Seriously KILLER thought life

It's late, and I have a thing tomorrow.  My alarm is set to go off at 6:00 and will remain that way regardless of how long this takes me to write and regardless of what time I finally shut my lids to sleep.  The sense of urgency that has grown in my heart about this post over the past couple of hours is enough to keep me from falling asleep anyway, so I'm just going to pound it out.  It was one of those crazy rapid fire neuron thingies that stemmed from one initial thought that was seemingly completely unconnected from any other previous or surrounding thought.  That thought led down a long trail of memories and thoughts that within a matter of second left me standing in the shower walking through what I'd say in this post.  It all happened in the shower.  It all happened in a matter of seconds.  I had decided I was going to wait until tomorrow to write it, but it just wouldn't.stop.nagging.  So here I am, wet hair, sitting on the bed, teeth unbrushed, tired as all get out.  But it can't be ignored.

To address the title of this post, I had a seriously KILLER thought life when I was a middle schooler.  I was  middle schooler, not a junior higher.  6th-8th grades.  Not 7th and 8th.  Just to clarify.  When I say "killer" thoughts I'm talking suicidal.  I'm sure this will elicit some dropped jaws, furrowed eye brows and questioning words from readers that know me.  I've talked to VERY few people about this part of my life and those I've talked to about it have never really gotten an ear full from me about it.  I tend to prefer to graze over it in passing on the way to a more relevant word on whatever discussion it seemed to have worked it's way into.  On to the beginning of my history.
 Those who remember me as a small child and even a middle schooler may remember that there wasn't much about me that fit into the "girl" category.  I had a horrific haircut for most of my early life, a huge gap inbetween my two front teeth (which our family dentist randomly filled in one early morning of my freshman year of highschool as he was, yet again, fixing a chip in my front tooth), barely a spot of skin on my face that wasn't covered by an orange freckle, a stick body with no signs of womanhood until I was WELL into my freshman year of highschool and non girly clothes.  I prefered to not be "girly", but never quite understood how it played a roll in my public school experience.  I'm not sure what bullying entails today, but I was bullied back in my day. (Note: those of you who were my dear friends growing up, hold NO fear in your heart that ANY of this is referring to you! You know who you are!  Be encouraged that you hold very bright spots in my memory of childhood!"  I was called names and told that I smelled like tuna (whatever THATS supposed to mean!).  "Freckle face", "gap tooth", "just another one of the boys".  There's others, but they don't matter.  I was told to go to the boys bathroom because "THIS bathroom is for GIRLS!"  She knew full well I was a girl.  She was just an insensitive jerk.  I sat down, peed, and then stayed on the toilet and cried for a healthy five minutes before mustering up the courage to walk past the door guard butterfly girl again.  My Dad held me on my bed in our cabin at Family Camp that night as I wept.  As for the door guard that said this to me, being on the heavy side of things, noticeably socially akward and having a "pet butterfly" that was at all times riding upon her right shoulder (yes, a REAL butterfly) probably put her in a prime position to feel the need to put someone else down, since she was constantly getting it herself.  If only I'd had a 30 year old brain at the time to know to reach out to her and pray for her instead of being so injured that I couldn't recognize her pain as being similar to mine.
My suicidal thoughts didn't come into play until middle school.  Middle school was worse.  I have vivid memories of weeks going by that held the end of every school day with a little girl weeping in the car on the way home about it being the "worst" day of her life!  And it was.  Every day.  For long periods of time.  I had a completely out of control sense of insecurity about the way I looked.  The way my body looked.  The way the "pretty girls" looked.  The way the boys treated me.  The way the boys treated THEM!  The looks that were darted my way in the locker room and on the basket ball or volley ball court as I stumbled over my enormously unproportional oversized feet.  NOW, know this.  Middle schoolers/Junior Highers, bless their hearts, have a brain that just.doesn't.get it!  Brains are SO wacked out at this age in life.  SO SO SO wacked out!  The feelings that I was feeling were so painfully real for me regardless of how real the situations were that were eliciting those feelings.  My view of things, I'm certain, was quite worse that reality itself.   This is where the suicidal thoughts came into play and I think DO come into play for more kids than anyone would expect (as I said before, I'm sure it's a shocker for the readers that know me to find all this out).  For THEM, it's real!  It's painfully and unmistakeably real!  REGARDLESS of how stupid and petty and babyish is all seems, is SO SO SO real in their brains!  Their strange, undeveloped, wacked out brains!  My dad rocked me at night if I wanted him to and spent more time investing in my life than most dad's can say for themselves and prayed for me daily (and still does.  Thank you, Dad!).  My mom told me often that I was beautiful and encouraged me that I didn't "need" make-up as she showed me how to apply mascara when I asked her to.  She prayed for me daily, as well, and still does. (Thank you, Mom!)  They were always a motivation for me to stick around.  I'm telling you, I was feeling desperate.  Again, as childish and petty as these things may have appeared to an adult, my insecure middle school brain just couldn't process it in a "normal" human way.  That age of people aren't "normal".  It's the most UNnormal age of life.  Yes.  Observe and understand how ABnormal it is!

There were knives that sat on the counter all tucked neatly in their slots of the wooden knife block.  I'd go to the kitchen to get a drink of water just so I could stand there and stare at them and decide, once again, that I wasn't going to take one out.  My heart would pound and my palms would get all sweaty.  I'd finally snap out of my trance and put the cup down and pad off to bed.  This wasn't at our house in Powell.  It was at a cabin that we'd rent for a week in the summer up in the mountains.  I loved that cabin.  The mountains made me feel renewed, alive, revived.  Thats when Satan would attack the hardest.  Getting away with my dear family to an environment that has always spoken to my heart the strongest, he'd fight to keep my attention on the trouble awaiting me at home.  The trouble of striving to fit in, to be liked, to be called by my real name.  To keep a friend that would WANT to hang out with me in school.  I know it's disturbing.  I know it's no fun to read.  It's no fun to remember.  It's honestly no fun to write, but I feel like it needs to be written.  There's just no way to know how their little brains are processing things.  Maybe someone will read this that remembers saying something not very nice and think that it just wasn't that big of a deal.  And it probably wasn't.  But to my brain it WAS.  To their brains it IS!  Me, a little girl from a strong Christian family with loving parents and loving siblings stood in the kitchen of a mountain cabin staring at the knives in the knife block, deciding which one would be the most pain free.  (Take heart, knife blocks no longer torture my thoughts.  God has used my experiences from grade school and middle school to make me who I am today.)  My heart cries when I see the akward one.  The picked on one.  The unliked one.  I know them.  I know their hearts.  I fear for them.  I pray for them.  I probably should do something with them, ministry wise, but until tonight I've never felt that strong of an urgency.  I guess I have felt it, but I've wrongly ignored it.  This is my first step in ignoring it no longer.  ( And I'm sure this isn't the norm for every middle school aged childs brain, but I fear it's more par for the course than we'd like to think.)
My challenge to you, parent or not of a child in this akward stage, PRAY.  Don't be paranoid, but PRAY! TALK! LOVE! ENCOURAGE! UNDERSTAND! LISTEN! WATCH! PROTECT!

I was serious enough about those knives in that block.  Had I not had the family that I had.  Had I not been covered in the prayer that I was shrouded in.  Had I not been held and rocked and listened to.  Knives or no knives, I was serious enough about getting out.  Had I not been embraced...
EMBRACE AND PRAY!




p.s.  No.  I wasn't ALL horrible!  Satan capitolized on the pain I was experiencing and had a royal time with my thought life for a while, but other than that wrinkle (that was HUGE for a while) I had rockin good childhood!