I Am Nineteen, Going on Twenty...

I want to write tonight, and I’ve no idea what to write about. So many things are whirling about in my head; I feel as if I’m in a dream. I’m looking at the cards next to me and find it almost impossible to believe that today I enter my twentieth year.
Nineteen years old. 6935 days spent on this planet – not counting before I was born. 166440 hours spent on earth – and what have I done for Christ? I have only one life. One life to live. I can use it for good or ill.

Actually, I can’t. I can use it for ill, or I can surrender it in its entirety – every act, thought, word, deed – into the Hands of God. Only He can use it for good. For His glory.

I look back over the past nineteen years. I’m tempted to look at the darkness. The messed up childhood. The living for myself even after I surrendered my life to Christ at 6. The suicidal depression in my early teens. My heart, sworn to Christ and purity, that I take to give to a worldly guy who never wanted it. The websites. The black depression. My failed witness at the Squadron. The cutting. The boys. The rock music. Giving my heart away again in a desperate search to replace what was missing. The idolatry. My failure of my friends and family.

Yes, that’s one dark list. And that’s enough to make me throw my hands up in despair and cry, God, what can You do with a whore like me? Enough to make me think that there’s no way I can change now.

There isn’t. But God can change me.


My childhood had many happy moments, and even as I’m starting to work through a grieving process, I’m starting to smile through tears at memories of times spent with my mother, my father and my brother.

Even though I lived for myself, God stretched out His Hand at the age of fourteen and struck me with a passion for Himself. I rededicated my life and repented, and the sense of His presence has never left me fully ever since.

Even through the failures of everything else I listed, God has used little things in there to change people – to change me. It wasn’t His will I go through the path of suffering that I created. But He was with me all the way through it – and along the way as I pulled out of each small section, He’s used my experience to reach out in a small way to others.

I’ve failed people often. I admit I mess up situations with too much roughness, arrogance or too little sensitivity. Yet God has blessed me, that when I think my presence in people’s lives has only been a curse, so many of my friends have raised their hands to encourage me and say that I’ve blessed them. That can only be the Hand of God.


I struggle with many things as I enter my twentieth year. The memories of the past. The burden of guilt for a wasted one and a half years of my life. The incredible grief at my failed witness for Christ – once painful battle, ended in ignominy. I am in America, and surrounded by a wonderful people and country who have stretched out their arms to me, into which I crumble and grieve as I try to sort my wounds and scars out. I struggle with the fact that once these two months are ended, I step into adulthood as I step off the aeroplane.

I admit, I’m afraid. I know sixteen year old who act as though they were double that age, and sixty year olds who behave as though they were six. Adulthood is not a responsibility I wish to take lightly. I’ve set many goals to accomplish on my return in the next year, but while they ground me in the accepted forms of adulthood, they do not perform the change in my heart. There has to be a balance between seriousness and fun, too, and I don’t want to lose myself in one or the other. People are one of the greatest investments I believe one can have; to reach out and touch another’s life – for good, for God – is a great and aweful thing. How to balance between spending time with my family while providing for them and spending time with my friends – most of whom are in another land?

It’s serious. I feel like a baby, and in a sense, I suppose I am. My communication life with God is not as it should be – and I know it needs to be, to help me through this and any part of my life. I cannot “do” adulthood on my own. It scares me. But I know Someone Who can, and Who has been there before me – a Leader of people, a Healer of hearts, a Toucher of lives, a family and a friend Man. The God-Man, Jesus Christ. And I know He is standing beside me, willing to reach out and hold me as I venture forth into this new stage in life.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago, and we discussed briefly how this trip to America, for me, is kind of like a closing door, a final goodbye party to my childhood and girlhood. Funny, that God should use this to heal my past. He has brought me amongst friends, and I am safe and content here. He has given me this time of healing and peace before bringing me back to face one of my worst battles, and I am truly thankful. Lord, make it so that You are an integrated part of my life on my return. I need You. And thank You - for bringing me safely this far.

So. I am nineteen years old today, entering my twentieth year of life. I have goals before me, a past behind me, and a life to live – for Christ. My duties are simple – to hear His voice in His word, to pour out my heart and fight prayer battles in speaking to Him (two-way communication) and He will guide me the rest of the way. The best of my youth is gone, but I am young yet and pray that He will use me in this new season of life.


Nineteen. On the brink of adulthood. I step out with a smile and hold in the darkness the steady Hand of my Father.