I was born in the south, raised in the midwest, and home schooled throughout. The first of four, my parents raised us to be "set apart." For us, this meant being kept from contact with - and kept from resembling - the sinful world. While my father never followed any one movement entirely, we were raised under a strange breed of the patriarchal movement and the quiverful movement, with a dash of Vision Forum and No Greater Joy teachings.
Shortly after my 18th birthday, I chose to leave home, at cost of losing my family and friends. I have spent the last six years moving 22 times not including the last seven months of living in my car while traveling the U.S. Much of leaving was a clean break, but much of it was a slow, brutal tearing apart. The last six years have been a great experiment as I re-learn who I am, who God is, and how the world functions.
I grew up in a bubble, with restrictions like no television, no movies; no public schooled friends, and no books unless dad read them first. All letters I wrote and received had to be read by a parent before they entered or exited the home, and every church sermon was picked apart at the Sunday dinner table, truth re-stated and lies cast out, until my heart was bloody. I didn't have friends at church; youth group wasn't allowed, and I dressed funny, so the other girls in Sunday school class didn't talk to me. I never went on a date or kissed a boy before I was 18, and I went through my teenage years with no make-up, no nail polish, and no girls nights allowed. My teenage years were instead full of politics, speech and debate, and discussing the perversion that is American society. Somewhere between age 16 and 18, I began questioning things. I was introverted, and miserable. There were too many secrets I couldn't share, too many things I couldn't do, and too many books I couldn't read. And I was desperate to have fun, and to stop thinking. One day my story will be a book, but for today, it is in the form a letter I wish someone had written me 6 years ago.
God is not who you think He is. He is bound by nothing and no one. Don't be afraid to question what you know of Him. Don't be afraid to question the rules as laid out for you. God is big enough to handle it, and crossing the lines of religion, denomination, subcultures & belief systems will not break your God, or revoke your salvation.
God will fight in your defense. Even when you are suffocating and drowning in confusion, when the ground underneath you seems unsteady and faulty, He will always know your heart and will never condemn you for your lack of understanding. He is the God of wisdom and of truth. If you seek it from Him, He may re-write what you know, and that is okay.
It will be harder than you think. This isn't teenage rebellion, and it isn't the miscommunication of the generation gap. You will not wake up one day and have parents again, and your decision to walk out on your own means God will reassign new family members to you. Permanently. It will be painful, especially on holidays and birthdays, but in the end, you will find out that biological family is given to us to represent spiritual family - and you are simply learning it the hard way.
Your heart is not evil, nor is it deceitful. Do not be afraid of yourself; God created you and set those desires in your heart for good. Submit yourself to Him, and you have nothing to fear. Dig deep into what makes you happiest, what triggers emotional responses, and what you are drawn to. It isn't you being worldly or sinful, and you will not be punished by God for them. Live life fully, and don't be afraid to breathe. Your mistakes are already paid for, and fear does nothing to stop death - only to stop life.
It will get better. Those girls you envy, that are confident and beautiful? Those girls that have friends to laugh with and cry with? Those girls who have good men in their lives and a future they look forward to? Those girls who aren't plagued by confusion, depression, and loneliness? Those girls who can have fun? In six years that will be you. And those years will go by fast. Take it one day at a time, and don't try to become someone else. Become what you love, and a miracle will happen: You will become that girl.
Read, a lot. You have years and years of truth and love to re-write into your heart. You were born broken, just like the rest, but in your own unique way, too. It takes reading about others' childhoods, brokenness, and fears to see what Jesus can do to a woman's soul. Acknowledge that you're just trying to figure things out - and read everything that gets put in front of you that has to do with healing. It will slowly permeate your mind and heart, and truth will soothe the ache.
The numbness will go away, at the cost of your innocence. You'll slowly learn how to be human, and you'll slowly begin to feel normal. I know that in a desperate attempt to be 'just like everyone else' you'll get drunk at the frat house, you'll kiss boys whose names you don't know, and you'll watch pornography. I know you'll sleep with a guy you don't even like in a self-loathing attempt to destroy the Holier Than Thou reputation you've grown up with your entire life. It will wreck you, instead of heal you - but it will bring you to a new understanding of Grace that God needed you to experience. It will be part of your story.
Read the four gospels. Every single day. Take a break from theology, and let go of what is right and what is wrong. At the end of the day, your salvation rests on Jesus alone, and he cares only for your heart, not for how much you know. Pay attention to what he talked about most: Compassion, healing, taking care of the widows and orphans, dealing out grace and mercy, overlooking tradition for the sake of love, and making people new. Our first command is to love one another, and you will not be able to do that with judgement and bitterness in the way.
Be the little girl that you are. God knows you're scared of growing up, and he knows that right now, you despise men. He sees you as pure and innocent, and when you can't explain yourself, he already knows your heart. God desperately wants to be your Father, not your life coach, your teacher, your business consultant, or your boss. He just wants to be your Father, and sitting in His lap sobbing, "I don't know, I don't know" is okay - just as a little girl falls, gets hurt, and buries her face in her fathers lap to cry and beg him to fix it. God will always defend your innocence; Jesus loves the little children.
Choose to always believe that God is good. You'll always believe that God loves you, but you'll stop believing that He is good. Like dark-chocolate-and-a-big-hug kind of good. Your life is in shambles, and He knows it. You'll be a mess for awhile, but He has a plan. You'll hate it, you'll get sick of it, it won't make sense, and you'll cry yourself to sleep a lot - but He will always be good, and you must always believe it. The moment you stop believing it, your heart will break all over again, and you'll start sabotaging yourself. Dig your heels in and believe that God is good.
Being a girl is okay. All the things you weren't allowed to do in high school, go do them! No matter how silly, how impractical, and how pink they are. Buy the colored eyeliner, get a brazilian wax, color your hair, paint your nails black, spend too much money on shampoo, go see outrageous chick flicks, buy that sequined little black dress, buy the scandalous lingerie and enjoy laughing at trash reality TV. Not everything has to be practical, and you don't have to think in black and white. Find yourself somewhere in there, and learn to enjoy being a woman.
Your parents' definition of sin may not be God's definition of sin. Sin is missing the mark, choosing to live a life apart from God's way, and letting self-centeredness grip your heart. Just as one culture believes a woman without a headcovering is sin while another believes that voting Democrat is a sin, neither of these hold any weight over anyone's salvation. Don't give sin power where it doesn't deserve to have any. Choose instead to see people how Jesus saw them: all in universal need of His love to fill their empty hearts.
It isn't your job to find a man to love you. One day, after you've made way too many mistakes and gotten your heart broken, you'll decide to revert to what you believed when you were a little girl: You'll get married, and it will be amazing. I don't mean this in a naive, Cinderella sort of way - I mean that the man you're going to marry is already born, and when he meets you, you won't have to fight to get his love or attention. God made it that way, and it's okay to believe it stubbornly like a little girl. And it is true what they say: When you know, you will know.
It's your life. I know you don't believe me, but really, it is. You were created to live a life no one else can live. If you live a life dictated by someone else, then you were not necessary. And God does not create unnecessary things. There will be things only you feel, things only you experience, and at the end of the day, you need to be the one who loves what she is doing with her life. People will be unhappy with you, and family and friends will disagree with you. God has a story for everyone's life, and you will not live that story if you're letting others write it.
Follow Lauren Dubinsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/laurendubinsky
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I enjoyed this, but it seemed kind of fluffy to me.
Christ did not isolate himself, and at the same time, he did not join in unrighteous deeds of sinners. He was amidst the crowds most of his ministry, teaching people from many backgrounds, such as fishermen, lawyers, accountants, prostitutes, thieves etc. We need to speak to people of all sorts. We don't have to be "like" people of all sorts. But isolating and sheltering too much, as in the case of this girl, is an unbalanced extreme. As is abandoning God altogether.
BRAVO to you Laurn Dubinsky, for finding your balance with God!
By the time I was in college I had lost whatever faith I had had, which was innocent childlike belief, but was eroding as I was now a thinking young adult. What happened next was interesting. I heard 2 women talking about the Bible. One was a Baptist woman who was talking to a woman who was called a "Bible Student". They were talking about whether the earth would be burned up and destroyed, according to the Bible.
The 'Bible Student" was very calm, reasonable, thoughful, and used the Scriptures skillfully, showing and explaining Scripture in ways I had never heard before. The "Baptist woman was unreasonable and emotional. She excitedly told the woman that she didn't care what the Bible said, her pastor told her the Earth would be burnt up and she knew he was right.
One question was the one you asked about division and if you understand the illustration of the wheat and the weeds, you know that there is division (Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43). Truth and lies do not mix. And sometimes people lie for a reason. Those in history who claimed to believe in God and represent him but then lied, are false. That would be many of the clergy of Christendom, who left the truth of God's word and allowed apostates to flourish. But- as the prophecy brings out- Jesus said the wheat and the weeds (representing the true and false) would grow together until the harvest time, which represents the end of this system of things we are under. When they are full grown, they would be distinguishable, one from another.
Who are Jesus disciples? The ones who show love to one another including their brothers and sisters in the faith, to their neighbors and also to their enemies. How many religions do you know of that do not participate or back the wars of the nations?
Good for her and great story. Thanks for sharing.
God said, ".. and the greatest of these is love." Those who do not live in love do not know God. Any religion that does not put love first is not one of God but of man.
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/tenbiblecontradictions.htm
http://biblebabble.curbjaw.com/bible.htm
http://atheism.about.com/od/biblecontradictionserror/Bible_Contradictions_Errors_Bible_is_Full_of_Contradictions_Errors.htm
http://www.project-reason.org/gallery3/image/105/
Judas Iscariot. The gospels, when different, do not mean one is right and one is wrong, but that they are different prospectives of the same thing, allowing for different details in one over the other. This does not mean there is a contradiction.
In your site: "About.com Agnosticism/Atheism it mentions: First - Matthew and Mark use the motive of greed for Judas' betrayal of Jesus, whereas Luke said he was led astray by Satan and John attributes the motivation to both Satan and greed. What the account at this site fails to explain is- No one is forcibly led to sin by Satan, it is something each person either gives in to or fights. Satan exploits our weaknesses, he watches us like a lion watches its prey to reveal our weakness and then the he puts the temptation before us. Our own sinful condition lead us to sin, if we do not fight the temptation.
Six days before Jesus died, Lazarus' sister Mary was anointing Jesus with expensive perfumed oil. (Matthew 12:2-7, Matthew 26: 6-12; Mark 14: 3-8) The account is revealing- the disciples were indignant, Jesus rebuked them, the majority assented, and Judas strongly objected.
Judas was stung by the rebuke and at this point his sinful tendency towards greed overcame him. As the Scriptures say: Satan entered into Judas, in that Judas allowed himself to give in to this sinful tendency in his heart. Judas allowed himself to give in to the will of the devil, to be a tool to carry out Satan's design to stop Christ.
The second point: Was Judas "destined" to betray Jesus, therefore, having no free will? It was not God, but the Devil... who put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon, to betray Jesus. (John 13:2) Instead of resisting, Judas yielded to the satanic influence.
I will throw in the third point:
The silver pieces. Matthew 27:3-10 mentions Judas throwing the 30 pieces of silver he had received to betray Jesus, into the temple. The chief priests knew that it was not lawful to put this in the sacred treasury (because it was blood money) so they bought a potters field with it. Acts 1:18 says that (Judas) "purchased a field with wages for unrighteousness", meaning he had provided the money and the reason for buying the "field of blood" as it was called.
Christians follow the example of Christ Jesus. Jesus never neglected his spirituality but very seldom, in his 31/2 year ministry, did he isolate himself. He withdrew alone into the wilderness for 40 days after his anointing, but thereafter was surrounded by people, as he preached to them about the kingdom.
I'm so glad you did not lose your faith in the Lord who made you the woman that you are and that you have chosen to be strong enough to walk in the path He lies out for you...kudos to you. I wish you every good blessing...pw
"Lord if you kept a record of sins then who would stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be reverently trusted"
"love keeps no record of wrongs"
These aren't license to sin but to RELAX