5/6/18 “Three Youth Sunday Messages” by Bryan Lee

MAY 6, 2018 BY BRYAN LEE (EDIT)

The following three messages were all given by Pullen youth in response to three short stories written by three of their peers. Our text for the week was John 15:9-17.

Caleigh Norris-Bradshaw

Pain. It is something we have all felt at some point in our lives. It is something that cannot be measured with a mathematical system because it is relative to each and every person. But I think we can all agree whether it’s a simple scrape or an invisible wound to the heart, it sucks.
The first memory I have of feeling pain was as a small child. I was maybe 3 years old, and I was playing with my preschool friends at recess. We were spinning around a pole, I got very dizzy, and I fell onto the jagged wood-chips. Now, I don’t know why someone thought it a good idea to put wood chips down in a preschool play area, but I do remember thinking that it was dumb idea has I looked down at my hand and saw a bright red spot forming where a chip had gotten stuck in my hand. However, I didn’t freak out and cry, but simply went to the teacher and explained what happened. She stuck a band aid on it, and I was on my way. These types of incidents happened quite frequently. I learned at a very young age that my pain tolerance was very high. That’s not to say I didn’t have my moments of crying at a scraped knee, or the shock of a broken arm, but for the most part physical pains didn’t really bother me. It wasn’t until I got older did I realize I am not so immune to mental pain.
Throughout the early stages of my childhood, I had a lot of self confidence. I was outgoing, I made friends with everyone I met, and I was generally a happy kid. And then, puberty hit. Now, some of you are probably like what’s puberty? And some of you can probably still recall some of those experiences and the rest of you are probably taking a trip back in time. Because it probably has been a while since most of you were a teenager, I want you to take a moment to think back to those years. You probably want to laugh, smile, or cringe at all the angsty things you did as you think man, I wish someone bestowed some wisdom on me at that time. But, as a teenager myself, it’s freaking hard. You’re kind of this weird in between of not an adult and not a kid. You’re expected to act like an adult, yet you get treated like a kid half the time and it’s just a constant rage of hormones and its just rough. I’ve always been quite mature for my age, so I although I’ve always been social and had friends, it was still difficult for me to fit in. It was in middle school that I really hit some hard times. And to this day it is still one of the hardest times I’ve had to go through. And if you’re thinking wow kid, you haven’t seen nothing yet, I’d like to say you are right. Because as a teenager, you haven’t experienced all of life yet, so what a kid says is the hardest thing they’ve ever gone through, it probably is because we haven’t had a chance to say “well, I made it through this really bad time so I can make it through this thing that isn’t as hard”. We’re still learning. And middle school was that time for me.
As I said, I’ve always been mature for my age, and in middle school it seemed like I was aging faster than all my peers. In 6th grade, I didn’t find humor in the same things that they did. I just felt out of place. I was socially awkward, I was changing and growing. And it just didn’t seem like my peers were growing at the same rate as me. I can remember my self confidence just draining. By 7th grade, it had practically diminished. I couldn’t seem to make friends as easily anymore. I remember eating lunch in the cafeteria, and not speaking a word to anyone the whole time. I remember always being the last to be picked for projects or whenever we had to partner up I was just kind of the leftover kid who had to crash a group of 2 and become the unwanted 3. Sure I had a few friends, but I was always the kid who got left out of the party invites because I was last on the list. And those friends I did had eventually left me. I became depressed and sad all the time. I just didn’t like myself anymore. I would cry myself to sleep most nights. But I never told anyone because I was scared they’d tell me I was being overdramatic and I needed to get over myself. So I kept it all in. 8th grade was a little better. I made some new friends and I realized through some inspiring teachers that I mattered. I was important. And little by little I began to see some light again. And then, there was high school, and it came crashing down again.
9th grade was just weird. I felt like a small child walking in the halls and the seniors looked like they might eat me if I even breathed wrong. It was in 9th grade that I experienced my first heartbreak, which left me more broken than before. Sophomore year was hard, but it did nothing to compare to the absolute torture of academic death that Junior year caused me. With 7 out of 8 classes being core subjects, 2 of which were AP, I felt like my brain would explode. I slept on average 3-5 hours a night. (For the record I’m supposed to get 10-12). I cried and cried and cried. It felt like a never ending death trap. My social life was nonexistent and I just studied all the time. It was painful.
At this point you’re probably like wow, okay thank you for this life story, but what is the point? The point is, I have never felt so completely and utterly alone than I have in these lows of my life. It’s like this hollow empty weight that sits in your chest, and it just hurts. You feel like there’s no one in this world who can possibly understand. And I imagine that is how Timothy felt when he turned to those pills. I relate to Timothy. I know what it is like to want to just escape from the whole world. To forget the gut wrenching pain that comes with being alone, because it causes a physical pain that makes it feel like your heart is breaking. If I could speak to Timothy right now, I would tell him that pills and alcohol won’t make that pain go away, not forever. I have met some people who are Timothy, who have his same experiences. Luckily, they’ve taken a different turn and realized the same thing I realized sophomore year of high school. You can’t keep that pain inside. It has to come out. If you let the pain of loneliness sit inside you, it will just fester. It gets bigger and bigger until it feels like it will suffocate you. You have to confide in someone. And you have to realize that while you may feel so isolated, there are people who care and who are willing to help.
In 9th grade, I met this girl who was as weird as me and who knew the pain I was going through. Her name is Trinity, and she’s been my best friend for 4 years now and I can’t imagine life without her. We turn to each other for anything and everything. We depended on each other Junior year, making sure we had skype study sessions for the big tests in our AP classes, making sure to remind each other to drink enough water, maybe try to sleep in on the weekends. I mended my broken heart with time and by surrounding myself with positive people.
If I could tell Timothy one thing, it’d be that pills don’t make it better, good people make it better. You can’t escape the pain, you can’t bury the pain, but you have to face it head on with the help of other people. That despite how bad you are feeling, it does get better. Whether it takes one month or 5 years or however long to get there, it does get better.
This fall, I will be attending Meredith College with my best friend Trinity. I sleep at least 6 hours a night, sometimes even 7. I wake up in the morning and actually feel like going to school because I can see my favorite people. I have a boyfriend who makes me feel like my broken heart never even existed. I know that this community at Pullen accepts me and loves me for everything I am. I wake up happy to live my life. I know I will have many many more painful experiences, and I will probably feel those lows at some point in my life again. But I also know that I can get through them because there’s always something good on the other side. I just need the right support to help get me there.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Zoe Nichols

Consider Martha, the single mother, struggling to raise her two children. Stress is her new normal. This is likely a phrase we all identify with, whether your stress comes from school, or work, or home. Like Martha, we may struggle to make ends meet, we may struggle to find time for our families, we may struggle to find balance and calm in our lives. When the world feels overwhelming, and when stress is the new normal, it is hard to find space in our lives for love.

One lesson I have learned in my faith journey is that “loving thy neighbor” is not as easy as it sounds. It is especially not easy to love when it feels like everything is going wrong. And it’s even worse when you try to love people who, quite frankly, are not very lovable.

I’ve been around this church long enough to know everyone here feels sympathy for Martha and her children in the story. It’s easy to sit here and say that you would extend your hand to them and help their family to find security. But what if Martha used her wages not to feed her children, but to feed her opioid addiction? What if she’s trying to feed her kids, but she’s also a bigot? What if instead of going to school with the supplies their mother sacrificed to get for them, Martha’s kids skipped class to smoke weed? What if Martha tells you her God condemns you, but she wouldn’t mind you giving her a ride to the grocery store?

It’s pretty easy to help people when we see them as victims. But things change when we see them as people- imperfect people we can’t “fix.”
For many of us, there are times when we feel unloveable. I know that at times in school I have felt that I was unworthy of love, like I was something unnecessary or burdensome. I have learned that when I feel that the world rejects me, or when I do not love myself, then I can not be open to accept the love that seeks to console me. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. We all love people who do not love us. We all have times where we turn away and isolate, or we lash out and become defensive. When we feel unloveable, we can make ourselves unloveable so the world cannot reject us. We are emotional porcupines.

It is easy to love people in principle, but it is not so easy to love them when they are flawed and prickly.

The challenge that Jesus presents his disciples in the Book of John is this “ to love each other as I have loved you”. Not as a master loves servant, but as a friend loves a friend. And let’s face it, we all cut our friends a lot of slack, don’t we? Who has friends that can get away with saying things that our family never could? Who has friends with a lot of flaws, but who are loyal and loving? Jesus was on to something here- Jesus didn’t call for parental love, or master servant love, but that love of choice- the love of a friend. Even the prickly friends. Even the annoying friends. It is not enough to love one another when it is easy, Jesus compels us.

And when we do love righteously, we will be freed. Freed from the idea that stress is the new normal, freed from the standards and rules we use to confine love, and freed from the eternal suffering that is living a life free of unconditional love. Because, as hard as it can be to find room for love amongst the stress, we don’t really need to find a space. Because love is always there. It is always there, but we have to be brave. We have to sometimes accept the unacceptable as our friend, and love them anyhow. And when we can do that- what we give to the world returns to us tenfold.

It is only when we choose to love one another as Jesus implores us – only then do we understand that nothing in life is as consuming, as overwhelming, AND as perfectly beautiful and rewarding as giving and receiving love in our life.

Especially when its hard.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Ryan Cherry

I am lucky to not live in a life of poverty like the one described in the story. I wake up out of bed every morning with a roof over my head. I eat a nice breakfast every morning. I ride the bus to school every day. I get a quality education from a nice school. I have supportive parents who work five days a week to provide me with food, shelter, and all of life’s other necessities. However, there are a large number of people who do not live this kind of life. As of 2016, there are 43.1 million people in America that are living in poverty. Those people have to struggle every day just to get a bite to eat, a concept that is foreign to many of us here today. Many of these people have to work over 10 hours a day, just like Santiago and Sofia in the story, or even work multiple jobs to support their families. Sadly, many of the jobs most impoverished people engage in only earns them minimum wage which is barely enough to survive on. Even worse, there is a large population of people who are homeless. At Pullen, we see this first-hand with the large number of people who come in our doors every day asking for food, bus tickets, or support. In recent years, we saw this with the homeless youth who slept on our patio every night. My family allowed one of the young adults to stay in our house for about six months. While he stayed in our house, my family gave him a nice place to sleep on, helped him get a job as a cashier at Food Lion, and gave him a nice meal every night. However, I also learned about the bad circumstances he grew up in which made me feel very sorry for him. Sadly, many of the homeless people who come to our church doors every day were raised in similar circumstances. These bad circumstances are what ultimately lead many homeless people to give up on life. They are no longer willing to make the effort to get a job and instead engage in drug use. That is why we need to care about these people. As a community, we should encourage these people and help them do whatever it takes to get a job. We should all provide them with the motivation they need to succeed. My family has seen this firsthand with several people who have come to our church for help. This goes to show that we can do it. We, as a community, are capable of getting homeless people back on the right track. Sure, maybe these people never had a supportive family that you and me had growing up, but we as a church community, can be the support group these people need to succeed. To support these people, it could be something as simple as telling them “Hello” in the morning or giving them money to take the bus. Or it could be something more complex like telling them about job opportunities or finding them a place to live. I know that most of us are busy and don’t have the time or energy to be with homeless people for multiple hours a day. But what I am advocating for is that each of us put just a little time and energy into helping these people just once a week, that can still make a difference in these people’s lives. Sure, it may not give them a job or find them a home, but giving these people just a small word of encouragement in the morning will make their day. With a small word of encouragement, a homeless person will be better off than Santiago or Sofia from the story who didn’t have any support at all. And, from a homeless person’s point of view, anything you do can make a difference in their lives. Something “small’ can still go a long way for them. It may not always show, but always believe that what you are doing is making a difference in a homeless person’s life. Thank you!