my heart bleeds for them.

Do we hear their crying?
I just want to be real.

The music from the orchestra filled the room.  Beautiful notes melded together into song.  I looked at the people around me.  So many eyes filled with pain.  So many eyes filled with sadness.  I happened to look next to me.  Her legs had huge slices cut out of them like a machete had been taken to her thighs.  They were so deep.  They were healed but so deep.  It cut my heart like a knife. Those cuts had purposely been put there.  She covered her legs every week after that.  Her face screamed out for acceptance.   My heart bled that night.  

See, another kid from my local high school overdosed yesterday.   All the changed profile pictures on Facebook of another girl who committed suicide a few weeks ago, all the kids struggling with a car accident that took a seventeen year old boy three months ago, and the sweet girl last week, so outgoing and crazy popular that everyone loves that shared with me just how bad she is hurting in ways that no one could even imagine from looking at her… it’s crazy.  One of the kids at my church the other day was hanging out in the hallway during Sunday School and I was talking to him, inviting him to youth group... one of the outcast kids and my day was made.  I wished I had all day to just sit there and talk with them.  All these kids have a place in my heart.   God’s been showing me so much lately just how much I lack love.  I need more love. 

I’ve been busy training for a national meats competition, flying out for a big music audition, my final semester of high school, volunteering at the local hospital, getting ready to coach the new meats kids, spending as much time as I can with my family, an hour drive one way to my church and 4-H is keeping me busier than ever… but these kids, their texts that have me praying for them countless times when I am driving places - it’s changing me.  I greatly need God.    I want to be a lighthouse.   

When I’m praying for kid after kid after kid and after a while, there is no change.  It gets hard and easy to get discouraged… and I was reading the Bible and I just started seeing how Jesus encourages us to keep going. <33 He was rejected.  He was turned away.  But, I also see God working.  I see Him at work.  I’m watching lives being changed.. not me not me.  BUT GOD working.

And it’s enough to leave me with tears in my eyes.

Like when my meats team wanted to pray with me before our national competition on Saturday.   Like when one of my ministry kids said, “I just want to talk about God.  Your God”.  When one of them texts me and says “So it’s been one year today since I stopped cutting.”  When another says, “I have been able to eat today without throwing up.  My stomach is allowing food again after all that time of me trying to starve myself.”   It sends me to my knees.  I need God.  I need love.  I want more love. 

I was on my way to pick up my brother from school yesterday and just praying these kids, I just realized more and more and more… I need more love.   I care so much for these kids and as I pray for more love, I just want to be real.  I want to be fully transparent. 

So yesterday, I called up one of my ministry kids to chat for a few minutes, I talked to another one for a couple minutes during her lunch break today, I popped two letters in the mail today, and there were so many hugs at 4-H last night it made my whole week.  I love these kids so much.  I realize just how much when I started out I wanted to be their friend, I realize just how much I needed them… and how much God is using my prayer for more love to be answered through the people the world would cast aside.  They are treasures.   

The world is casting aside the outcast… those who are beautiful in their own way, made by the beautiful hand of a loving Creator… why are we standing back?  Jesus calls us to go into the world, be a light, and love on people.  How else will we share His Love?  That is what I am learning.  The world is holding them at arm’s length and Jesus calls us to go in and pull them into our arms.   I guess I have just realized in the past year just HOW SHORT life is.  We don’t have much time at all.  In fact, sometimes we only have one week with these kids, two months, twelve …

Because maybe even one hug, one smile, one text can save a life.  In Jesus, we are absolutely loved.  The Gospel tells us we are valued and significant.  There is meaning to life and true satisfying joy. He is in control and therefore we are safe and secure.  That is what they need to hear…

That is what we need more of.

I only have one life that I’ve been given.  I want to be different.  I want to love more… I only got one chance to make a difference.

That is what I am learning so much.   I am praying more than ever.   My heart burns that they are saved. 

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.  I have made you  known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

// John 17:25-26