Learning who you are with God by your side

I have been a believer and follower of Christ since I was young. My parents always took me to church and I grew up in the faith. I always knew that I had faith and I always believed but it wasn’t until a traumatic experience made me realize that I wasn’t being my true self and that I had so much more to learn. I will get to the experience but I wanted to share the journey of how I got there first, because we know that the journey is what makes everything fun.

I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City and I was a good kid. I did not get in trouble, I had good grades, teacher’s (well most of them) liked me, I had friends and I was happy. But in the back of my mind it always bothered me that I was not “cool.” Now in middle school and high school who really knows what cool is? I know that in my mind I thought cool was a specific group of people that acted better than others. Looking back, they were not nice people and they did not have good morals, but something made me want to be them. I definitely played it off that I didn’t need to be cool, telling myself that I was fine and reminding myself that I had good friends and didn’t need popularity. But I definitely was intrigued by what their lives were like. See, I was in band and I like I said a good kid. I never took a sip of alcohol until college and I was afraid of getting in trouble, which the popular kids definitely weren’t afraid of.

In middle school and high school it can be so easy to be caught up in what other people have and what you are missing. I tried to push that aside and tried to remind myself that I was perfect just how I was, which I was. It wasn’t until after college that I truly saw that I was who I am and I was grateful for that.

So fast forward, I graduated high school, went to college and joined a sorority. I dropped my ties with marching band, met new friends, and drank alcohol. Very scandalous, I enjoyed hearing people say “Is that her?” when I would run into them at parties. In my mind I was saying “That is right, I am not the good girl anymore, I have a little bit of rebellion in me.”

In my excitement of meeting new people and enjoying new experiences I pushed away some of my friends from high school. One in particular was a friend that I had had since Kindergarten. We were friends through high school, even playing the same instrument in the marching band. When we got to college we joined the same sorority but then we both went our separate ways. She stayed friends with the "good girls" and I decided that I was going to try something new. I became mean in our friendship and it is something that I still regret to this day.

I became friends with the "cool girls" in my sorority and lost all contact with who I used to be but I couldn’t see it. In my mind, I had finally achieved what I had wanted to know. I finally felt like I was in the popular group and I was in the in crowd. But as I moved forward closer to college graduation I felt an emptiness that I couldn’t pinpoint. I felt like I was constantly trying to please my friends and constantly trying to live up to the image that I had created for myself. I didn’t want to lose my status as the popular girl.

After college I had a job that took me away from Kansas City and I started to feel more like me, more like the person that I grew up being. A job brought me back to Kansas City in 2011 and I was thrown back into my group of friends from college. But this time I wasn’t happy. I didn’t feel like I fit in and I felt like I was an outsider. I chalked that up to the fact that I had moved away for 2 years and that it would take time to get back into sync with my friends. Well I was patient and things were finally going back to “normal” when the worst thing happened. I lost everything.

What happened was not easy and is still not easy to talk about. I was scheduled to be in my best friend’s wedding, stand by her side as she married the man of her dreams surrounded by all our friends. I was excited for her but I had a nagging feeling that something was not right with her fiancé. He was too smooth, too complimentary, not trustworthy. I pushed these feelings aside though because my friend meant the world to me and I knew she was happy. The biggest thing that upset me about him though was that he was an atheist, he did not believe in God, and my friend being a very strong Catholic was still going to marry him. I had conversations with her about this but she continued to say that it bothered her that he did not believe in God but that he had the right to his own opinion and she wanted to marry him. Once again, I said ok and agreed to stand by her and what she wanted.

Well, that nagging feeling in my stomach came to a head one night 2 weeks before their wedding. I was visiting my college town with a friend from KC and we were staying at my friend and her fiancés apartment for the big game. One fun night to relax and unwind before the stress of the wedding really kicked in. To my horror, in the middle of the night I was awoken by my friend from KC telling me that she had been assaulted by my friend’s fiancé. I immediately stood by my friend from KC and knew that the fiancé was capable of doing something so horrible and so close to his wedding. My friend from college witnessed her fiancé assaulting my friend and decided that it was just a mistake and that she was still going to marry him.

That is where my story changed. The moment my friend decided to stick by the person that did not believe in God and who had the ability to hurt a friend of mine 2 weeks before their wedding. That is where I said no more. Don’t get me wrong, it was tough to tell my friend that I could not be in her wedding that I had helped her plan. It was tough to not tell my other friends why I was not in the wedding. It was tough for me to see pictures on facebook of everyone having fun at the wedding as I sit at home crying my eyes out. But what made it possible for me to stand strong during those tough times were God.

You see this incident happened on a Saturday and I drove back to KC on Sunday morning. While being there for my friend that was hurt, I was struggling with what do I tell others, do I stay in the wedding, what will my life be like if I don’t have these friends. I struggled with these questions for a week with the love and support of my family. A week after the incident I was still struggling on whether or not I could be in the wedding (which was now a week away) and my parents encouraged me to come to church with them. It was in that church service that God spoke to me. Now it was not a direct speech to me but the sermon was about doing what it is right. It was exactly what I needed to hear and I felt a sense of calmness as I left church and knew what I needed to do.

After that sermon, I wrote out what I wanted to share with my friend and with my parents by my side I called her and let her know that I could not be in her wedding. I told her that I was there for her but I could not stand in front of God as she made this decision. She accepted that decision and that was the last time I spoke to her.

This all happened in 2013, 4 years ago and there are still days that my heart aches for the friendships that I lost. I went through a dark period where I was afraid that I would not have anyone left in my life besides my parents. I was afraid that no one liked me and that I was going to be alone forever. I was also angry. I was angry at my friends fiancé, I was angry at my friend for marrying someone so horrible, I was angry at my other friends for never reaching out to hear my side of the story.

Well time passed, wounds heal and I am here today to share that I am truly in a better place because of what I went through. Believe me, it was hard and it tested me but the thing that I gained the most from this story was God. I was reminded that He was there. Through it all, He was there.

Since this incident, I have gained new friends that I can be me around. I don’t feel like I need to put on an act, I can be me! I can be the nerdy good girl from marching band that never wanted to get in trouble and that is ok! I do not have any contact with any of my friends from college and while that still hurts at times, I know that I am better off because I have true friends that accept me for who I am. On a side note, I have gotten to a place in my life where I am trying to forgive and move on. I am learning that forgiveness is hard but that for true peace I want to forgive them so that I can move on and not harbor the pain.

You might be wondering about my friend from Kindergarten, we got together at our high school 10 year reunion a few years ago and we are repairing our friendship. I can never take back the way that I acted in college but I can move forward and fix the relationships that I miss.

Additionally I have a stronger faith, I am in a small group of women from the church who I feel more connected to then I ever have with any other group of friends. I know that we have that connection because of God. I can be myself around them, I can be vulnerable, I can share my concerns but also my joys. I love how one moment we can all be lifting up prayers for someone and the next we can be rejoicing in how good God is.

Finally, I kept the love of my family and I found the love of a true companion in my boyfriend that I love so much. I realized that I am not alone and while I might have felt like I was alone during this incident I am always reminded that I was not because God was always right there with me.