only because the stone is rolled and the curtain torn;

Hey you.

Before you read this, before my words cause your thoughts to run and blood to boil, let me just admit right now that this will infuriate you; you will not agree with this message, my perceptions. You will tell your friends, tell them all about your “problem child.” And they’ll side with you, because friends do that. None of them have the authority to challenge you.

I do.

And that’s what’s pissing you off, the unnatural stir of events, assertions on my own part that make you shift in your seat. Shift and shift again. I will not send you this letter. You will not read these words. Give me pen and paper and I will paint the portrait; this leaves you at a mighty disadvantage. I will not fall to the curse of this family, to hide behind letters sent by technology or uniformed men, with futile fervor to bridge the gap between us consisting not of miles but of years of turmoil, resentment, unspoken words, forgotten apologies and consequent harbored bitterness. I am no coward. These words, should they meet you, will leave my face and come upon your own. You’ll threaten to cut the ties, to change the will, and I will walk away. I am not tied to you, I am not your puppet, I am not your punching bag, and I will not be your door mat. You, you will retreat and stew and relive these words, pervert the recollection when you tell the story through your distorted lens. I will sigh over you, and you will continue to plague my thoughts. I will not be free from you. But I will not be under you.

And that’s what scares you. No one else has stood for and by you as I have; no one else has taken your crap. I am the puppy you beat; I always return cowering with my tail between my legs. You had control. You had the power to punch.

You have been battling your own demons since your childhood, for so long that the bleeding wounds now blind you and all you can see is red. Your world is painted with your hatred, and you seek only things to serve you now. You have grown increasingly less selfless over time, convinced you have not been paid your due. Take this up with your debtor if you must, but do not take it up with me.

Keep your cookie cut-out of my character, for it is the only reference you will have to relive the past and design the future in which you want to live. You can choose brokenness or you can choose grace, and my bet is you’ll take the former. You will stay in the ditch you’ve dug yourself, but I will hold the rope for you. I will be near enough only to hear you call my name. But I will not crawl down there with you, and I will not be pulled down. I will not play second to your latest lover, and I will not be kicked just to serve you. I will not be bruised in meeting your demands. Meet them on your own. Take your own advice. Act like an adult. Treat your parents with respect. Grow up and stop immediately assessing every situation as if you are the victim, for I am not always the villain.

I know. This isn’t true, you are never wrong, you are only mistreated and misunderstood. How dare I be so mistaken to write this, let alone allow these thoughts to run amuck in my head as they have? By what authority may I defend myself and choose to lead a better life? Wherever did I get the impression that it is never good enough for you, that you will always find something to attack? Why is it that you cannot live in a state of peace? Why do you never question motives, you never examine the situation, you never account for circumstance? You’ll sleep better if you stay the way you are, cuddled with your skeletons, guarded by your demons. Let them tell you none of this is true, there is nothing wrong, and the world is against you. All your enemies created themselves out of sheer desire; I was born to. I was born to make you miserable. At a young age, before I acquired language, I set out to destroy you. It is your goal to make sure I do not succeed.

Go ahead, and fight that battle. You’ve already lost the war.

Enjoy the dark. The mess you made of me, the lies you spoke of me will join you and haunt you and you will wonder what you did so wrong in a past life that never happened to deserve such offense.

- Yours, if only by blood.

Farewell to lies and textbooks, but I'm keeping my arms.

I have never been awake for such a crummy sunrise as I was on January 11. I have nothing but respect for the way God paints the skies, but the beauty was nearly hidden by overcast clouds, to be completely honest. I kept telling myself it was a new day, but the thought was immediately followed by the next; it was not a new day that I wanted. I hadn’t asked for it. I resented that I couldn’t return it to customer service. But God does not take bargains. God just takes over. There’s no way to pause the sunrise. I learned that the hard way. I went home, I cleaned my apartment, I went to the classes I grew to despise.

Christmas Day is a twenty-four hour block that we tend to celebrate our family with the amount of crap we’re willing to give them. I celebrate the manifestation of redemption in the flesh. In a more painful way, it was on Christmas Day that I was redeemed. The ball started rolling, and it was a slow process. It is over four months later and I am still waiting for the end.

These classes that I went to…they were my identity. Every class I’d taken, every textbook I’d read, every test that I had taken and term paper that bore my name took on part of me just as it had taken on the printer’s ink. And I sat in them on January 11, running through the events that were beginning to unfold and redefine the world I lived in. Nearly four months have passed; two more days will meet the mark. In the proverbial grand scheme of things, four months is not a long time by any means. I call sets of them “semesters.” Yet this one was the hardest one, and this one took eternity to end.

On January 5^th, I got a flat tire.

On January 7^th, I reclaimed my heart and gained a new friend.

On January 11^th, I lost perspective because I thought I’d lost another.

On January 13^th, I interviewed for a job I was sure I’d get.

On January 14^th, I lost my expensive car key to a lame roller coaster.

On January 15^th, I got a flat tire. Again.

On January 16^th, I got my oil changed, and my tired patched for free. I was naïve enough to think it was over.

On January 23^rd, I got a ticket.

On February 20^th, I quit being the student I felt like I needed to be and went to a party disguised as a rock show.

On February 23^rd, I postponed one trip and went on another.

On February 24^th, I made friends with a new journal and renounced every demon that has held me down since the early beginnings of my childhood.

On February 26^th, I made some new goals for myself. I wrote them on a mirror to see them in my reflection.

On February 27^th, my grades paid the price and I lost my life goals, security, and identity within a matter of hours. I made a new deal with God, and I haven’t made life plans on my own since.

On February 28^th, I was swept away.

On February 29^th, I got the chance to spend a day or two adding to the Adventures.

On March 1^st, I didn’t get the job.

On March 4^th, I learned that in most cases, the body of Christ fails to meet the needs of the marginalized.

On March 11^th, a sixty-day drought ended.

On March 17^th, I drove hundreds of miles on three hours sleep and it was wonderful because I am blessed. I got made fun of for driving tame, but I didn’t get pulled over once.

On March 18^th, I co-wrote a paper that wasn’t mine on a book I’ve never read.

On March 20^th, I slept in my car. Don’t hate me cuz you ain’t me.

On March 28^th, I became better friends with my dad. [My dad’s awesome].

On April 3^rd, I got schooled and disillusioned.

On April 8^th, I got honest and a vision. Good things will happen because of it.

On April 10^th, I got humble. I have a long way to go.

On April 16^th, I took a step forward.

On April 18^th, I scheduled my life for the latter four months of 2007.

On April 28^th, I got another ticket, gained perspective, lower-back pain, and better friendships.

On April 29^th, I got mad at America’s insatiable greed.

On May 1^st, I got a much-needed love letter.

On May 4^th, I woke up with less homework, less guilt and easier breaths.

On May 5^th, I got a book I’ve been wanting to read, someone else’s story.

On May 8^th, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling.

On May 9^th, I had a good day.

On May 10^th, I wrote this at 2 in the morning.

This is my story. I spent hours with dear friends, mostly on Tuesdays, doing little more than conquering Guitar Hero and sharing each other’s lives. I’ve been given countless bites to eat, and you will get greater reward than I can offer for it. I missed the calls that came to me and mostly left messages on those I made. Countless hugs warmed my heart, and the course of my spirit was altered by your prayers.

If you’re reading this, you probably had a hand in this season. You’re a part of this chapter. The hand of God is clutching my heart through my chest, pulling me from the grave. Christmas Day lacked the peace I expected it to have, and was a catalyst of change. This is not over. I have important relationships to repair, wounds that I still must have healed.

Tomorrow is May 11, 2007. The sun will rise on a new day, a welcome day, and begin a new set of four months. I will learn new things, meet new people, and bear more light. I will shed more tears, have more laughs, see more darkness and experience new rescue. I will lead, and I will reclaim. I will write and play and read and run and love more deeply than I’ve ever been capable. I will get tired, and I will try harder. I will feel defeated but I will have victory. I will move and I will sleep under several roofs and I will write more letters and continue this story. I will come, see, and conquer. I will return to the classroom in fall just like before, but this time I will be free. My identity will not be printed on paper, double-spaced in twelve-point font. I will not be defined by letters. I will be given grace and confidence and love. Hope will wake me up in the morning. This is not a farewell to arms. This is a call to rise.

The Consequences of Being Displaced

Prior to April 28^th, 2007, I was a quiet activist. I signed the One campaign, I said my prayers for world peace. I slipped a few bucks here and there to charity. I went to class and did my homework, went to work and told my stories. I rattled off statistics like I knew what I was talking about. I wrote songs on guitars I received as gifts, wrote my words in journals like I had the right to share them. I drove around the car I didn’t pay for and slept in the apartment for which I didn’t pay rent [thank you, Dad]. I lived the life of opportunity I was born into. That was my story.

On April 28^th, 2007, I participated in Invisible Children’s Displace Me with 67, 870 other people in fifteen cities across the country. My friends and I joined the ranks at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. We simulated our own refugee camp to bring media attention to the guerrilla warfare in Uganda that has brought unspeakable consequences to the nation. Millions have died. Thousands die each week. In the chunks of my life that I call semesters, 16,000 people will die unnecessarily at hand of treatable diseases and malnutrition at Ugandan camps alone. Keep in mind that Uganda is not the only place in which this is happening. When I parked my car at UCF, my friends and I said our prayers that the lives of those affected will change; that the actions of Americans will bring blessing to the needy in Africa. I don’t think I was smart enough to pray for my own life to change, but it did. I learned a few things this weekend:

1. Right now, at this very moment, millions of people are hungry, thirsty, and completely incapable of doing anything about it. When they can, their food has the nutritional value of saltine crackers [which I imagine gets old real fast] and their water is dirty. For this, their immune system is weakened.
2. Sleeping on anything less than a well-made mattress blows beyond measure, and your body will hate you for it. Particularly your lower back. Do it for one night, and days later you still will not have recovered. Do it for years and it will kill you slowly, namely through smacking your already weakened immune system upside its hurting head.
3. For us, eating a few saltine crackers, drinking limited rations of clean, bottled water and creating our own cardboard campsite to slumber party with 5,000 people was cool. We got to wake up and eat a lovely breakfast at Perkin’s with student discounts, shower when we got home in warm, running water with name-brand soap, shampoo and conditioner, and sleep in a real bed that night and every night thereafter unless we choose otherwise. Fabulous. For them, they eat crap and drink dirt and can’t farm their own land back “home” (a very flexible term at this point) and sleep on what I assume is at best a sturdy concoction of mud and straw, unable to work for income and largely dependent on charity. If it hasn’t already happened, it’s in the works for the UN to drastically cut this charity. [Tell them not to].
4. There is an entire generation of children orphaned by AIDS and abduction. The lucky ones still have at least one parent. They walk every night to centers to protect them against the Lord’s Resistance Army, who have taken it upon themselves to raid villages and kidnap human beings and essentially make them their slaves. Parents are separated from their children. Women are raped. Children are taught early on that innocence is not theirs to have. Young girls are raped before they know what sex is. Young boys are told guns are easy to use. I doubt they even know what they are fighting for, other than to not lose their own life to the cause. In many ways, I think they already have. I’ve read, at least in terms of sex slavery, that there are 27 million slaves worldwide. I don’t know if this also accounts for those abducted by guerrilla rebels. This is the stuff of movies. I still can’t process that it’s actually the stuff of real life, that as I write this, there is genuine weeping throughout the world. That as you read this, lives have either ended or dramatically changed for the worse at the hands of others. The opposite is also true, and it is hope that carries us onward.
5. There is a movement in the youth of America, and fortunately the music community is fostering its growth. Music has the power to move and change, and that’s what is required right now. Most of the participants this weekend fell into the youth of America. This is our cause, this is what our generation will be known for—our response to the world’s depravity.

On April 29^th, 2007, I returned home. A few things have changed that I think are indicative of a greater movement within me: I say grace before meals, just like before, but now I really mean it when I say “thank You.” I lay on my bed grateful for its existence. It's not even mine, to be honest with you. I appreciate my showers on a whole new level. I study for finals, joyful that I have the chance at literacy, let alone higher education. I drink my clean, bottled water aware of how quickly it takes for thirst to set in when you can’t quench it. I have so little to complain about, and all it took was one sissified attempt at poverty for fifteen hours for me to realize it. My story just started a new chapter.

This war has not ended, and the problem is not contained. It is global. Please join me in this plight. We cannot rewrite history, but we have the rest of the future. We have the world’s story to change.

www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme