have let walk away. To the ones I have yet to meet and whom I have yet to learn about and be with. And to my friends now. My boiling chips, my fail safes, my go-tos, my lovelies—who have shared with me brilliant shades of pinks and oranges and the deep shades of rouges and navies that color the life I have in my hands.
To all of my friends, hello.
Maybe it’s the sentimental part of me speaking, but with twenty years nestled deep in my bones and however more to come, it seems fitting to break this writer’s block of mine with a topic that has since imbedded its gold-latticed self into the collagen and fibers of my body.
My nineteenth year of life took me by the collar and shook me—hard. So hard that if I think a little too hard about it, trace the scars for a little too long or put just enough pressure on those thin lines that crisscross the avenues of my memories, it still hurts. Not as much as it did then, but still.
They say time heals all wounds, but with cuts so deep, you need stitches. And just because bruises on your stomach and chest and legs can’t be seen, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist—no matter how much you try to fool yourself.
But stitch by stitch, the wounds can close.
The first stitch, the one I will always remember not because it hurt the most, but because it was the first one that I let them put: a drive home in the few hours before midnight on a Monday night. Keys taken from my shaking hands, silence in a room where no one knew the answers to the questions I was asking but were willing to sit and feel and cry with me nonetheless.
Then small texts that reminded me that I exist. Maybe not in the shell that some part of me, maybe all of it, was haphazardly poured out of. But in the tenderness and gifs and spontaneous messages, wrapped the truth that only a year later I can truly believe: I am loved.
At first I thought to myself, how could these stitches possibly knit back what has been broken?
And there were times when I did break the stitches. I tore them, and it seemed like the bleeding would never stop. The tears would never stop. That this tattered mess—this paper mache figurine—would never be fixed.
It came in raw bursts. One day—or more accurately, a weekend late in October if I remember correctly—the stitches broke and broke and broke, and out came all of myself, seeping out of that paper mache, bursting the shell I thought I had duct-taped well enough back together. And there I was—strewn out in the mountains of Santa Cruz, and it didn’t stop coming.
But you, my friends, all held it—held whatever pieces of me that can come undone, whether you knew it or not. You caught a bit of that debris and came to me to give it back. Thank you, you told me. For what, I’m still not sure. But those two words were a flower in my hair that made me feel, at least for a little bit, that I was beautiful and that there was beauty.
There was a still a whole lot more of me to be put back in. But first I needed to be stitched back up.
Humpty dumpty had a great fall, I guess.
And you all, you lovely, lovely people from my past and present, took whatever pieces of thread you had to put me back together.
I remember two of you knocking on my door, right when I was already read to go to bed, just to sit and talk, maybe to laugh, if we were able (which I’m sure we were) in my two-room double, on my futon and black chair.
I remember a movie night that passed well into the hours of morning. (Although I do remember taking a brief nap while the movies played on, because as you all know, I am not a night person.)
I remember you planning meals for me because it hurt too much to be alone.
Memories like these colored the stitches in bright turquoise and magenta, and each time something broke through the stitches you had so meticulously sewn in, you were there to put this humpty dumpty back together again. But you made me as colorful as the sunset with your threads.
You began the slow process of filling me up.
Some nights you surrounded me with prayers*, and as you laid your hands on me, I felt like more of something was being poured into me. The something was warm, and it heated up the shell that had been long lost to cold.
Unexpectedly, I found you pouring into me at an art exhibit with pieces from incarcerated people. And even more unexpectedly, I found that same warm something in a forty five minute car ride to get your eyebrows done and conversation that lingered for months after.
The night you walked me home and hugged me the tightest and longest I have ever been made the tightness in my chest finally go away—like the wrapping around it unraveled and what was left was something fleshy and that made an odd lub-dub sound.
Though I hadn’t seen you in months, you made an effort to call—even be mom for me when I needed it, making sure I was happy, or at the very least, okay, which is all I could have wanted.
The days before finals, you sacrificed study hours to help make my overly ambitious ideas a reality. When you let me drag you along to movies, it brought back a smile that seemed so foreign. We studied and filled white boards and did psets and ate snacks. Moments like that of being with you, you may not remember, but I remember them all.
It’s been almost a year since the first stitch was made. A year of dark hues and every so often a gold star in what seemed like an eternity of night. The smile still in some ways feels foreign, but so does the pain that had been so raw for so long. My fingers still trace the stitches, feels the quilt that has become my mind. I don’t know if they will burst again, or even if I’ll get a new bright red cut somewhere else; but the wounds are closed, and scars are forming.**
**More important than from my friends, healing has come from God and God alone. My friends have been but reflections of his brightness, and none of them put together compares to the shear magnitude of the light that radiates from him.
My friends, like all humans, have failed me, in some ways that have made the wounds deeper (unintentionally, of course). But through it all, fixing my eyes heavenward have been so worth it—to just know a little more of Christ has made the pain and the stitches worth it.
The image that stuck the most with me this past year has been Peter— the faith and fear with which I am sure he walked on water—his eyes fixed on Jesus though the winds and waves beat below his feet; the embarrassment when he didn’t believe that the same God could calm the raging sea; the shame having denied Christ; the love he had when he first saw his Savior on the shore that compelled him to jump into the waters after him. Peter, Jesus’ best friend, constantly fell short but even more constantly came back. That who I wanted—and still want—to be.
And I think of Paul and the thorn in his side. Maybe he never got rid of his, and maybe I’ll never get rid of mine. But if it brings glory to God in some way or helps me to know him better, then I don’t want it ever to leave.
I am not martyr, and I am not worthy even to even by touch the robes or wash the feet of Jesus, much less have him call me his friend. Yet in this past year, my identity in Christ—his redemption and love for me—has become the most palpable thing I have ever conceived. The Beautiful Name is forever marked on my heart and in my mind, and my whole identity—who I am, who I was, and who I will be—takes the form of a daughter of the most high king. I came in with dirt on my nose and stains on my shirt, and he has clothed me in robes of white and has combed through the matt of my hair and placed a gold crown on my forehead, calling me his and loved and beautiful. He has hugged me more tightly than any of the friends ever can, and He has not let me go.
I’ve learned that he is never going to let me down. No cut is too deep for him to heal. No name is more beautiful that the great I AM—no person or thing more powerful. He brings life and hope and light into darkness.
And it sounds crazy because it is. Love this radical is pure insanity. Even for me to write these things, it sounds so irrational and like worship. That that’s because it’s both. Faith is irrational. I am irrational.
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