Find Out What it Means to Me

Here is what I would like to say.  I know this may offend some people and for that, I am not really sorry.  I find that people often think very lowly of me.  People make assumptions about my character, my intelligence, my faith, my love and may other aspects of me.  I have never been someone who feels I need to assert myself or prove myself.  If someone wants to think something about me, let them.  But I do want to say something today.

I am not stupid.  I am an intelligent woman who has spent my life seeking truth and listening to both sides of every story.  Please don’t come at me like I am ignorant or unaware of what is going on around me.  I am very well informed about so many subjects and if I lack information in one I will certainly be the first to admit it. 

            In regards to my character, I am honest, loyal, caring, I bend over backwards to help the people in my life.  I fight for justice, I speak up for the people nobody listens to, I listen to the people who just need to talk, and I hold the ones that just want to cry.  I may have vices and I may be what my sisters call “rough around the edges,” but I have been through a lot of things in my life that very few people will ever know and even fewer understand.  Don’t question my character.  I try daily to show the love of Jesus to the people around me who need it.  That is all I can do.

            I went to a church for 22 years.  It was my church.  It was my school.  It was my friends, my family, and my entire life.  I chose to leave that church for reasons that are based in my faith, not because I lost faith.  When someone comes to me making an assumption that they need to teach me or that I am ignorant in my faith or my walk with the Lord simply because I no longer attend that church, it would be good of them to realize that I went there exponentially longer than them.  I could explain to them the year a concept was introduced, the reasons it came about, the message preached to introduce it and the pastor who inspired it.  The day I left that church I did not get amnesia and I did not suddenly stop loving the Lord.  I would appreciate if people would give me a little respect when it comes to this.  I have been through a whole lot more than most of the people preaching at me.  I “fell on my sword.”  I “stayed on the wheel.”  I “kissed the cross.”  Somehow, since the day I changed my church, my story has been rewritten and I am remembered very differently now. 

            More than anything I would like to say that while I am strong and confident, these assumptions and attitudes have truly hurt me.  I have lost friends that I love.  I people so close to me that I would have called them family.  Twenty–two years I invested and all I am constantly reminded that I no longer matter to anyone, I have nothing to offer, or I don’t exist.  It makes me angry and it breaks my heart every single time.  That is the truth.  It makes me angry which is what I might show on the outside, but it breaks my heart.  I think I deserve a little respect from my “brothers and sisters.”  The choices I have made, the life that I live, the person I have become are not all bad.