Healing
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The few times that I have had opportunity to tell my whole story to someone, and I mean the whole thing with all the bad parts and emotion that we usually leave out, I have received a response that caught me somewhat off guard. Several times the response I received was basically “how are you still so good after being through so much bad?” To which I thought, what are you talking about? I'm horribly sinful. That's not what they were saying though. What they were saying was that I hadn't allowed my hardships to break me, to make me hateful of the world or utterly selfish in my ways. What they didn't realize is that was exactly what happened.
My breaking point came around age 15-16; that time when hormones and ignorance are at their height and the change from child into adult is strange and difficult. I was living in Brussels, Belgium at the time. My step-mother had family there and my dad had gotten a job with a company that paid our way. My mom made it clear that she felt my little brother and I were abandoning her, to the point that he didn't want to go. We had been sleeping on the floor of her friends living room, however, so he didn't have a choice. In Brussels we could drink and party, and we did, a lot. It was during this time that I became infatuated with someone from our close group of friends. She liked me well enough but wasn't really interested in dating me. My fawning attention was enough to convince her though, and I used spending time with her as a way to distract me from the various types of pain and confusion I lived in.
The reason she didn't want to date me was because she was already engaged to someone from her home town, which I found out the hardest way possible. Around this same time I received word about Eric, my best friend of several years from back in Seattle. A few years may not seem like much, but it's a lot for someone who went to 14 different schools growing up (counting the ones I left and went back to). Eric had lived with muscular distrophy, in a house with a woman that I'm pretty sure wasn't his birth mother and several special needs kids that drove him crazy. He told me his dad was a Navy Seal who had died in combat, I don't know if that was true, but the point is he wasn't around anymore. Despite being stuck in a wheel chair and not having the strength to hold a full glass of water with one hand, or pick his head up on his own, Eric lived with a constant excitement. He knew he wasn't gonna be around forever, and he wanted to live life now; which mostly equated to us skipping school and hanging out together all day.
So there I was, in the middle of a foreign country (both literally and figuratively), not sure what I was doing or where I was going and certain that no one in the world cared, when I got the call. It was my mom, she was trying to find words when my cousin broke in, announcing suddenly “dude, Eric's dead.” He had gotten pneumonia, and just like that he was gone. I knew he wasn't going to live forever, and I hadn't even really expected to ever see him again, but that wasn't the point. This world sucked, and it was all God's fault. After all, he's the one that made it right? He's supposed to be in charge, but from what I'd seen he either didn't care at all, or else he wasn't the type of god that deserved worshiping. In that moment I broke. All the painful relationships, all the suffering, the nightmares and insomnia, the cold numb feeling, I was done. I walked dark streets with the cold rain coming down on me and I screamed at God, I wanted answers! I didn't just want to vent, I really expected Him to answer me somehow, some way.
Not long after that I stood on the roof of our 3 story house, starring down at the ground. Not because I wasn't sure of the decision I had made, but because I wanted to make sure that I did it right so that there was no chance of me surviving. My brother pulled me back though, and told me to go inside. I knew I couldn't do it with him right there, so I decided to wait for a better time. That time never came though, and instead something else happened. The numbness went away and it was replaced by a sort of peace, to this day I can't describe it or explain it.
All I know is that I stopped partying, I made up with the girl without any hard feelings, I said my good-byes, and left Brussels forever. Circumstances brought me to a military academy cut off from the world with other kids that had been through stuff a lot like me; who had made mistakes like me. It was a time of healing and brotherhood. I know now that it was part of God's plan for me, a sort of cleansing before He brought me in to know Him personally. Now I look back and can provide the old cliché “it was my trials that made me the man I am today.” I know the truth though, that it was God's own wisdom I received through it all, and through the trials before and since. The reason I'm not a broken man now isn't because I was able to persevere, it's because in His great mercy God allowed me to be broken, in order to build me up into what I was meant to be. He showed me what goodness is, and I've been running recklessly to Him ever since. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2), and our joy, and that's what James is talking about.
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