How He Loves/How I Love

Before I became a Christian and started a relationship with Christ, the most important thing to me was being loved by other people. My parents are divorced, and for a long time I was totally fine with it because I was super young when it happened and I didn’t have any delusions that it was somehow my fault. It was only as I got older that I realized how burdened I really was. It was hard enough seeing that most other kids my age were having a great time in their traditional two parent homes, and it was only made worse having to deal with my own feelings of abandonment and the stress I felt at home. My mom and dad did a pretty decent job of pretending to be totally cool with each other until sometime when I was in high school, when the masks came down and it became clear that my mom could barely tolerate my dad and my dad lived too far away from us to work up enough energy to care. My mom had remarried and my stepdad was my primary father figure until we moved into separate houses—he stayed in Chicago and we moved out into the suburbs, and then I only saw him a few times a month. Also, I was a pretty sensitive kid and got teased a lot at school, suffering a lot of that surprisingly long-lasting kiddy trauma. Since I cried really easily, people would be mean to me on purpose because they knew it would make me cry. Even the people I considered my friends in elementary school periodically told me that they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. Once it was because I apparently laughed too loudly, and for the next several months I tried to laugh quietly or I didn’t laugh at all. Eventually, because being at school was difficult and being at home was somehow worse, I shut down emotionally in the fifth grade, at least visibly. I glared at everyone and rarely smiled, hardly laughed, and often ran off to the bathroom to cry where no one could see me. I was really hard on the outside, but underneath I still wanted to be loved by people, and my emotional state only got worse when it seemed that I endured countless rejections and hurts at the hands of friends and family members. When people did try to reach out to me, I was too sad and angry to really talk to them. I was worried that if I shared, they would just run away from how emotionally damaged I was. This entire time I was in Christian schools. I think my mom just thought education quality would be better. Because of this, I knew about Jesus and for some reason unknown to me I even believed in Him. But He was just too distant to be of any use to me. I wasn’t even sure if He had fully accepted me because I let my relationships with people in my life who had hurt me influence my relationship with Jesus. I kept “going back to check” that Jesus had heard me ask Him to save me and that He hadn’t rejected me. I had no real faith at all. Jesus began working in my heart when I transferred to a different Christian school. My mom took a job at the school, which required that every member of the family attend church every Sunday and Wednesday. It was through these mandated meetings that Jesus finally had a chance to reach me. I even started going to those Christian summer camps for kids where you’re in a church service like, every third hour of the day. It was at one of these camps that I finally sat down with Jesus and told Him that I just accepted the fact that He had saved me, and that He wasn’t going to hear me come back to ask for salvation again. I was just going to believe His promise that once I asked for it, salvation was mine. That was when I finally began to be changed by Jesus. I shared this portion of my testimony during my graduation ceremony from the school I’d attended from sixth to twelfth grade, and afterwards a ridiculous number of people said to me various phrases along the lines of, “So that’s what happened to you.” Not even lying, a music teacher I had once was brutally, annoyingly honest with me when she told me that she honestly thought I wanted to kill her on several occasions; that’s how angry I looked. Thanks, Mrs. White. I appreciated that. I can’t pretend that since seventh grade I’ve gotten over all of my insecurities or kicked all of my bad habits. I still struggle with practically demanding love from people when I don’t trust them enough to love me on their own. Sometimes I get moody or angry when I feel like I’ve been shut out by someone that I would let in. But one of the most important things I’ve learned as a Christian is that my identity is in Christ and not in my relationships with anyone else. No matter what happens with the other people in my life, Jesus is always going to be here for me and He’s never going to turn me away. There really can be no other explanation for the ways that I’ve changed over the years other than divine intervention. I’m one of the meanest people you will ever meet, because I had so many years of practice sitting angrily in a corner and thinking evil thoughts. I’m only nice because Jesus has worked in me to be nice. I hated people, family members included, for years, but Jesus loves people, and now I have the capability to love people, too. Especially since I’ve come to GCC, Jesus has been teaching me crazy things at a ridiculous volume. I can honestly tell you that I have never been so happy in my life. And I’m sharing this with you all because I want you to see and understand how Jesus has completely transformed me.