing constantly, Giving continuously,
Emily E.

Things I Wish the Church Would Get Over and Talk About

There are a lot of things I see wrong with the church. And the more I talk to people here at Liberty, the more people I discover agree with me. I've also met some people who don't agree with me and think I'm a little too liberal in my ideas. But hear me out. I think Christians have set up this "fight or flight" mindset in that if the world around them doesn't agree with them or outright rejects them and their beliefs that they must either set up a wall of defense and stay safe within the church building, or they push their faith on nonbelievers even more and it turns into them setting out on what is essentially a Holy War against them. This seems ridiculous and completely unnecessary. So, here are some things I think the modern Christian needs to stop ignoring or making taboo and start talking about.

Your body is Not Dirty or Evil.
The human body was made exactly how it was meant to be made. God made your body, and no part of that is bad. It's your God given body, and God's Creation was made inherently good. Now, what people decide to do with that body may be wrong, and may be deviant from God's law, but your body is not wrong. Your body is a work of art, and I can only imagine how sad it makes the Artist when you think that it is not good or beautiful or wonderful.

This pertains to a lot of different aspects. Mostly it's this sex-negative mindset that so many Christians teach their children, not telling them the proper names of the parts of their bodies, and telling them lies about their bodies and other people's bodies. I don't know why this is even a problem or an issue. How can your child be comfortable with themselves if they don't even know the real name of the body in their pants? Sex-positive thinking does not say, "Yes, you can have sex whenever you want with whoever you want as long as you keep it safe." It says, "This is your body, these are the parts of your body, and this is how you take care of it. Your body is beautiful and there is nothing wrong with you. You need to make wise, educated choices and make sure you keep yourself healthy and out of danger." Sex-positive thinking is not about liberation, it's about education. You're going to spend your entire life living in your body, and that body is going to do the best it can to keep you alive and protected and give you the chance to live an awesome, wonderful life. But how can you live within something that you know so little about? If your kid has questions, answer them honestly, if you don't know, research. Then tell them in an age-appropriate manner.

Another aspect is in body image. Not only has secular society determined what we think is beautiful and acceptable for both men and women, but the church has followed this adamantly. Not so much in telling people what they should look like, but what they shouldn't look like. Because in some ways, formulating a list of "Do Not" rules, is a lot easier than sitting down and understanding what the Bible says is good for your body and for the Christian idea of body image. So we have so many people, especially women of all ages, who struggle with accepting their bodies natural structure, and who don't understand that everyone has a genetic tendency to a certain weight, and that there is no one healthy weight or shape or size or height. And it isn't just women, I see so many men at church and overhear so many conversations about how they are struggling to keep up with some new diet or work out regime that they have set up for themselves, and it is so disheartening to think that people are trying to push their bodies to be something they aren't. I am not saying it is wrong to want to be healthy or to make active choices in staying healthy. But when we get to a point where we end up worshiping a certain body type instead of worshiping the God who made those bodies, we end up with a power struggle for what has more of our attention.

The Rest of the World Does Not Have to be Held to Our Biblical Standards and Rules.
What???? This is preposterous! Of course, the world has to be held to our standards because our's are right and everyone else is wrong!!

Just...hush. Be quiet, you sound like a child when you say these things. Yes, they may be wrong, and they may not believe the same basic things you do, but guess what? Many Christians say that about other Christians!! In some cases, you have Christians who just inherently believe they are better than every other person in the world, and they think every one else who doesn't believe exactly like they believe is wrong and evil and going to be damned to hell for eternity. And that's an awful, toxic mindset. But it is there, and many of us seem to have a diluted version of this mindset in some way or another. We think that at the end of the day, everyone is still to be held responsible to the Biblical mandates and laws that we are held to. Quite simply, this is not the case. God gives us those laws and such that we may look different than the rest of the world and to shine a light in the darkness. No one but Christians are to be held by other Christians to these standards. No one. Not American society, not Muslims, not Atheists, not any one whom you do not specifically know is a Christian. If you know for a fact that they are a Christian, yes you can hold them accountable to biblical law. But if you aren't certain, then don't shame or condemn another person because they live a different life than you.

It is not our job to change the world's outlook on life as a whole. It is our job to focus on the one, the close, those who are already around us. It is not the job of the Christian or the church to target a specific part of our culture. We should not be trying to change Hollywood, or the LGBTQIA+ community, or the government, or any other group as a whole. One at a time, get close to people, make relationships, invest in individual lives. It's not about the most change you can make in the entire world, it's about the singular lives who are shown the beauty and grace of God's love.

Please Stop Oppressing People.
I know there are people out there that will say that the Christian church across the world is the one being oppressed, and worldwide, yes. But here in the West, we have literally no oppression. We are not being systematically murdered, we are not being discriminated against on a daily and widespread basis. We are not being denied basic human rights for our beliefs. As hard as it is to believe, over the course of history, the Western Church has been the cause of most of the oppression in the world, including the Crusades, slavery, and other minority struggles have been caused by the church and their desire to eradicate all other religions and cultures in the world. (White Man's Burden anybody?) We are not supposed to destroy other people's right to a pleasant and fulfilling life. We are supposed to show them the only true way to fulfillment and Salvation. The only way to do that in our world today seems to be to show love. More specifically, the love of Christ. Why is Christianity not characterized by the Love of Christ anymore? Why are we not known for our outreached arms and outgoing feet? Love is what everyone is desiring for, whether they realize it not, and the ultimate source of love is the Cross. We need to stop pushing shame, and start pushing Love and grace. That is what gets people's attention. Love and caring, not oppression.

Politics are Completely Different than Church Ordinances.
I am not going to bring up an argument about church and state, because I honestly don't know exactly what it is and I have had it explained to me to be several different things, and none of them make a lot of sense. But I do want to remind you, that the pastor can preach about the Bible's moral absolutes, of course, but when they try to get up and say that those moral absolutes should be forced upon the rest of the country or area in which you live through laws with a religious background, that's when we have a problem. A pastor's job is not to tell you how to think politically. It is the job of the pastor to shepherd the church and to guide them to the path of spiritual righteousness. How a person applies that to their political views is completely up to the individual, not the pastor. Please don't abuse the power of the pulpit.

The Country was not Founded Upon the Idea of Freedom of Religion Alone, and it was not Written Into our Constitution Sspecifically and Only for Christianity.
This country was not founded solely for the reason of Freedom of Religion. If anything, we must remember that our country did not fight for nor gain independence until 167 years after Jamestown was founded. This means that there was no correlation between the Pilgrims' reason for leaving England and the Founding Fathers reason for fighting for independence. Everyone who came over on the boats were long dead, and the biggest reason for the War of Independence was taxation. There are not connecting factors there. So please, stop misquoting history, it makes us all seem ignorant when we aren't.  Some of us actually paid attention in high school history class, and a lot more of us know how to look up the real facts on the internet. Our country was not even founded by what most of us would consider Christians. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Deists, who do not believe in divine providence, nor in divine sovereignty. So, that being said, many most likely did not think to ask God to bless our country, or asked God for anything, because Deism says that God made everything in Creation, then stepped away and has left it alone since then and has no direct involvement with the world.

The World Sucks, Stop Making it Seem Happy.
Look, the world, because it has been enveloped by sin (which is an embodiment of evil, which is the perversion of good), and because of that, the world is an awful horrid place. There is death, there is violence, there is sickness, poverty, greed, abuse. The world, not even our own specific version of our own personal world, is going to be better, or get happier, by becoming a Christian or donating to a church or a Christian organization. Pastors, do not lead the people, who have trusted you to tell them Biblical truth, to believe that which is not true. Show them the heartache and the pain they will feel having to leave family behind because they do not believe. Show them what happens when they decide to accept a gift of holiness and salvation. Show them what other Christians suffer through all over the world, and teach them the selflessness of Jesus to try to help them. Teach them prayer and supplication, teach them mercy. The world sucks, please don't sugarcoat that.

The World is Beautiful, Stop Making it Seem Awful.
The world, while full of evil, is still a part of the Creation of God, who made it in perfection and beauty. IF we look, the world is still full of that beauty. The mountains, the oceans, the fields. The cities, the countries, the villages, all of them are still full of happiness, whether we see it or not. In every place, weddings, births, birthdays are full of joy. Holidays are taken as days of rest and celebration. Throughout every day, there are people blessing other people, spreading happiness, spreading joy, spreading love. Even places where the joy and love of Jesus have never been told of, people have these things, because they set out to have these things. The flowers still bloom, the sun still rises, the forests still stand. The oceans still house an entirely different world, the entirety of the universe is still expanding, still growing, and still burning bright. There is so much we overlook sometimes, because we get so caught up in the bad news, the suffering. We need to remember that all around us, there are children learning to walk, babies learning to laugh, and couples celebrating 50 years of marriage.

I feel like American churches and pastors forget this all so often, and I pray that we don't continue this trend.
Emily E.

Beginnings, Endings, and Learning to Understand Yourself

At the beginning of the semester, I joined the Liberty University Debate Team. On Thursday, I officially left the team. I let go of an amazing opportunity and what some could consider wonderful practice for a future lawyer and I walked away. But why? Why would I dare to let such a thing go?

Because I learned. I learned about how Debate works, and I learned about myself and about how I would do in the sport. But I also learned about how I cope with things. I don't doubt for a single second that I wouldn't have been an excellent debater, I know I would have done amazing. But I also don't doubt that I would have worn myself out. And that is not something I want to do so early on. I already feel so worn down and stressed over everything and trying to balance both Debate and the amount of school work I have to do. After a month, I could not find a good equal balance between focusing my mind on school work and Debate work. I put more focus on school work, because ultimately, that is what is more important to me. And so I talked to my coach and I left. She understood what was going on and how much unhealthy and unnecessary stress I was dealing with and while she was upset that I was leaving, she wished me luck and it was a good parting. The team doesn't know, but since I'm posting this on Facebook later, they will now.

College is a time of learning. It's a time of learning more about the world around you, about the fields you are passionate and studying about, and about how you can interact and become a part of the world and an influencer instead of simply a consumer and a by-stander. It's also a time where you begin to truly learn about yourself and you begin thinking about who you are as a person, about your personality and your virtues and vices. It's where you learn about how you manage your own life and how you, and more specifically your body, deal and manage stress levels you aren't used to.

Last year after about a month being home from Vancouver, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was having trouble breathing. At first, I thought my childhood asthma had flared up and I was having an attack. I had a couple more episodes like this within that same week, and I treated it as asthma with nebulizer treatments until I was actually able to go to the doctor. They checked me out and told me it wasn't asthma, I was fine, they didn't hear any wheezing or general tightness in my chest. I went home and mom mentioned that maybe it was anxiety. I don't like to think of myself as being a relatively anxious person, but when I think about how I normally react to situations, it does make sense. That being said, having some form of an anxiety disorder, as I have not been to a doctor for this, but from my personal research have a pretty clear idea that this is what it is, has been relatively okay to manage. Over the past year, attacks have been minimal and have been rather easy to deal with. I understand that for me, focusing on fixing my breathing is the best thing (breathe in for a few seconds, hold, then let it out for longer and repeat a couple of times), and to tell myself that everything really is okay.

But in the past couple of weeks, I have realized that since I am taking Junior level courses, because I have transferred in with that many credits, I have a much heavier work load than I had previously anticipated. I have more required reading than I have hours in the day, and more need to study than I ever have before. And I was trying to balance that with Debate, and I just simply wasn't able to do so. If I focused on debate, a test was almost forgotten and performed poorly on. If I focused on school, which is what is and should be my  main focus as a student, I had no proof or evidence of my research to show. I think ultimately, I would have simply been a bad Debate partner and team member, and I would not have been able to healthily balance everything. And so now, I have time to actually do my school work, my breathing (which has been in a constant state of difficulty and just general tightness) is getting better, I'm focusing on keeping myself healthy and being the best me that I can be. Will I regret this choice to leave? Maybe. And I do miss the family I stepped into when I joined. Making friends is going to be harder now, but as many know, I make friends rather easily, not quickly, but easily. I am a people person by nature, and I thrive off of company. I don't doubt that my years here will be the best days of my life so far, and I am going to be learning even more about myself, the world that I so achingly love and long to adventure into, and the people who surround me.

Always learning.
Emily E.