Lies of a Stranger

Not too long ago I was on my way to meet a few of my friends for dinner when something so odd and a bit hurtful happened to me. I was stopped at a stoplight and this woman looked at me and said, "Oh my God, what happened to you? I feel bad for your parents." As anyone would be, I was a bit taken back by this comment. I didn't really know how to respond aside from just saying, "excuse me?" That is when she responded with, "You are really ugly."

The truth is that I don't try to hard to be the most beautiful human in the world. To be quite honest I often envy my friends for how gorgeous they are but at the same time outer beauty has never been something that I value too highly. I value being comfortable in my skin and living life the way I was created to be. That has never been something that has been hard for me to do because I find such high value in human beings. However, these words brought me down and brought me down hard.

There is one part of me that realizes that the human being who said this to me does not know me. She does not know my life or what I do for a living. She has absolutely no clue who I am or who I aspire to be. Then there is the human part of me that realizes words hurt. This woman may not know me, but she still took a hard punch at me. The truth is that I can be the most confident human being in the world but I still have fears of how the world sees me. I don't want to be viewed as the most beautiful human in the world but I also don't want to be called ugly. The truth is that words hurt and they can really do damage to the soul.

This situation hasn't ruined my life or brought me down every day, but it has challenged me a little bit. It has challenged me in what I value and in who I am to an extent. The truth is that I still struggle with comparing myself to the other women in my life and even those who I have never met before. I constantly struggle with not being as beautiful or talented as them. The moment that I start having those thoughts is when I hear this woman's resounding voice in my head.

This scenario has been much more real lately as I hear all of my guy friends talk about all these smoking hot girls. They talk to me about my friends and how beautiful they are. I have always been one of the guys in these situations. They feel comfortable telling me how great all my friends are and how they would love to go on dates with them while I am left here thinking, "Why don't they notice anything about me? Why is it always someone else?" I sit there hoping that maybe they will throw a compliment my way instead of telling me why everyone else is so great.

In no way am I saying that I am not beautiful or that I don't have things going for me, but I will say that my pride has been hurt a little bit lately. The struggle of trying to find myself in the midst of constant lies is definitely real. The reality is that I continually have to remind myself of who I am and the woman that I am growing into. That constant reminder is exhausting and sometimes even unbearable, but to fully give up is even more exhausting. There will be many challenges and fights about who I really am, but I am confident that I can overcome and win those battles.

The Fear of Being an Adult

When I was a kid I wasn't much of a fearful child. There were never any monsters under my bed or in my closet. The trees outside during the storm were always trees to me never any giants trying to get in to take me away. The fears of a child were illogical to me even with my never ending imagination. Clearly I was afraid of things, but fear itself was never something I was familiar with. There was always a logical explanation and through that explanation any ounce of fear disappeared.

Today I still don't fear much, but fear has definitely become more of a reality to me. It's not of anything dumb like spiders or snakes but I have a great fear of loss. I don't fear natural loss but I do fear losing what is closest to me. I fear what is not logical or what I cannot make sense of. I fear the things that I have no control over and the pain that comes along with those situations.

Over the past few weeks this has become more and more real to me. I have been walking in the midst of fear and have been paralyzed by it. This fear has taken me to a place where I do not have any words and have no ability to communicate. It keeps me from being able to truly see what is going on in the world around me and has stopped me in my tracks. The worst part of all of it is that I don't really know how to overcome the fear right now. I don't know the best way to talk about it or to work through it. All I know is that I hate this feeling more than anything else in the world.

A few weeks ago I found out that a person who is dear to me has been diagnosed with cancer. When I first heard the news I was in shock. After the shock had worn off, I went through the the typical stages that I go through when I am in a time of crisis. First, I made sure that everyone else was dealing with it and helped them through their thoughts and feelings. Then, I removed myself from everyone else and tried to "handle" it and "be strong" just like always. Finally, I hit the point of where I am at now where I see the importance of processing, but have no idea how to.

The final stage of crisis for me is where all the fear kicks in. I am fearful of talking about it but also about not talking about it. I am fearful of all the possible situations and not knowing outcome. I am fearful of not feeling any pain at all and being numb. These are the fears that we start to face as adults. We start to realize that the world around us is real and that there is true pain in the world. It is at times like these that I would give anything to have childish fears. I would do anything to come face to face with the monster under the bed or the angry tree that lives outside my window, but that just doesn't come with adulthood. As for now I must grab my shield and my sword and go at life with everything I've got because these fears aren't going to back down and I'm never going to let them destroy me. Here's to fighting on and moving forward.

Ownership

I am rare from my friends when it comes to communication especially with emotions or feelings. I have no issue talking through situations or telling others that how a specific situation makes me feel. When it comes to this, I am definitely the black sheep out of all the humans that I hang out with.  However, it’s who I am and through it I am continually growing.

One way that I have been growing in this lately is through understanding the concept of ownership in relation to emotions, thoughts, and ideas. There have been a few scenarios this year where I have started to lose myself because of my lack of taking control or owning up my own situations. I am not just talking about my actions or how I have responded in a situation, but I am talking about not letting other people take control when it is not their place to be in control.

It is easy as human beings to allow others to take control in situations. We don’t like conflict and we don’t like to be in scenarios where we are uncomfortable. In some cases this isn’t an issue, but it definitely can become a problem. We let what others do or don’t do to us control the way that we respond or react. We don’t want to respond in a certain way because we don’t want to hurt them. We stop looking out for ourselves because it isn’t comfortable or because it challenges us and to be honest we would rather not deal with it. When we allow others to take control of situations and we don’t own up to what we should, we are no longer in control of our own emotions or feelings.

It might seem like an easy way out at the time, but the reality is that we are greatly disadvantaging ourselves from an opportunity of growth. We have to be real and we have to be honest about what is actually on our minds. Silence does nothing but sets us back and keeps us from becoming who we were meant to be. We learn and grow through community and community only happens through communication.

All these thoughts seem a bit jumbled and mix matched, but all I want to say is that our thoughts and emotions belong to no one else. We owe it to ourselves to take ownership of what is truly ours. No one else deserves to hold that over our heads. Here’s to being real and to being challenged.

Process and Progress

This time of year is never easy for me and I often times get upset that it still isn't getting easier. It has been almost nine years since my world was turned completely upside down. The truth is that some great things came with that but with the great also came some giant suitcases that I am still lugging around today. To carry this load for nine years has been exhausting and to be quite honest it sucks. However, every time I think that I have gotten rid of part of the load it's just filled in again with something else.

I wouldn't be shocked if my friends get sick of me around this time of the year. I get sick of me around this time of the year. Next Sunday (April 26th) is the nine year anniversary of the Taylor van accident. On the night of April 26, 2006, there was a van of nine people heading back to Taylor from Taylor Fort Wayne and a semi going northbound crossed the median into the van. Out of the nine people, five were proclaimed dead on the spot. 

As time has gone on, I have healed from the grieving of friends and people that poured into my life but as time has gone on more things have been uncovered that I have to work through. It was one of the hardest times of my life to go through the loss of people that I looked up to and that poured into me in their own ways. The grieving of the loss of people was definitely something that took time and I was challenged by, but I never thought past that. I never thought of my family's involvement and the affect that it would have on us as a family. I definitely never thought that it would be something that I was struggling with nine years later.

The truth is that the accident itself changed my family in such a radical way. Before all of this happened my relationship with my father was terrible. I resented him for not being enough in my life and for always pouring into the students at Taylor way more than I felt he was pouring into me. That night he had been following behind the van but stopped off at the exit before he got home which pushed him further back. Had he been following them he could have been killed himself or witnessed something that would have scarred him even worse. This was a dramatic mood change for me in regards to my father. I could have lost him that night and even through all the resentment and pain I wasn't ready for that. This opened up a new road to recovery of a broken relationship and a lifetime of my own guilt that I had to sort through.

Aside from the relationship with my father, the accident changed the way that my family was in general. Before the accident, my dad loved his job at Taylor but because of the accident lots of things changed at Taylor. There were a lot of position changes in the administration that changed because of it and happiness for my father was very few and far between. Parts of the institution that always felt like a family to me were no longer filling that role in my life or in my own family. There was bitterness that was built up and that was passed on. To this day there is still bitterness when the subject comes up and it honestly is the most draining thing to go through. I love Taylor and I love the experiences that I had there, but sometimes that's hard to separate through the pain that I am still dealing with through this.

People always say that it gets better with time. That's not always the case. Things can be better with time, but the truth of the situation has to be admitted along with the desire to fix it. The truth is that the reason that parts of this time are still so intertwined in my life is because there is still bitterness wrapped up in the pain. There are things that I need to forgive, but forgiveness is easier said than done. This night changed my life and without it I can't say that I would have ever came to God, but it also is still a process for me. It's still changing me and it is still a challenge around this time. They say that it takes about seven years to grieve for one person and I have five along with the struggles of a family. Every year I know that I am one step closer to the closure and the end of the process, but I know that I have a long way to go. 

Confidence as an Adult

Most people would say that I am a confident human being. As I have thought more about it, I too would say that I am a confident human. I am confident that I can accomplish great things, but I am also confident that others can accomplish greater things. I am confident that I will find love one day, but I am more confident that everyone else will find love before me. I am confident in who I am, but I am more confident in who those are around me. I am a confident human being, but I am confident in all the wrong things.

This hasn't always been the idea in my head, but it seemed to be a developing thought as I got older and became an "adult." The reality of the matter is confidence as a child looks much different than it does as an adult. Children are allowed to show vulnerability and are allowed to be honest about how they truly feel. Once we hit adulthood the idea of vulnerability is thrown out the window. We have to be put together. We have to have an idea of where we are going. We cannot let others see our weaknesses. We will not be consoled for the lack of confidence that we have and often times are stomped on because of it.

The truth of the matter is that I do have a great group of friends that surround me and build me up. However, I feel that there are those certain areas of my life that I lack confidence in still. There are plenty of areas where I have continued to fail and building confidence up after that seems almost impossible. I look around and see how those who surround me are so put together and have everything in order and it brings me down a little bit each time.  I feel like I can't be open and talk about these things because it's not something that we do as adults. We don't talk about our fears of never finding the love of our lives or never fulfilling our dreams. If we talk about these things, we are weak and we haven't truly hit adulthood.

The question therein lies is how to remove the displaced confidence I have put on others and place it upon myself. The first challenge is always getting the problem verbalized, step one complete. The next step is to make some changes to my own mindset. With that being said, I am going to take on confidence. It's time to go head to head with my fears and destroy this beast that has been destroying me for so long.

The 2015 Truth

As a year ends it is common for most humans to think of all the things that they want to achieve for the next year. New years brings new resolutions and new goals. This year I want to focus on rediscovered truths.

The first truth that I have rediscovered within the year of 2015 is true forgiveness means seeing people where they are truly at rather than where you want them to be. We all have our faults and we will all fail over and over again. We are human and that is a given. However, that does not mean that we do not set standards for those who surround us. We want what is best for those people who mean the most to us and we set the bar high.

The truth is that there is nothing wrong with setting the bar high, but there is a problem with having unreasonable standards when those achievements aren’t met. As we love and care for the people who mean the most to us in our lives it is important to know that they may not follow through with the commitments that they make to us. It is even more important to know that if we don’t communicate those standards that they definitely might not follow through with the unspoken. We can’t count on people to always read our minds and we have to be gracious in the times we are let down.

With that being said, as I walk into this year of 2015 the first truth that I have been reminded of is the truth of forgiveness. Forgiveness is possible in the midst of pain and necessary for the growth of our downfalls. We will never be able to grow with the other humans of our life if we do not learn how to forgive and especially if we do not learn how to forgive within the standards that we set for other people.

Here’s to another year and to learning about grace and forgiveness in a new light. It’s time to set aside all of those high standards and see people for who they really are. It’s time to grow within relationships and to be challenging with a humble heart. Let’s go truth 2015, I’m ready.