Purpose for the Pain

"I have been walking this line for just over two years now, two of the most beautiful, awful, wonderful, terrifying years of my life. I have fought harder than I've ever fought for anything. I have cried harder, laughed and screamed louder, and grown in the most painful, fantastic ways. Today I choose to feel the pain of sitting through a feeling, the terror in realizing that I am powerless over so many things, and the joy in knowing that I do not experience these things alone. I fight my feet when they beg me to run and battle my mind in its attempts to protect me from remembering the things I worked so hard to forget. Today I choose to fight, to stand in front of the mirror and let God hold my hand as I wake up the dead and face them head on. Today is a constant war for healing, and today is filled with promise and potential. I have dreams and goals of changing the world, of leaving a true legacy of love and redemption. I long to be a catalyst for a revolution.

But, the most beautiful thing about all of this is that this redemption I've experienced was not my own doing, but that of One who is far greater than I. It is not my hands that keep my arms from scars or my mouth from quenching its thirst in pretty poison. It is a God who loves me, who carries me when I am too weak, and He has been, He always was. I just wouldn't let Him. The hope that I had in Him was the rope that I clung to through the darkest of days. When I was in high school I met a girl who introduced me to this prayer, 'God, make me a shining star in the universe, give me ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to understand.'

This has been the prayer of my heart, my hope. The idea that God could take the ugliest, darkest corners of our lives and expose it, make our secrets transparent and shine through them, is what fuels me. I want nothing more than to share my heart with the hope that God would take my pain and give it purpose, beauty and use it to redeem those that may find themselves somewhere in these pages. There is a purpose for the pain. It is called redemption."

- Rene Yohe, Purpose for the Pain