Eight Years Ago...

A while ago, for a blog run by Durham Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, I wrote 500 words under the title, ‘Why I am a Christian.’ But I found that 500 words didn’t cut it. It couldn’t express the struggle, the confusion, the resistance I had to following Jesus, to letting myself surrender to his call in my heart, to be fully free and changed in Him. It did not express the pain of bullying, and the pain of be becoming a bully, of how I victimised others and myself. It could not get to the depths of my emotional recklessness, the seething anger borne out of intense insecurity in my identity. Therefore, I don’t think it did Jesus justice. He deserves more glory than 500 words can express.

This is going to be long. Find the short version here.

Eight years ago, I gave my life to Christ. An imperfect girl finally realised that living a good life and trying to be perfect wasn’t enough and could never be enough, and that I could never be enough no matter how hard I tried. Struggle didn’t end at that point, in fact I think it really kicked off then, because when I rejected God, reading his word, prayer, his power over my horrific sin for the next few years, I did it with eyes wide open and a heart that wanted to be hard. I suppose this is my story.

Most people assume that a girl like me, enthusiastic to the point of insanity and who currently desires to work full-time in a church or mission context, must have been brainwashed by her parents into this Jesus thing. Truth is, there was Christian influence around me from my mum and from some of my extended family, but I didn’t enjoy it. I went to half-term Bible clubs and did the worksheets for the prizes, not because I was enthralled by the stories. And when the prizes were Bible stories I didn’t let my mum read them to me – no way! I avidly remember telling my mum exactly what I thought about church: dull, boring, full of old ladies. And when I didn’t get the answers right, couldn’t prove myself, I kicked off. Being a church kid was about being a good kid. Bring your bible, get a point. 10 points and you get extra sweets. Learn a memory verse (in the car on the way), get a point, get 5 points and you get a prize. I was in church because I wanted rewards for my good acts.

Aged 9, I remember being moved by a story told to me at church. I went home and hid behind the sofa. I prayed a prayer of sorts and thought ‘job done.’ I’d done the ceremony. I was a Christian, right? I believed that I really was a Christian and reassured myself with all my knowledge of the Bible. But my heart was bruised. Bullied from around the same age, I retaliated with violence. I remember dragging kids by the hair, thumping them with books, hitting with those rubber skipping ropes. It was satisfying, getting someone back who had done you wrong. I didn’t understand the gospel message – Jesus forgave every sin, theirs and mine, and calls us to forgive. It might be hard for a 9 year old to even contemplate this, but in my moments of anger, where was Jesus? He was for Sundays and he helped me win prizes.

Bullying led to rocky friendships, constant suspicion that I wasn’t liked, doubt in my abilities which led to an unhealthy attitude of perfectionism. In my Year 6 SATS I had to be seated in a separate room because I would get so anxious of everyone around me writing and think that I was useless, driving me to panic attacks and tears. I can’t even count the amount of times I walked out of class to find a corner where I could be alone and breathe. I had friends, but it took a long time. Some of the friends from the past had become those who bullied me, or bullied my new friends. But I was clever enough, and I was striving to go to that better school. I also danced, and I was good at that, better than them at least, and that’s what I pursued. I was in pantomimes and did auditions for the West End. That’s where my hope lay. I wanted to be celebrated.

I moved to secondary school, a girl’s grammar school, hoping that I would change now. No one would remember who I was from my first school. I didn’t have to get angry here, I just had to work hard and make friends and it sounded so simple. No boys around to make me feel even more uncomfortable. This school taught dance in PE, even better. I saw that this was a place where I could thrive.

Within a month or so, I realised that I couldn’t just change. I was already frustrated that I was coming bottom in maths – why were these girls all so clever? Why didn’t I know how to do long division at all (I still don’t know how to do it!)? The friends I had made might have accidentally left me behind to go to lunch and I would have a paranoia party – ‘They left me deliberately, they don’t like me, how could they treat me like this?’. I wallowed in my own self-pity and sunk down deep into insecurity again. It wasn’t long before I became the bully. I was tired of feeling insecure and paranoid, of having no one to sit with at lunch and not even getting the grades I wanted to make up for it. I wrote a note ‘I hate you’ and put it in a jumper for her to find when they came out of the canteen. That will show them. I used one of the only forms of social network we had back in 06’ (Stardoll), made an anonymous account, and wrote hate. I used school e-mail, too. I even remember getting people’s passwords and checking if they had also misused their IT class to write e-mails to one another to check that they weren’t about me. I was sly, but I was caught. It was obvious.

You can’t force people to forgive a bully. I would never have called myself that then. In my eyes, I was the one being hurt by people neglecting me. Really, there was a wider heart issue. Even at church, I wouldn’t speak in case I got answers wrong, wouldn’t even read aloud. I was no good. I carried on dancing and those extra activities in a place where I was successful got me through all my bad homework. I still would have called myself a Christian. In RE I knew the answers, answered the debates. I had it all at my fingertips, all except what it was like to be in relationship with the living Jesus, the living Lord, the Saviour who forgives and transforms hearts. I was so much further than I realised.

To top off a first few terms of secondary school, I attempted to strangle a fellow classmate. It was a trivial issue. Every year 7 class did a dance for our Gym & Dance display. I wanted my group to have the best section in our dance. Another girl wanted to take control. Dance was my area, I was good at it, her thoughts are wrong, why is she messing with this? I got angry over a few weeks, and then I exploded. I ran away in such shame and guilt. After an act of violence, from throwing a pen or storming out of class to the more extreme incidents, there was always shame and guilt and tears and a lot of running to cold, dark corners or the end of the field where I would be alone. Sometimes I tried to call out to God but he never came. He didn’t fix me so why should I call on him? Why did he make me like this? I was trying to control myself and it wasn’t working, and now everyone hates me even more, they are scared of me, the few friends I might have made won’t talk to me now. Yet I also couldn’t deny that again, getting my own back was satisfying. A moment of violence was also a strange pacifier for all my insecurity.

I was invited to go to a Christian conference by a friend, and I said yes, mainly because at 12 the idea of a holiday in Butlins where there were water slides sounded fun. I thought I had the Christian thing sorted, anyway, so it was no big deal. It was very different to what I was used to. The meetings had long periods of standing up and singing, which was fine for me as a performer. I quite enjoyed it, apart from the fact that all the songs were new and I didn’t know them. I think the unfamiliarity of these songs meant that when I did sing, I sang for the first time in years actually having to think about what I was singing about God. I learned over the first few days to truly delight in singing these amazing words. I took notes in the talks as I always did at home, not that I ever really looked at them again. But, it was really uplifting.

It got to day 3 or 4, I can’t remember. It was a Tuesday evening, drawing to the end of the 5 days, and I didn’t want to listen to the talks anymore – I had friends and these friends had sweets. Sitting on the floor, chatting in hushed tones in a circle, we weren’t really being told off. It was quite the rebellion for this 12 year old. There was paper at the back of the room and we were told to go and write down behaviour that we wanted to change. We were being encouraged to be more Christ-like, yet I walked over, saw other people’s ideas and judged them. I don’t gossip like they do, I’m kind to my sister. I sat down, thinking that I was good enough. I didn’t really understand what it was to come broken, helpless and sinful at the cross of Jesus, overwhelmed by my own sin until I sat down. It flooded onto my shoulders and I spent the next few minutes (though it felt like ages) scribbling down everything I could think of.  My anger being the big issue, but then it rumbled down into the small, everyday ways in which I rejected God. I saw the extent to which I was running away. Whenever I sat back down, something else struck me and I ran back to write it. 

It wasn’t just that I realised I wasn’t a good girl, it was that I realised for the first time how much I needed grace. I needed Jesus to help me overcome all of this. He did to overcome all of this, for me, the girl who thought she had it sorted and didn’t need anything but a good knowledge and religious looking actions to be right with God.

The room gathered and we ran through this piece of paper, symbolising Jesus breaking the chains of our sin. I was elated like nothing else. People sang and I grabbed bits of paper and ripped them apart. It was an inexpressible joy and freedom that I suddenly felt. The best dance performance, the loudest applause, never topped it. When we got back to our chalet, the people I was staying with asked me, ‘So are you a Christian now?’ after I had chatted excitedly with them about what had happened. I paused. I realised that I actually hadn’t been a Christian before I had grasped all of that. It shocked me, but thrilled me. I answered a confident ‘yes’ and was welcomed into the family by a hug that I won’t forget.

Not everyone has such a moment to speak of, and it is amazing to see how that moment when I was trying to be cool, not listen, actually became a moment where I grasped the gospel, the 'good news', I had been hearing from childhood for the first time. It was the moment where I saw the folly in my goodness from God’s eyes. But it didn’t change me instantly. I’m not sure I leaped home and told everyone like so many in the Bible seem to do when they encounter Jesus like that. I’m not even sure I told my mum! It was a slow slog from there. There were too many issues that still seemed too big for Jesus to handle. I wanted to read my Bible, but there was still a wrong attitude. I read verses on anxiety and anger and found them patronising, and to be honest read the Bible to confirm that I was still good, doing the right thing, plodding along nicely.

I still struggled with anger. I was in counselling, and then I was in therapy. I didn’t understand why I still struggled. I had a real faith, but real doubts too. Puberty, hormones, endless streams of problematic friendships and my own perfectionism were a constant battle. I struggled to see how Jesus could help me if my friends were ignoring me, or if a friend was self-harming, or if I still couldn’t stop having panic attacks in class. It was a turbulent time, and I was still very insecure. Jesus wasn’t a quick-fix 'solution': I still had lots to learn and understand.

June 2009: I reached a tipping point. A netball game got a bit intense. I was losing, I was forced to accept my failure and the failure of my team, and a friend who had been causing me a lot of anxiety was on the winning team and loving it. She jibed in jest, but I snapped. How could she? Did she know what her problems were putting me through? I ran at her, there was a violent attack that I mercifully can’t remember the details of. I ran to the empty PE cupboard, bright red, face hot with anger and shame. I cried, I was shaken, I hated myself, I hated this anger that seemed to be controlling me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started banging my head against the wall, contemplated self-harm momentarily, but it ended on my knees. I was praying for forgiveness. I knew that I needed a saviour because my efforts to be good, to be god in my own life and take control, were failing.

In all my violent incidents, or insecurity, I never blamed myself or saw myself as a problem. It was always other people that triggered me. The people around that knew all the answers when I didn’t, or a comment made which tipped me over... Why could I never take the blame? I had to write reports of my actions and it would always start with a scapegoat clause, an attempted defence. It wasn’t just me. By deflecting all my problems as other people’s problems, I had in my eyes escaped calling it ‘sin’, that word of dread. But it was, and now I knew it. I was crushed. I was stuck dumb. I was so ashamed. I saw that for years people had been scared of me – the only friends I made I eventually let down somehow. I recommitted to following Jesus, and it wasn’t on the agreement that I was fixed up or would fix myself up, but on the agreement that I would surrender.

I faced girls turning away from me, and kindness from a few who took pity and didn’t follow the crowd (still great friends today!). My summer was my ‘summer of darkness’. No friends to hang out with, six weeks of family time and lots of visits to Shakeaway! In the nights I read my bible and prayed with more understanding. I prayed for those that I thought had hurt me, as Jesus commanded us to do. I prayed that I might forgive as he forgave me. I didn’t expect that a few weeks into the next school year it would really happen. I was reconciled to Jesus and reconciled to my friends. My heart, too, was slowly changing. Within a year, the counselling and therapy was no longer needed. It was nothing to do with me. I couldn’t change myself – I had been trying for years and falling flat. He alone orchestrated the change in my heart by His Spirit as I read his word with open eyes and a longing to know more of Jesus. He alone could rescue me from the depths of my insecurity, inadequacy, anger, anxiety.

On a bus one day in October, having seen how God had completely turned my thinking about and changed my heart, my thoughts turned to baptism. Before, it was a weird ritual, but now it had a whole new meaning, and I wanted to proclaim that I was died and raised with Christ, raised to a new body, made a new creation because of his death. I wanted to proclaim his victory over sin and death in my life and for others to see and be encouraged. January 3^rd, 2010.

Those are the 'big bits', I guess, although that is only just the beginning. I continue to grow and change and fail and fear and pray and stumble and pray a lot more... and fall again. I’ve taken the gospel message out, the good news has been proclaimed with my words and hopefully in my life. It’s why I took a year between school and University to work for free, live on little, so that I could share the love of God and the message of Jesus’ death to the most marginalised in society. It’s why I am always rushing around at University and am so glad to be taking on roles in CU at Durham next term. What good news we have to share!

It’s why I want to give my whole life to Jesus. We owe a debt of love we can never repay. We are still weak and helpless, yet our sins are remembered no more and we are clothed in His righteousness – set apart for His glory. We have been adopted by the Creator of the Universe, who calls himself Father. This will hurt, this will cost. This will be worth it.

But I echo Paul in my life (with trembling lips): ‘But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings...one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press onwards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.’

And I follow Jesus, who calls me to ‘Go’.

To Him be the glory.