what do i know of You/who spoke me into motion?/where have i even stood/but the shore along Your ocean?/are You fire, are You fury/are You sacred, are You beautiful?/so what do i know? what do i know of holy?

i guess that i thought that i had figured You out/i knew all the stories, and i learned to talk about/how You were mighty to save/but those were only empty words on a page/then i caught a glimpse of who You might be/the slightest hand of You brought me down to my knees

what do i know of holy?  what do i know of wounds that will heal my shame/and a God who gave life its name/what do i know of holy? of the ones who the angels praised/all creation knows Your name/honoured than heaven above/what do i know of this love?

Lord, what do i know?  what do i know of holy?

–what do i know of holy? – addison road

I don’t know what started the depression to begin with. To be honest, I should really stop referring to it as ‘the depression’ and start calling it ‘my depression’. Either way, I don’t know what started it. But, it happened.

I’m not sure if it all started when I was eleven or when I was thirteen. I was eleven and in the sixth grade when one of my best friends suddenly died of a heart condition none of us, her friends, knew about. I carried on next-to-normally after that. I continued on living in a way that most people wouldn’t even perceive a change in me. In retrospect, I don’t think I dealt with my friend’s death effectively. Maybe if I had, my depression wouldn’t have started. I believe, though, if I wouldn’t have had that battle with depression, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Or maybe I would and everything would have just happened in another way.

Two years after the initial incident of my friend’s death, when I was in the eighth grade, my friends and I all had a really bad year. We were being bullied by many kids in our grade, what our vice-principal chalked up to nothing more than boys being immature, and beginning to experience the spike of hormones that come along with puberty. Incident after incident was reported to the administration and the guidance counselor. Nothing happened. By the time an appointment was set up with mediation services, it was made for the end of June, four days before our middle school hell ended. No resolution would be found then, anyways. All we cared about was getting out of that school once and for all.

At thirteen, I spent my time writing—a lot. Writing pieces that a year before I don’t think would have even crossed my mind to write. Poem after poem poured out onto my computer—I still have them—about bleeding, fighting, running away, challenging authority, self-mutilation and, the big one, death. I’m fortunate in the fact that I never did anything self-destructive that year, although cutting and killing myself at times were floating dangerously within that thought-bubble line, the line where thoughts become reality, although were never attempted.

When the summer after eighth grade approached, apprehension and anxiety added to the already dark cloud of depression above me. When I think back to that summer, I remember falling into darkness, either feeling like I was about to cry or feeling nothing at all.

Finally, two and a half years after my friend’s death, I started feeling the pain of losing one of my best friends in a permanent way. This added to my already dark emotional state. Talking to anybody about how I was feeling was so far from my mind. I was having problems at home with my parents on a constant basis. When I told my mom about the bullying, initially, it was only because other parents found out and were planning on taking action with the school and the school board—I wanted her finding out from me, not them. When I told her, she acted like it was nothing.

Yet, that ‘nothing’ had the ability to drastically change who I was turning into. I was no longer happy, in some ways I felt like I was no longer innocent, and, I was no longer whole. At this point, talking to anybody was out. I was so sick of everything in general. Thoughts of death permeated my mind. It sounded a lot better not to have to deal with all the everyday pain, feeling claustrophobic just being in your own skin, hating every day you spent alive. As much, though, as I hated life, I still must have feared death, because I didn’t take action on my thoughts.

The first week of August came. My friend had invited me to camp with her earlier in the year, and apprehensively, I agreed. Why had I agreed to go to a Bible camp of all places? In my fourteen years at times I had out rightly declared myself an atheist, and thought the concept of god was ridiculous. Camp did nothing for me. I spent the week pretending to care about what my counsellor was saying, pretending to worship every evening.

I went back home the same person I had left, bitter, depressed and pessimistic. The week at camp had just been a vacation from everything that hurt me . . . and the rest of my summer continued. On September 7th, 2005, I started high school–a new school. After being in the same school for nine years, this was really unnerving, especially on top of the depression. I spent exactly one day of high school the person I formerly was—and then my world shattered.

The evening of my first day of high school, my mom told me that my grandma’s cancer had returned after a seven year remission. That just was so it. I sat in my room that night knowing that if I didn’t do something, I’d end up one of two places: burned out completely—half alive—or full out dead.

Something had to give. And that something was me.

That summer, something got inside me and grew. Something injected its way into my veins, and flowed throughout my body, even though I didn’t know it was there. It entered deeper into me, into my soul. With a tearing sensation ripping through my being, that night, in my room I gave my life to God. On my second day of high school, I was not the same person as I had been on my first. If it wasn’t an instant change, it was pretty close to it. I woke up the next morning, with a huge weight lifted off of me—the weight of all that I’d done wrong, all my sin, transferred over to Christ, who died for me.

What have I gained from this? I realize now that if I had killed myself, I would have never given my life to God. And because of that, there would have been nothing for me in death. But, because I let God enter my life that night, I regained my will to live, and when the time comes, there is eternal life in death. As Philippians 1:21 says “to live is Christ and to die is gain”. I also realize that at the same time, life can be so fragile, but so strong at the same time—much as we are as people. We learn, we love, we lose. All in all, we live. Each step we take forwards is one we don’t take backwards on this journey called life.

This journey is joyful, painful and inspirational, and it will continue to be. From where I was, to where I am now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

–this one doesn’t count by the way –

Good morning!  Mmmm . . . Symbicort.

VIP parking at school, yo!

Checked the psych research board, but there are apparently no experiments now.

We went to The Bay on spare, and my friends and I weighed ourselves on this scale.

Food is the reason we went to The Bay.  We like our food.

The bathroom at The Bay is wicked.

Um, yeah, I was definitely taking these pictures when I was supposed to be In Academic Writing . . .

Toooooo cute!!  I want one!

There is a randomly placed box of cookies with these DVDs . . .

Dear lady on bus: you are wearing too much denim.  Gross.  Please rectify this.

Finally ripped Hello Hurricane and The Circle onto my computer.  Memento Mori was ripped already .  Now all three are on my iPod!

This is an uber exciting picture of my the elevator in my guitar teacher’s apartment building.  I forgot to take a picture of hallway Jesus, so this will have to suffice.

To see all the November 12 of 12s, check out Chad’s blog.  We’ve never talked, but he started this cool 12 of 12 thing, so I am guessing he is an awesome guy!  It’s also his birthday today . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHAD!!

there’s only artificial light
my flaws hide well here
i used to be afraid of cluttered noises
now i’m afraid of silence

fill this space Idle words
i’m scared to death of light and silence
Jesus kill me inside this
raise me up to live again
like You did, like You did.

now i am mute despite myself
all of them are gone
the silence overtakes me
the idle words forsake me and i am left to face me
i’m held accountable
for every idle word
curse the idle words

i’m scared to death of light and silence
Jesus kill me inside this
raise me up to live again
like You did, like You did.

glory shows up
exposes us
i’m naked here
forsaken here, by the dark, by the dark

i’m scared to death of light and silence
Jesus kill me inside this
raise me up to live again
like You did
like you did!

–in the dark, flyleaf

i concur.  i’ve had many of my best meetings with God in the dark . . . including when i surrendered my life to Him.

It’s blurry, but this is exactly at midnight.  My iPod lit up to inform me that it was 12 of 12, so I grabbed the camera and took a shot of it being 12:00 AM.

Yay Canadian Thanksgiving!  I sent a tweet out to the Canadian Twitterverse.

Susannah will be happy.  I am up to level 10 in Boxed In!  I played it before getting up this morning.

My mom and I pondered this question, and since Google couldn’t answer it, I posted it on Yahoo! Answers.  (MR.OLYMPIA responded: “Yes Easter in the year 2018 will be on April 1. This will happen again in 2029. Last time Easter was on April 1 was 1956 a little before my time.”  Thanks!)

On the way to my aunt and uncle’s for dinner.  We stopped at Zellers to look at winter jackets.

Look at the pretty table!

After dinner we played Apples to Apples.  Seriously.  I’ve played Apples to Apples the last, what, three 12 of 12s?  Weird.

Got this text from Julia on the way home.  It made me smile.  Yay for being a vegetarian!

After getting home, I hit the books.  Yayyy biology! (I didn’t get to psych tonight).

THANK YOU TEXTBOOK!  Honestly, in grade eight and nine they kept talking about the flagellum, and never told us what the heck it did.  Now I totally know the purpose of the darn thing(s).  YAY LOCOMOTION! (Which always reminds me of a train).

Textbook says: “Total surface area of 27 small cubes”.  Okay, anyone want to explain to me how this works?  I think I get it, but it just hurts my brain.  The outer cubes all share two sides, eight share three.  Four middle that share none.  I am not spatial, and I do not get this.  And since when is a cube a unit of measurement?

Bedtime snack .  Good night!

Oh, and notice my 12 of 12 does not involve any lungs today?  No puffer or peak flow meter pics?  The lungs are ROCKING.  Seriously.  YAY.  Love ya, lungies.

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving—Canadian or not!   If you wanna find out what I’m thankful for, go check out the comments under Danielle’s post!

my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak, my eyelids grow heavy and i might just fall asleep.  walking around in my sleep, running into walls i cannot see.  falling and scraping up my face, ignoring the softest spoken grace.  how many times will i go and take the bait, only for this hook to rip right through my face?  how can i love You back?  what can i do to show You love?  His piercing eyes meet mine.  “please simply stay awake, talk to Me and I will love you.  don’t fall asleep this time,” gotta stay awake, gotta stay awake.  don’t You see me reaching for You?  eyes wide open, i need to love You, love You. how can i love You back, what can i do to love You.  His piercing eyes meet mine.  His piercing eyes meet mine . . .

–sleepwalker, flyleaf

just awesome.

Anyways, overall, I really like university so far. A few friends and I did Shinerama last week, where we went out and collected money for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in the downtown area–with the incentive of shining people’s shoes if they chose. Fortunately, nobody wanted us to shine their shoes and just gave us donations.

I’m hoping to get more involved with stuff, and I’m sure there’ll be more student group tables out as the term progresses. Overall, university is a good time (and will be even better once I get my stupid Education distribution requirements out of the way like English and geo or history. Fortunately, we’ve figured out that I can do my teachable major in Biology, which just saves a lot of stupid classes I don’t want to take on my part!

I had what I may have to say was one of the best summers of my life. How many people can say that they loved their first job? I can! While I know that working at a daycare isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life, the kids all definitely made their ways into my heart. I had the some of the best coworkers I could ever imagine, and I got to do so much cool stuff.

I cried when I left on Friday.

I’ve begun working at a school age childcare centre, and I love it. Although challenging at times, it’s a stable, stress-free job that pays very well. Not to mention it’s my first job.

It’s also really rewarding: when the kids yell my name to show me a new skill they’ve mastered on the playground, or a picture they’ve drawn. Not to mention my co-workers are awesome.

I definitely feel super blessed that I’ve been given this opportunity so early on in my life. Seriously, I’ve been eighteen for less than a month and a half and have already achieved an excellent reference for any other position that involves working with kids that may come my way in the future.

I’ll admit that it will be a long summer of eight-hour shifts, day after day. But, I have awesome people to share it with, and kids to open my eyes to a new way of seeing the world.

Now, just to remember to embrace every moment, and the summer will fly by.