Biogrimony

I like to combine words (see the name of this blog) and decided to combine my Bio and testimony into one. Thus, Biography + testimony = Biogrimony.

Anyway. Let’s start from the start, shall we?

I’ve always led a fast-paced life, it seems.

I was born at 28 weeks, three months early. I weighed just over one and a half pounds. My mother was sick with toxemia, and so was rushed to a hospital two hours from where we live now so that she could have a C-section. My mother was not allowed to see me until a few days after I was born, because she was so drugged up from the surgery.

It’s been 20 years and counting (a little over, technically), and I’m still an impatient person.

In fact, it seems I’ve gotten even more impatient as the years have gone by.

I like things to be done NOW, as quickly as possible, so that I can get on with my life and stop worrying that I might screw up.

I do projects as quickly as possible. I guess, psychologically, I wait until the last minute (procrastinate…) so that I have to rush through and finish quickly? Maybe?

Anyway. I’m a fast, impatient person.

And I put Jesus off. I’ve been procrastinating with my Bible reading and stuff. I don’t know why, but I can’t get myself to spend as much time as I should with God.

It’s been that way my entire life. I’ve always thought of myself as a motivated person…but I fail at a lot of things.

I’ve never had the relationship I should have with God.

I mean, I grew up in a Christian home, and I go to church practically every Sunday and Wednesday, and even the ocasional Friday or weekend event. I take PAGES of notes; I have a binder full of notebook paper lined with the order of the service per Sunday; I have literally almost every bulletin from the last THREE YEARS stashed somewhere in my room; I’m insanely obsessed with collecting and saving church stuff. I went to Bible Camp all but maybe two or three years out of, like, seven. I paid attention in Confirmation (which at our church is 7th and 8th grades). I’ve been to CHIC twice. I went on mission trips.

But I didn’t start to fully understand what being a Christian and having a relationship with God was until… Yeesh. I’m not even sure I fully understand it right now. But I starting getting more serious about it during high school, I think.

My high school years kinda sucked.

In three years, I lost four special people.

My neighbor, who was like a grandfather, died of cancer that spread to his brain.

My grandmother, who I didn’t get to see very often, won her first battle with cancer, but then it came back stronger and spread to her brain.

My best friend was killed by a drunk driver during our Senior year.

And another girl from church died in a car accident—-the guy who hit her apparently thought he had more time to cross a busy four-lane than he actually did. I wasn’t as close to her as I was to the others, but it still sucked.

Losing my neighbor sucked.

Losing my grandmother was hard.

Both were expected, though, unlike my BF’s death. I found out the next morning when my mom came to find me at school. Thursday SUCKED. A lot of us kids skipped classes, but stayed on campus. At lunchtime, we left, and a few girls came to my house for pizza and “Get Smart (the newer movie version).” That night, we invited people who knew her to church for a memorial service: stories, photos, some food… And then Friday at school… My Spanish teacher grabbed three of us who’d missed class because of the ordeal and started to tell us how sorry she was for our loss and I broke down. I cried. I should’ve left the room.

Losing them was hard. Losing M was hardest, because it was unexpected.

One of my small group leaders said periodically that she couldn’t believe M’s mom was okay with it; that she would’ve still been in mourning and not able to get out of bed months later if it had been her kid.

It was hard, but we got through it.

I still miss her, and every month on the anniversary of her death I Facebook her and wish her a happy eternal X-month birthday.

But I don’t cry as much anymore.

And when I REALLY miss her, I talk to her. I write on her Facebook wall or look up and talk to the ceiling.

Can’t very well talk to her gravestone, because she was buried in her home state, but I can still talk to her.

After each of them died, I had to make a choice: run from God, or run to Him.

At first, I was angry and wanted to run away.

But then, with help from church friends, I started to see that I needed to run TO Him.

And then I fell away again.

After To Save A Life came out in theaters, our youth group did this follow-up thing on Wednesday nights. One night, we pretended the room was a “sacle”—-you know, one of those things where you illustrate where you stand on a scale of one to ten? Yeah, we did that. One wall was zero, not at all, and the opposite wall was 10, or totally agree, or whatever we used…

Anyway, two of the questions that I remember were about our relationships with God.

The first question, about where we are in our relationship right now, I stood sort of in the middle of the room with a few other people. I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, but I didn’t feel like I was that far from Him, either.

The one after that, where we wanted to be in our relationship with God, EVERYBODY went to the “10” wall. I looked at the other leader (not the youth pastor) and said something about how we were tipping the boat over.

Soyeah.

Right now, my relationship with God is almost nonexistant. Which is bad. I mean, I talke to Him and stuff, but I’m not at a 10 yet. I’m not sure I ever will be, but it’s kinda my goal.

So, if you’ve read the About and Weird Title pages of this blog, you know that I’m blogging partly as a way to get myself back into devotionals.

And this fall (2010), I’m hoping to go through the Confirmation kids’ book with them, read the same stories, answer the same questions, memorize the same verses… I’ve already asked the YP for my own copy of the book so that I have something to do each week as opposed to just hearing the kids say their verses and letting them go on their way. I’m gonna go through it with them and show them that it’s not as hard as it seems to memorize a couple of sentences in a week. (Maybe I’ll post each week’s verse when we start youth group again…)

So, that’s kinda my Bio/testimony. A synopsis, anyway.