I get embarrassed of admitting that I'm a Christian a lot. I've found that is has nothing to do with the God I follow, but that a big problem for me lies with those who claim to follow Him, the Christians, and what we do to give the title of "Christian" a bad rep to have.
One of the biggest embarrassments to me in the Christian world is our words and actions during political season. Honestly, every time I saw a hateful post about another political party, it made me cringe for a number of reasons-that person was being uninformed, was trying to start unnecessary quarrels, and being hateful and judgmental towards people they don't even know. You guys honestly had me really embarrassed, and I tried to stay out of political posts as much possible for that reason.
Why do I say I hate being a Christian during political season?
First, we often have zeal without knowledge. We tell ourselves "Republicans=good and Democrats=bad" or vice versa without even researching the issues. We vote for one candidate because we feel like as Christians that's who we're supposed to vote for without even thinking for ourselves. Then, we get flat out ugly with anyone who disagrees. Suddenly our political views turns more into a whole Twilight craze "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob" thing-you're either the hero or the enemy. The question is, can we provide true facts, thought-out opinions, or just a bunch of political propaganda when talking about our candidate? As Proverbs 19:2 tells us (and I have this highlighted in my Bible), "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way." I think that our intentions are good, because we want to convince ourselves that we are fighting for God and standing up for His truth. But I think that in the long run, God wants us to fight for truth in our daily actions in our lives that show other people God is who we say He is, not posting political propaganda that we think is true.
In fact, that's one of my biggest pet peeves-starting unnecessary fights and quarrels-and its prime time is during political season. I've seen people call Obama supporters "ruthless baby killers" to be exact and harshly argue on Facebook with people they've never even met before. I pray that people realize that their words and actions are not going unnoticed by many people of my generation who already have a bad taste of Christianity. If the point of a debate is to share in love something you feel convicted about, that's fine, but very rarely that's the case. Pride is the main contributor to a debate. Be careful-Proverbs 20:3 says "It is to a man's honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel."
People honestly just like a good fuss, and Christians aren't excluded from this. But our judging hearts turn people away much more quickly from God than they turn people towards the idea of God. Our Facebook rants about how we despise Obama-a man we do not know, probably will never meet, and is not responsible for the moral decline of our country but instead we as the American people are-just comes across as hate-based to me. It especially comes across as hate-based and judgmental when the next status that comes up on some people's newsfeed is something completely un-Christlike.
I don't have my political views listed on Facebook, and I probably never will have my true views listed. Instead, I quote this from Micah 6:8: "seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly." God never commanded us to be conservative or liberal, Obama-adoring or Romney-rooting, but to do these three things. Perhaps this is where most of my embarrassment comes from-the lack of these things in our Christian bubble.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Why I Hate Saying I'm a Christian Part 1
I hate saying I'm a Christian.
Please don't quote that overly used verse about "if you deny Me before men I will deny you before My Father in heaven," because it doesn't apply here. I hope you're not going to judge me and say that I lack faith when you don't know the condition of my heart. I wouldn't be surprised if you look at all of the good Christian things I've done according to my Facebook page-spending time as a Christian summer camp worker, the summers I served as a missionary in Houston, Texas and in a tiny village in Peru, the years I was a youth Bible study leader/mentor, or my ministry of helping international students and think "What a hypocrite. She's done so many churchy things and she's ashamed of saying she's a Christian!"
You see, it's not saying that I follow Christ is what I'm ashamed of. I give everything to follow Jesus and will eagerly tell you what He did in my life when I was a teenager. Rather, I hate saying I'm a Christian.. because of what my fellow Christians have done.
Write off gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders as inferior freaks of nature that are destined for hell when we also forget that the Bible also condemns in the same way the man who looks at a 16-year old in a bikini and lusts after her? Yeah, that's us, the Christians. Posting hateful propaganda about Obama and anyone who voted for him without being informed and judging people we don't even know? Freaking out because no one knows about our beliefs yet not being willing to listen to the beliefs of others? That would be the followers of Jesus Christ. And frankly, I'm usually ashamed to admit I'm one of them.
I'm writing all of these things after spending time both in the "Christian Bubble" of Baker County, Florida and in a major secular university, Florida State University. I've seen how true followers of Christ act and how cultural Christians live. I've seen how the Christian Bubble views the mainstream and how the mainstream views us. I've found that no one knows what we're for, only what we're against. Until the Body of Christ has some serious reform, I'm ashamed to admit I'm a Christian.
If you aren't a Christian, I'm sorry for any bad impression we have left on you. Our God isn't like we are. But if you are my fellow follower of Jesus, keep reading what I'm going to say these next few weeks. We've got some serious work to do.
Please don't quote that overly used verse about "if you deny Me before men I will deny you before My Father in heaven," because it doesn't apply here. I hope you're not going to judge me and say that I lack faith when you don't know the condition of my heart. I wouldn't be surprised if you look at all of the good Christian things I've done according to my Facebook page-spending time as a Christian summer camp worker, the summers I served as a missionary in Houston, Texas and in a tiny village in Peru, the years I was a youth Bible study leader/mentor, or my ministry of helping international students and think "What a hypocrite. She's done so many churchy things and she's ashamed of saying she's a Christian!"
You see, it's not saying that I follow Christ is what I'm ashamed of. I give everything to follow Jesus and will eagerly tell you what He did in my life when I was a teenager. Rather, I hate saying I'm a Christian.. because of what my fellow Christians have done.
Write off gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders as inferior freaks of nature that are destined for hell when we also forget that the Bible also condemns in the same way the man who looks at a 16-year old in a bikini and lusts after her? Yeah, that's us, the Christians. Posting hateful propaganda about Obama and anyone who voted for him without being informed and judging people we don't even know? Freaking out because no one knows about our beliefs yet not being willing to listen to the beliefs of others? That would be the followers of Jesus Christ. And frankly, I'm usually ashamed to admit I'm one of them.
I'm writing all of these things after spending time both in the "Christian Bubble" of Baker County, Florida and in a major secular university, Florida State University. I've seen how true followers of Christ act and how cultural Christians live. I've seen how the Christian Bubble views the mainstream and how the mainstream views us. I've found that no one knows what we're for, only what we're against. Until the Body of Christ has some serious reform, I'm ashamed to admit I'm a Christian.
If you aren't a Christian, I'm sorry for any bad impression we have left on you. Our God isn't like we are. But if you are my fellow follower of Jesus, keep reading what I'm going to say these next few weeks. We've got some serious work to do.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
San Jose de Quero: Life Outside of the Teepee
I'm in a new teepee now. Ya see, my grandma paid for this program called Florida Prepaid years ago before I even decided to join the Seminole tribe. You basically pay for a student's college expenses at the rate they are currently at, so if a dorm cost $1,500 in 1999 you paid that rate instead of the $2,400 expense it is now in 2012. Well, my granny, who was big on education, paid for me to live in a dorm through this program for four semesters. It's already paid for, and living in an apartment that I paid for completely was making me broke. So which would I rather live in..a teepee (apartment) that I have to spend money from my personal savings on, or an already paid for teepee? Yep, I choose the free teepee (aka a dorm).
I'm in a new teepee, alright. A dorm is totes different from an apartment, in good ways and bad ways. But not only am I in a new teepee, I'm also a new person.
Why? I lived life outside of the teepee, outside of the life I know oh so well. This summer, I lived in a rural village in the Andes of Peru for two months sharing the Gospel by helping shepherds in their fields, teaching English in the high school, and teaching new Christians there the Bible.
Little moments of my life at Florida State take me back to my life in that beautiful village called San Jose de Quero. It will just come to me randomly, and I start to miss that place where I left a piece of my heart. Lyrics from one of my favorite artists (Brooke Fraser) songs after she went on a journey to Africa and was torn by a woman she met there keep coming back in my mind; "Now that I have seen, I am responsible/Faith without deeds is dead/Now that I have held you in my own arms/I cannot let go of you tonight/"
So I have to tell what I've seen there, how I've lived there. The best way I know how to do that is through pictures, and through these pictures, I will tell what I have seen in life outside of the teepee.
Helping the Shepherds
I worked with an indigenous people in South America called the Wakana Quechua. The way most of these people live is by being shepherds. Here you can see my pal Carmen and I with some of the cows in her herd.
If you really want to show people that you care about them, you should live among them and be a part of their everyday life. I mean, that's what Jesus did, right? So since these people would work with their livestock 5-6 hours a day, I would go out there and help them take their sheep and cows to graze.
Very rarely was the trek easy up to the fields these people in the village owned. It would be a good half hour to an hour of a hike through some tough terrain at 13,000 feet. Plus, I knew nothing about cows or sheep. The people would always laugh at me. "Does anyone in the United States own cattle?" they would ask me. "What would your mother say if she knew you were working as a shepherd?" Carmen would often say, shaking back her head with laughter. "This distance is really far for a gringa, huh?" she would snicker. But everytime I thought that I couldn't make it up the mountain, I prayed that God would give me the strength, because He gives us the strength to do things we cannot do alone. And sure enough, even when I was very sick with food poisoning, He gave me the strength to make it up..every single time.
And when I made it to the field, I was so amazed by the beauty of God's creation and the peacefulness of life I couldn't find in the United States. Back home, especially as an university student, it was all about deadlines and jumping from the next activity to the other. But here, I found la tranquilidad. Calmness.
Teaching English in the High School
My ambitions in life are to 1. work with people from other cultures and to share Christ with them through my actions and 2. to teach people about other cultures, particularly teenagers. So when I was given the chance to teach English to a group of 100 or so high schoolers two days a week, I jumped on it.
It honestly had to be the ultimate teaching challenge. For one, I speak fluent Spanish. But having to teach for four hours in your native language and teaching for four hours in your second language...in a completely different culture-are two different things. Secondly, the regular English teacher just gave me the classroom and said, "Ohh...just teach basic verbs. I'm leaving now..have fun!" I had absolutely no idea what the students already knew, what they were supposed to be learning, or had no textbook, worksheets, whatever to use for teaching. Finally, I was a white girl with a funny American accent. Earning the respect of the students, many who had never met a gringa before, much less one that knew Spanish, was a hard task.
But I did a few things. First, I was very strict with the students to show them that while I was white, I didn't play. I took pride in the difference I saw in the students from laughing at me the first week to being in silent fear the third week. I even used myself as an example of how a foreigner could learn a second language, so they had no excuse for not taking English seriously. Secondly, I tried my best to make class fun. We discussed American music and whether or not the Biebs sang like a girl. We talked about my crazy last name of "Rambo" and if you still called Shrek "Shrek" in English. I even helped them translate "Everything" by Lifehouse into Spanish, and we talked about its Christian meaning and jammed to it in class. Finally, I managed to hunt down their teacher, and he at last gave me some stuff to teach the students.
I had a lot of compassion for these students. Growing up in the lower class in your country as a purely indigenous people meant that they never really had anyone that believed in them or that they could do great things. Very few went to college; most of them became shepherds like their parents. Their teachers were dedicated though-they were a group of teachers who lived in the city an hour and a half away and were devoted to helping lower class Peruvians succeed. I think about these students a lot. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to go back to that high school and teach English there for a year or two.
Discipling
I have never met a group of people that hungry for God, simply put. Things that we take for granted in the States are things that these Peruvians thirst for. I discipled believers in three places-in their homes, in a Bible study two missionaries I was working with founded, and in a tiny church in the neighboring village of Usibamba.
Carmen was a believer that I would disciple every Monday. She would feed me a lunch of potato soup and cheese, then we would hike up to her field with her livestock. As I and my teammate sat on her manta, she'd ask me to tell her a story from the Bible. I would tell her stories that Jesus taught, the ones called parables. Sometimes she'd ask me to teach her about doctrine, such as if the Bible really does condemn alcohol or dancing. But no matter what, her eyes would grow big every time we talked.
I think the church in the village of Usibamba had the biggest impact on me. From the moment that Rolando, their elected pastor, told his story of going from being the town drunk to the man who wouldn't shut up about Jesus after he became a Christian, I fell in love with this beautiful group of people and cried at every meeting I went to with them. One of my favorite songs that they taught me became one I think of daily, "Ya no tengo madre/Ya no tengo padre/Solamente Cristo/El es la verdad/Ya no tengo padre/Ya no tengo madre/Solamente Cristo/En mi corazon." (I don't have a mother anymore/I don't have a father anymore/Only Christ/He is the truth/I don't have a father anymore/I don't have a mother anymore/Only Christ/In my heart." By the way these people would listen to us and their leaders teach the Bible for three hours each Sunday and still beg for more, you knew that Christ really was all they wanted. I will never forget the genuine joy I saw in their eyes everytime I looked at them.
In the Teepee
It's nearly 1 AM right now, and I have to be up in six hours if I'm going to the gym to work out like I should before my morning classes. The demands of tomorrow are already calling my name.
Will I write more about this later, for I still have stories to tell? Possibly. But there is rarely tranquilidad in the life I live now in the United States. Papers, exams, campus ministry events, international ministry events, relationships-are all things that take up my time now. I love it. But I know that there is more than this.
There is life outside of the teepee. There is more than paper after paper, trying to keep up a 3.5 GPA so I can get into graduate school. There's San Jose de Quero, that's the beautiful life I know outside of the teepee. The beautiful people, the calmness, the joy in the eyes of the people there all lie there.
But there is even life outside of San Jose de Quero. That life is the life that called me to San Jose de Quero in the first place, and that is the new life I found in Jesus Christ six years ago. And I pray that this life outside of the teepee is the life that will continue to be number one to me.
I'm in a new teepee, alright. A dorm is totes different from an apartment, in good ways and bad ways. But not only am I in a new teepee, I'm also a new person.
Why? I lived life outside of the teepee, outside of the life I know oh so well. This summer, I lived in a rural village in the Andes of Peru for two months sharing the Gospel by helping shepherds in their fields, teaching English in the high school, and teaching new Christians there the Bible.
Little moments of my life at Florida State take me back to my life in that beautiful village called San Jose de Quero. It will just come to me randomly, and I start to miss that place where I left a piece of my heart. Lyrics from one of my favorite artists (Brooke Fraser) songs after she went on a journey to Africa and was torn by a woman she met there keep coming back in my mind; "Now that I have seen, I am responsible/Faith without deeds is dead/Now that I have held you in my own arms/I cannot let go of you tonight/"
So I have to tell what I've seen there, how I've lived there. The best way I know how to do that is through pictures, and through these pictures, I will tell what I have seen in life outside of the teepee.
I worked with an indigenous people in South America called the Wakana Quechua. The way most of these people live is by being shepherds. Here you can see my pal Carmen and I with some of the cows in her herd.
If you really want to show people that you care about them, you should live among them and be a part of their everyday life. I mean, that's what Jesus did, right? So since these people would work with their livestock 5-6 hours a day, I would go out there and help them take their sheep and cows to graze.
Very rarely was the trek easy up to the fields these people in the village owned. It would be a good half hour to an hour of a hike through some tough terrain at 13,000 feet. Plus, I knew nothing about cows or sheep. The people would always laugh at me. "Does anyone in the United States own cattle?" they would ask me. "What would your mother say if she knew you were working as a shepherd?" Carmen would often say, shaking back her head with laughter. "This distance is really far for a gringa, huh?" she would snicker. But everytime I thought that I couldn't make it up the mountain, I prayed that God would give me the strength, because He gives us the strength to do things we cannot do alone. And sure enough, even when I was very sick with food poisoning, He gave me the strength to make it up..every single time.
Teaching English in the High School
My ambitions in life are to 1. work with people from other cultures and to share Christ with them through my actions and 2. to teach people about other cultures, particularly teenagers. So when I was given the chance to teach English to a group of 100 or so high schoolers two days a week, I jumped on it.
It honestly had to be the ultimate teaching challenge. For one, I speak fluent Spanish. But having to teach for four hours in your native language and teaching for four hours in your second language...in a completely different culture-are two different things. Secondly, the regular English teacher just gave me the classroom and said, "Ohh...just teach basic verbs. I'm leaving now..have fun!" I had absolutely no idea what the students already knew, what they were supposed to be learning, or had no textbook, worksheets, whatever to use for teaching. Finally, I was a white girl with a funny American accent. Earning the respect of the students, many who had never met a gringa before, much less one that knew Spanish, was a hard task.
I had a lot of compassion for these students. Growing up in the lower class in your country as a purely indigenous people meant that they never really had anyone that believed in them or that they could do great things. Very few went to college; most of them became shepherds like their parents. Their teachers were dedicated though-they were a group of teachers who lived in the city an hour and a half away and were devoted to helping lower class Peruvians succeed. I think about these students a lot. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to go back to that high school and teach English there for a year or two.
Discipling
I have never met a group of people that hungry for God, simply put. Things that we take for granted in the States are things that these Peruvians thirst for. I discipled believers in three places-in their homes, in a Bible study two missionaries I was working with founded, and in a tiny church in the neighboring village of Usibamba.
Carmen was a believer that I would disciple every Monday. She would feed me a lunch of potato soup and cheese, then we would hike up to her field with her livestock. As I and my teammate sat on her manta, she'd ask me to tell her a story from the Bible. I would tell her stories that Jesus taught, the ones called parables. Sometimes she'd ask me to teach her about doctrine, such as if the Bible really does condemn alcohol or dancing. But no matter what, her eyes would grow big every time we talked.
In the Teepee
It's nearly 1 AM right now, and I have to be up in six hours if I'm going to the gym to work out like I should before my morning classes. The demands of tomorrow are already calling my name.
Will I write more about this later, for I still have stories to tell? Possibly. But there is rarely tranquilidad in the life I live now in the United States. Papers, exams, campus ministry events, international ministry events, relationships-are all things that take up my time now. I love it. But I know that there is more than this.
There is life outside of the teepee. There is more than paper after paper, trying to keep up a 3.5 GPA so I can get into graduate school. There's San Jose de Quero, that's the beautiful life I know outside of the teepee. The beautiful people, the calmness, the joy in the eyes of the people there all lie there.
But there is even life outside of San Jose de Quero. That life is the life that called me to San Jose de Quero in the first place, and that is the new life I found in Jesus Christ six years ago. And I pray that this life outside of the teepee is the life that will continue to be number one to me.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Why I Support Chick Fil A
Would you like a free kid’s meal with your adult meal twice a week, and fun entertainment for your kids on Saturdays? Maybe $3 desserts just $1 on Wednesdays gets your eye-and stomach. Then there’s my personal favorite for a broke college student such as myself-buy one, get one free sandwiches or chicken nuggets twice a week just by showing your student ID?
This is what my local Chick Fil A offers, and I can guarantee you that there is no other restaurant chain that has so many specials on nearly every day of the week (that day being Sunday, when CFA closes). But there are other things, too that I love. For one, I have never been in a fast food place so clean; I’m not grossed out when I use the bathroom! There’s genuine hospitality upon every worker’s face, and when people tell you “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome” because CFA believes it is a pleasure to serve others, you can’t doubt their sincerity. Plus, the food is of great quality! You get your money’s worth there. Because of this incredible environment, I often invite my international student friends to come with me there, saying, “This is place is something you HAVE to try while you’re in the States!” After saying this and going with him there, my friend YongJin “Jo” replied, “Caroline, let’s make a Chick Fil A in Korea together!”
In 2011, rumors started around Florida State University that there would be a Chick Fil A built on campus. Meanwhile, the FSU’s student newspaper voted CFA as “Tallahassee’s Best Fast Food Place.” When these rumors about the “best fast food place” in our city were confirmed, most FSU students were super excited! Yet a small uproar was heard from my student body-an accusation that Chick Fil A discriminated against homosexuals and would possibly refuse to serve them. This uproar made it all the way to the FSU Student Government Association. Finally, at the end of the Fall 2011 semester students were asked to vote on whether or not they thought that having a Chick Fil A on campus would go against our university’s policy on anti-discrimination.
I voted “No.”
Now let me explain. If Chick Fil A was actually showing discrimination against homosexuals, I would NOT have voted no. I don’t care about how much I love their chocolate milkshakes or lemonade, saying “You can’t eat here” because you’re gay is WRONG. Heck, I wouldn’t even eat at Chick Fil A if they did that.
No, we need to see why people are falsely accusing CFA of being discriminatory. In 2009, Chick Fil A’s charitable organization, WinShape, donated a large sum of money to conservative, family-based organizations such as Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family is a non-profit organization that promotes evangelical Christian values; one of many of those includes belief in traditional marriage. Focus on the Family promotes marriage between a man and a woman and encourages it, but that’s it. They have never said “Let’s go shun all of the gays of the world and hate them.” Being Christians, they have expressed their beliefs against homosexuality using the Bible, yet have also expressed using that same holy book that they are to love everyone and treat everyone equally. Other organizations that CFA supported -Fellowship of Christian Athletes, National Christian Foundation, etc. have the same views.
The problem is that people confuse disagreement with hatred and discrimination. They assume that because you say, “Hey, I think that marriage should be for a man and a woman” means that you must have a raging hatred of gays. If this is the case, then I must be a hypocrite, because I don’t agree with homosexuality yet have several friends who are gay/lesbian/bi. I’m a Bible believing Christian, yet I made friends with the openly gay guy next to me in the computer lab-woopsee! I support Focus on the Family, yet I gave out free snow cones outside of an AIDS clinic once a week one summer and made friends with a couple of gay patients there. I think I made my point. Please don’t confuse my disagreement for hatred, nor do the same thing with Chick Fil A. “We have no agenda against anyone. While my family and I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage, we love and respect anyone who disagrees,” president Dan Cathy explained in a written statement.
If my favorite fast food place really did discriminate, then I’d have some beef with them (pun intended). But they don’t, and as I’ve been saying a lot these days, “People throw rocks at things that shine.” With somewhere as perfect as Chick Fil A, people are just trying to find something bad to say about it. By the way, we students at FSU voted that Chick Fil A is NOT discriminating against gays in the Fall 2011 voting session.
It looks like that the only thing that will not be served at Chick Fil A..is a hamburger.
Monday, April 23, 2012
For the Sake of the Call
In less than a month from now I'll be on a plane leaving all that I know in America and headed to South America to spend two months living in a Peruvian village called San Jose de Quero. I'll go from seeing my amazing boyfriend Andy every day to hearing his voice on a phone for about 45 minutes once a week. I'll trade the flatness of Florida for an elevation of 13,000 feet. Instead of my cozy apartment ( the teepee), I'll be living in a hostel. I'll be speaking a foreign language, eating foods I may or may not want to know what it is I'm eating, and embracing a culture completely different than my own.
Why am I doing all of this?
It's for the sake of the call.
God's love radically changed my life nearly six years ago. I went from being an insecure, depressed girl to someone who found her identity in the fact that a God loved her enough to lay down His life to save her from her mistakes. I don't know what to do with a love like that other than telling the world about it. I know that God has called me here, and I will go to the ends of the earth for the sake of the call.
There was another call that called me here. That call was none other than Jesus Christ, who came not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). For the sake of the call, Christ abandoned the riches of heaven to rely on two teenagers for shelter, food and love. He traded the praises of the angels for the taunting of His creation as they beat Him. He died a death so brutal that His corpse looked like an animal to bear the punishment I could not. But then He rose from the dead, conquered the grave, and offers new life to all who believe. He whispers the secret of freedom, "Give up all that you are for the sake of the call."
I'm scared of leaving the comforts of my home in a few weeks to live with the Quechua people of Peru for two months. I don't want to leave Andy, whom I love, or my sister Melissa, who is my best friend. But there is no greater joy than to share the joy that I have with people who don't know it.
The sake of the call is worth it.
Please pray for Sam, Andrew, Christina and I (my teammates) as we share the Story with the Quechua people of Peru!
Why am I doing all of this?
It's for the sake of the call.
God's love radically changed my life nearly six years ago. I went from being an insecure, depressed girl to someone who found her identity in the fact that a God loved her enough to lay down His life to save her from her mistakes. I don't know what to do with a love like that other than telling the world about it. I know that God has called me here, and I will go to the ends of the earth for the sake of the call.
There was another call that called me here. That call was none other than Jesus Christ, who came not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). For the sake of the call, Christ abandoned the riches of heaven to rely on two teenagers for shelter, food and love. He traded the praises of the angels for the taunting of His creation as they beat Him. He died a death so brutal that His corpse looked like an animal to bear the punishment I could not. But then He rose from the dead, conquered the grave, and offers new life to all who believe. He whispers the secret of freedom, "Give up all that you are for the sake of the call."
I'm scared of leaving the comforts of my home in a few weeks to live with the Quechua people of Peru for two months. I don't want to leave Andy, whom I love, or my sister Melissa, who is my best friend. But there is no greater joy than to share the joy that I have with people who don't know it.
The sake of the call is worth it.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
For Good
Katie will never be able to know how much that terrible decision she made three years ago today on March 3, 2009 impacted my life. Who can say if my life has been changed for the better? But I know that because of her, my life has been changed for good.
Katie was a smart, quiet girl who sat in front of me in Mr. Yaracs' dual enrollment physics class at Baker County High School. I was awful at physics-and since Mr. Yaracs and I had a friendly relationship, he was always picking on me for this. (By some miracle my senior year I won the science department award-haha I laughed in his face!!) But Katie was just the opposite of me. That girl was SMART. Problems that would take me 2 hours to do and I would still miss were things she could do in 2 minutes and be right down to the precise details. Mr. Yaracs adored her-and with good reason! I remember the day he made her announce to the class that she had been accepted into one of University of Florida's school of medicine with a full-ride scholarship. I thought that this girl had it all!
That Tuesday when I saw Katie, I remember that I had a SUPER clumsy moment and accidentally hit her with my backpack!! "Sorry!" I cried sheepishly. Since Katie was a nice girl, most of the time she would have probably just smiled and said "It's okay." But I noticed something was wrong when she just frowned and proceeded to say nothing the entire class period. She seemed really depressed. I hoped everything was okay.
But I knew that nothing was okay when I walked into my government class the next morning. Instead of hearing the all-too familiar noises of chatter and laughter under our carefree teacher Mr. Harvey, everyone was dead silent. People had their phones out, texting and calling people. A few of my classmates were in tears. I turned to Debra, the girl who sat next to me and asked her what was going on.
"Katie Kirkland killed herself last night," she said.
"No," I whispered, unable to grasp what was happening.
The rest of that day was a blur. I remember watching Mr. Harvey cry, which I never dreamed I would see. Before walking into Mr. Yaracs' class, a group of us students got together and prayed before we had to stare at Katie's empty desk. We just spent the next two hours sitting together as a class in tears and talking about how we couldn't understand why Katie was so unhappy or what we would have done if we had known what she was going through. I remember sittting there thinking, "No young person should ever have to feel unloved again. Everyone needs to know that they are valuable and they are worth something."
The months passed on and Katie still remained in my memory. I was angry at myself for not trying to be her friend. I was angry at her for shooting herself when she had so much to offer. But most of all, I was angry at God for putting circumstances in Katie's life to lead her to feel like death was the only way out of her pain.
Finally, God spoke to me on the beach towards the end of that summer when I had just returned from working at Camp Crestridge for Girls. I was praying about my future, and somehow it just all made sense. Perhaps Katie died to show me that I was meant to be a high school teacher to show teenagers how valuable they were and to not let anyone else make the same mistake Katie made. Using my love of Spanish language/culture, I would teach students not only that they were valuable, but other people's language and culture were, too. Sure enough, three years later I am majoring in Spanish and minoring in education at Florida State University for that very purpose.
Katie's death changed my life, there's not a doubt in my mind about that. When I teach, I know that I will forever have her in the back of my mind and will remind myself that I am teaching for Katie, that other students may know what she was never able to grasp: her value. Katie has certainly changed my life for the better, and as it was said at her graduation, "because I knew her, I have been changed for good."
Katie's graduation picture (http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/gainesville/guestbook.aspx?n=katherine-kirkland&pid=126022819&cid=full)
Katie was a smart, quiet girl who sat in front of me in Mr. Yaracs' dual enrollment physics class at Baker County High School. I was awful at physics-and since Mr. Yaracs and I had a friendly relationship, he was always picking on me for this. (By some miracle my senior year I won the science department award-haha I laughed in his face!!) But Katie was just the opposite of me. That girl was SMART. Problems that would take me 2 hours to do and I would still miss were things she could do in 2 minutes and be right down to the precise details. Mr. Yaracs adored her-and with good reason! I remember the day he made her announce to the class that she had been accepted into one of University of Florida's school of medicine with a full-ride scholarship. I thought that this girl had it all!
That Tuesday when I saw Katie, I remember that I had a SUPER clumsy moment and accidentally hit her with my backpack!! "Sorry!" I cried sheepishly. Since Katie was a nice girl, most of the time she would have probably just smiled and said "It's okay." But I noticed something was wrong when she just frowned and proceeded to say nothing the entire class period. She seemed really depressed. I hoped everything was okay.
But I knew that nothing was okay when I walked into my government class the next morning. Instead of hearing the all-too familiar noises of chatter and laughter under our carefree teacher Mr. Harvey, everyone was dead silent. People had their phones out, texting and calling people. A few of my classmates were in tears. I turned to Debra, the girl who sat next to me and asked her what was going on.
"Katie Kirkland killed herself last night," she said.
"No," I whispered, unable to grasp what was happening.
The rest of that day was a blur. I remember watching Mr. Harvey cry, which I never dreamed I would see. Before walking into Mr. Yaracs' class, a group of us students got together and prayed before we had to stare at Katie's empty desk. We just spent the next two hours sitting together as a class in tears and talking about how we couldn't understand why Katie was so unhappy or what we would have done if we had known what she was going through. I remember sittting there thinking, "No young person should ever have to feel unloved again. Everyone needs to know that they are valuable and they are worth something."
The months passed on and Katie still remained in my memory. I was angry at myself for not trying to be her friend. I was angry at her for shooting herself when she had so much to offer. But most of all, I was angry at God for putting circumstances in Katie's life to lead her to feel like death was the only way out of her pain.
Finally, God spoke to me on the beach towards the end of that summer when I had just returned from working at Camp Crestridge for Girls. I was praying about my future, and somehow it just all made sense. Perhaps Katie died to show me that I was meant to be a high school teacher to show teenagers how valuable they were and to not let anyone else make the same mistake Katie made. Using my love of Spanish language/culture, I would teach students not only that they were valuable, but other people's language and culture were, too. Sure enough, three years later I am majoring in Spanish and minoring in education at Florida State University for that very purpose.
Katie's death changed my life, there's not a doubt in my mind about that. When I teach, I know that I will forever have her in the back of my mind and will remind myself that I am teaching for Katie, that other students may know what she was never able to grasp: her value. Katie has certainly changed my life for the better, and as it was said at her graduation, "because I knew her, I have been changed for good."
Katie's graduation picture (http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/gainesville/guestbook.aspx?n=katherine-kirkland&pid=126022819&cid=full)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
We Seminoles are unconquered.
That means that no tribe can beat our awesomeness. We are the best. We will defeat any enemy that comes our way and threatens to hurt our tribe! We scalp 'em Seminoles!!! F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E! Florida State, Florida State, Florida State....WOOOOOHHH! Do you see my unconquered spirit here?!?!
But sometimes it's hard to have an unconquered spirit when I am trying to climb up that daggum hill behind Diffenbaugh (the Department of Modern Languages). It's really steep and my pansy little legs don't exactly enjoy the trek. Now, climbing down the hill after I get out of my French and Spanish classes is easy cheesy! It just comes natural, and I reckon you can credit that to how gravity pulls you down. But climbing up, now that's rough, and gravity is acting against you.
As I was climbing up that stupid hill today, I realized that this stupid hill is like life. It's so much easier to go down than go up. Knowing myself and knowing who I am inside, it's so much harder to do the right thing than do the wrong thing. I have my sinful nature (gravity) that's always working against the person I want to be. Know what I also noticed? Walking up that hill hurts my legs. In the same way, if I'm living in a way that doesn't hurt me or cost me anything, then I question if I'm really doing the right thing.
Maybe I'm not so unconquered as I thought :(
That means that no tribe can beat our awesomeness. We are the best. We will defeat any enemy that comes our way and threatens to hurt our tribe! We scalp 'em Seminoles!!! F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E! Florida State, Florida State, Florida State....WOOOOOHHH! Do you see my unconquered spirit here?!?!
But sometimes it's hard to have an unconquered spirit when I am trying to climb up that daggum hill behind Diffenbaugh (the Department of Modern Languages). It's really steep and my pansy little legs don't exactly enjoy the trek. Now, climbing down the hill after I get out of my French and Spanish classes is easy cheesy! It just comes natural, and I reckon you can credit that to how gravity pulls you down. But climbing up, now that's rough, and gravity is acting against you.
As I was climbing up that stupid hill today, I realized that this stupid hill is like life. It's so much easier to go down than go up. Knowing myself and knowing who I am inside, it's so much harder to do the right thing than do the wrong thing. I have my sinful nature (gravity) that's always working against the person I want to be. Know what I also noticed? Walking up that hill hurts my legs. In the same way, if I'm living in a way that doesn't hurt me or cost me anything, then I question if I'm really doing the right thing.
Maybe I'm not so unconquered as I thought :(
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)