You know that feeling when you wake up from a dream and want to go back, yet you know that you can't? Your life will go on as if you hadn't just been ripped out of an ideal world and into reality. That has happened to me five times that I can remember. Most times, It was a dream where I had a friend. Yet when I woke up, I was back in the cold reality that I didn't. I never understood why I didn't have friends. Maybe it was because I was around so few people, though probably it was because I just watched everyone and acted like I didn't need anyone. Looking back, I wish I had just been honest and at least looked lonely. Perhaps if I hadn't acted okay, people would have noticed that I wasn't. For nine years, I acted like I was okay, so no one knew that I was always lonely. Sometimes, I couldn't hide it, and I would just start crying. No one ever guessed what was truly wrong. Part of the reason I hid my pain was because it was so painful to show it. That all changed last week. I'll never forget those five days at Student Life like hundreds of other teens who were there.
The first day of camp, I knew God was at work, though I couldn't see how. All my life I had been timid and reserved. Part of that was from my personality and part of it from my family. I'm not going to say that God broke through my shell overnight. He had been working on me for years, teaching me that it's okay to be confident and take chances. That night, I worshiped, but with a guarded heart. When I went to bed that night, I had thought I hadn't changed at all, but God had already started to prepare me for what He had planned.
The next day, we went back to worship and again I guarded my heart, though from what I still don't know. Perhaps from emotion, or perhaps from letting God work in me. Either way, I couldn't stop Him from reaching past the barrier I had put up. That day was the first day of missions and our first mission site was at a park in a poor neighborhood where we were banned from sharing the Gospel. It sounds like a hopeless situation for a Christian trying to share the Gospel, but in truth it's not only the Gospel we needed to share. The most important thing to share is God's love. So we did just that. Broken, hurting kids came to the park and they left broken, but filled with God's love that we had poured into them. Just letting God pour His love out through us changed me; slowly.
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but the next day, I wasn't as guarded. I ignored the bright lights and noise and really praised God from my heart, lifting up my hands to Him, even though I had previously though people who did that were weird. That day, we had a new mission site: The Jubilee Christian Center. Even though a lot of the kids there were Christians, it was still just as refreshing to let God pour His love out through us. If you had told me a few days before that I would be up in front of a group of kids teaching the Bible and acting out scenes, I would have thought you were joking, but God had been changing me. Still, the biggest change was to come that night.
After the sermon that night (I just have to stop and thank Pastor Will for his part in all of this. His sermons really impacted me,) our youth group met for our nightly meeting to discuss the day. Midway through our meeting, our youth pastor asked us to bow our heads. We did and I'll never forget what happened next. He asked us to raise our hands if we were carrying a burden and it was digging into our shoulders. I raised my hand, then started crying, nine years of pain finally spilling out. And after that I'm completely healed. You probably just did a double take or you didn't even believe me. That's because that's not how it works. When we have years of pain, it takes a long time to heal. In fact, I couldn't even tell anyone what my burden was. I was also surprised to see that I wasn't the only one with burdens too heavy to bear. In fact, others had worse pain than I did, and even in my own pain, I was able to empathize with them and cry for their pain too.
The next morning, all of us were emotional. As we were in our last service of the week, I wrote these words in my notebook: "I took the first step. I won't go back." Since then, I've wanted to go back a few times, but those words kept me looking forward. That first step was being honest. Too many people put on their "church faces" when they go to church. The truth is that if we're just honest, people are willing to help. There are so many songs, sermons, and other media that tell us to bear each other's burdens, but we can't do this simple task. We pray for others who are hurting, while we keep our own hurts locked away. If we were just to tell others how we're really feeling, we would find that we aren't alone. We make up lies about why we can't tell the truth, but the real truth is that the truth is the only thing that can take away our burdens. And Jesus carried all of our burdens on the cross. He carried His own burdens as well as the burdens of all Jerusalem when He wept over it. His burdens were so great, he sweated blood, but He shared them with His Father as well as His closest friends. Everyone has burdens and the only way to start healing is to share them
If you are going through pain, you're not alone. I'm hurting. I'm broken. My burdens are too heavy to bear, but Jesus bore burdens we can't even begin to imagine. He was broken when Jerusalem wanted to crucify Him. He wept when Lazarus died. He went through the burden of carrying all of our sins and being forsaken by God. He knows our pain, and that's why He gave us the Church, to share our burdens and support each other in spreading the Gospel. The first step is to ask Jesus to help you bear your burden. The second step is to just be honest.
So now I'll ask you again, how are you really doing? Don't answer here. Don't leave any comments. Just get down on you knees, bow you head and tell Jesus that you're hurting. Tell Him about your pain, then just be honest when someone asks you how you're doing.