Hospitals ----->Contains Sensitive Material

*Warning: The following is a very sad and touchy topic, and if you are sensitive or don't want to read about pain, sadness, or care if it ruins hospitals for you, then please don't read it.



I'm supposed to go to the hospital tonight to visit a friend before I go to youth. But I really do NOT want to go. It's not because I don't want to see her or anything, it goes much deeper than that. I hate hospitals, people go to the hospital when they are sick and broken, more importantly people go there to die. I hate hospitals because they smell like they are trying to hide the scent of sickness, to mask the scent of death. I hate hospitals because it is an instant reminder that there are people in my life who are gone, who lost their life in that hospital. Where their family members spent every waking hour not knowing when they were going to die in that hospital. Who suffered and fought for every breath they had left in that hospital. For me a hospital signifies death and fighting so hard when in reality you just give up in the end anyway. It was very traumatic as a kid walking into a hospital to visit someone, seeing them dying and weak. It changes the way you see that person, because every time you see them in their best you remember that pale face losing more and more of it's color. You remember all the pain that was written all over their face, and you remember the loss of blood, loss of hair, more and more needles getting stuck into their skin. I was a kid, I didn't know what to think, it wasn't a happy place. For me, it was a place where my grandma went as she was getting to the last stage in her life. It was my Aunt Dawn laying in a bed with cancer, with a follow-up phone call in the night hours saying she was dead. It was watching my step-grandpa, lay there, barely responsive as we watched the life slowly drain from him. It was long hours of waiting for someone to die, questioning if they were going to live. So yea, I really don't want to go to the hospital tonight, she is currently fine and my philosophy is I should be able to go visit her when she gets released. Because that is when I won't be reminded of how traumatizing the hospital is. I won't have to deal with flashbacks and painful visits that always ended with me wondering who will be next. For me, hospitals are a place that my foot shakes when I walk through the entrance. For me, hospitals are the haunted house that I'm afraid to enter in for what I will see. For me, hospitals are a place where I do NOT want to go even though I'm supposed to.
Like Always SUBSCRIBE so you don't miss my next post whenever that may be!!!

I am Second

So, tonight at my youth we talked about sharing our stories with others and we did so in partners. Now that honestly was so hard because my story is almost as if opening up old wounds. Our series is "I am second" testimonies or how we put God before ourselves in the day to day. The moment that made the big change for me was the darkest point in my life, and every time I talk or even think about it, it makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry. However, if this story helps people then I say suffering through it is worth it if they end up knowing my best friend and savior. That being said, typing it for people behind a screen is the first step I'm taking to share what I have to say and quite frankly the easiest. Not doing this in person may not have as great an effect, but I say even if this helps one person, if this changes one life than the reason why God gave me this much crap to go through has been made. So, this is the paragraph I wrote for my "I am second" Story, not revised... the raw version that came straight from my vulnerable teen self in a small group at youth on Sunday night.

I put myself first for the longest time, I thought I had all the answers. Going into my freshman year of high school, I was bullied beyond what I thought could be repaired. I had already went through a hard time of loosing my grandma that same winter. I turned to my own way out, I wanted control again, to be in charge of my situation. I was lost and searching for what I thought would may everything easy again. I thought it'd be better to have control, and if I were to die it'd be by my own hand. I had accepted that my fate would be to finally stop all the pain with one clean blow, just a couple of pills and it would all be over. But then God spoke to me in that time, more powerfully than I had ever heard in the entirety of growing up in a Christian home. He told me what I needed to hear, that I wasn't on this earth for me, I was here for him. My life was in his hands and it was a very humbling time of finally letting go and giving up control. It was the darkest point in my life where I realized that I was, and that I am second.