"My Best Friend"

Most people my age (16) have a wonderful best friend. You know the kind that call your parents mom and dad, the kind who call you before they call anyone else about anything, the kind that still have the shirt they borrowed from you last year. Everyone wants a best friend. Someone to hold you, someone to stay on the phone with you till you fall asleep after a tough day. A best friend is like a life jacket in a lake. They keep you up, they make things easy, and they make you feel safe. People without life jackets have to work to keep themselves from sinking, it's harder for them to get from place to place and they feel that they have no security. Most people that don't have a best friend say it's because nobody likes them. That's not true, they (and I) didn't realize that there was a best friend waiting for them all along.
I've alwasy had a great best friend. We would laugh until we started crying from the pains in our side. We always held hands wherever we went, we had cool secret handshakes, we talked about boys together, we were totally inseperable. You couldn't say my name without saying hers too, and you couldn't say her name without adding mine somewhere. Life was good. What more could a girl ask for? I had everything I wanted.
On November 11, 2004 I went to a convention with my youth group. I was excited, but I was sad because my best friend couldn't come along. She went to a different church. So we were seperated for a whole weekend. I ended up getting saved and surrendering my life to Christ that weekend. I was so excited to go home and tell my friend about what happened. I was totally on fire for God! I finally caught up with her and told her all about my weekend, and how God touched my heart. She was excited for me too! We jumped around and squeeled for a while and then went to hang out. Since my salvation was so new, I had no idea how to be a Christian.
I started listening in church and asking questions. I also started to notice a growth in my Christianity through reading the bible and prayer. My friend was still happy for me, but I started noticing that our relationship was dying. She said we were still cool, but I knew something was up. I continued to seek God and stared to listen to the Holy Spirit more. I changed my music selection to Christian and stopped swearing. I started to get a really big heart for other people and was really in tune with right from wrong. I was in love with Jesus. I think my friend noticed my transformation because she decided that we shouldn't be best friends anymore and her and our other friend stopped talking to me. I now had no friends.
I wasn't exactly happy with my new life after that. I soon came into some family problems and really struggled with life. Jesus was a part of my life, but I didn't trust him. I didn't trust anybody. I was alone and I was hurting. I used to be the most popular girl in my class along with my friend. Now people didn't want to even be around me. None of my friends wanted to be with me.
I would cry myself to sleep at night. I missed my life jacket. I was drowning without it. Although I felt there was no hope for me I decided to go to a camp. It was a church camp and I felt that I would be accepted there. My life changed almost as much as it did when I got saved, at that camp. I learned how to be a good Christian and I got to be with a bunch of people who loved God like I did. When I was at that camp Jesus spoke to me. I was laying at the altar when he finally reached my heart. He sent me an image. It was of me in a lake. I was frantically chasing after this life jacket, but the harder I swam the farther the life jacket floated away. I soon became weary and started sinking, but as soon as I started to go down I saw a hand reach down for me. It was Jesus! He said, "take my hand Brittany." I of course reached up to him and to my surprise I was standing in a boat! I was no longer in the water.
Jesus has always been willing to be my best friend. He's been following me around with a boat while I was frantically searching for a life jacket. I've never felt so stupid in my life. There is a God who loves me and wants to be with me, but I was too busy chasing a life jacket to notice. Jesus became my best friend at that camp, and when I cam home I had the courage to tell my old friends about God. I had a new best friend, a new comforter, I had a boat. I was sure of my faith and trusted my savior. That made my witnessing effective. I soon had all my friends coming back to me. They all wanted me to hang out with them. There were life jackets floating all around me, but I didn't want to leave the boat. Jesus helped me to see that my best friend wasn't a good influence on me and would bring me down spiritually. The first sacrifice I ever made for God was my friends. I had to let them go. It's not like I was mean to them or anything. I just didn't let them influence me, I didn't hang out with them or participate in the wrong things we used to do together. I just loved them like Jesus. I tried to set a Godly example and I tried to help them see the light.
Today God has blessed me with lots of Christian friends. I have a ton of encouragment. My old friends are still a part of my life, but not as best friends. I've actually got to lead two of them to the Lord and have helped many grow spiritually. Jesus remains my best friend and is by far the best anyone could have. Our friendship and love towards each other can't be described with words. I am continually maturing in the Lord and have been used to help others with the struggles I went through. Jesus is the boat in my life! I would drown without him. I can't imagine my life without this relationship. It's the one thing the world can't take away. Jesus is my best friend, and nothing will ever change that!

P.S. Have you ever tried watching a movie with Jesus? Someday just invite him to watch a movie with you. Start doing it everytime you watch a movie, it's actually really cool. It helps me know what movies are ok to watch, and it helps me stay away from the ones that aren't. I never watch a movie without inviting Jesus. If you can't invite Jesus to watch the movie, it probably isn't worth watching. If you can't invite Jesus to the party, you shouldn't be there either. If you couldn't say those words to Jesus, you probably shouldn't have said them to that person. You can learn a lot by including Jesus in your everyday decisions! Worked for me! Let him decide if the outfit looks good, don't put your confidence in people. Let Jesus be the best friend of your life.

"Under a Mask of Perfection"

There are times when life seems unbearable, and there are times when life seems worth living. Both situations come and go between us all. So why does it seem that there are those who walk among us that never see life as "unbearable"? We often get the the mindset that there are people with "perfect" lives. People who are wealthy, people who are famous, people who have a strong religion, people who are popular, and people who are good looking or good at sports. They seem to have it all, but what we don't realize is that most of the time these people are the ones that are hurting the most. Everybody feels pain, some people feel it in different ways, some people recieve it in different ways, and some people deal with it in different ways. It may seem as though there are the kids in your school or the people at your work who "have it all", but the truth is, often times these are just people who hide their brokeness under a "mask of perfection".
After I was saved my life became total Jesus everything. Of course I didn't know how to be a Christian then, but I enthusiastically began to seek the face of the Lord anyways. Jesus saved me from a lot on November 11, 2004 as I lay at that altar with my hands gripping tightly around my broken heart. In fact he saved me from my very own life. Every inch of my body was infested with emotional and physical pain. I looked to Jesus to save me that day. I cried out to him with everything I had and welcomed a healing into my heart. Although I did feel like Jesus took my pain way I secrety left the remains of it hidden beneath my new life. I offered my broken heart to Jesus, handing him the peices one by one, but I kept a couple of those peices tucked away. I simply put Jesus on top of my pain instead of allowing him to take it all away.
So I'm living a life dedicated to Jesus, but I still feel that pain beneath my salvation. At first I wasn't sure what it was so I just pretended it wasn't there.
I always thought to myself, "Why do I feel like this? I have a wonderful savior and I'm doing the best I can to follow him. Jesus, I thought you said I would be new? I thought you said I wouldn't have to feel this anymore?"
I was hurt, but I continued to live for him learning all I could about him and sharing him with everyone I knew. Everytime the pain from my past tried to creep up on me I would cover it up again. Over and over this took place. Untill finally my past started to eat me from the inside out. The pain was bubbling back to the surface, yet somehow I still managed to hide it under my mask of Christianity. I just kept trying to live for Jesus, refusing to be honest with anybody. I wasn't even honest with God. I assured him I was fine over and over as he tried to lay his healing hand on my layer of brokeness. Each time I would feel him or someone else reach in and attempt to reveal that secret layer of my life I would nervously cover it back up. I tried really hard to make sure that nobody saw my struggle. I was "Super Christian". People look to me for help. I can't be feeling like this, I can't be struggling like I am. My hidden past was swollowing my sincere relationship with God and replacing it with my "mask of perfection".
I finally realized that I was in trouble, and I needed God. I needed to allow Jesus to take ALL the pain away. I can't expect him to fix my broken heart if I hide the peices from him. So I let him in and as he reached down and laid his gentle hand upon my face he slowly started to peel away that mask, revealing my bruised and numb identity. I immediately began crying out to him, but as soon as he reached for that layer I began to flinch and turn away. Over and over he tried until finally he managed to peel away that layer of brokeness with his love and compassion. Instantly I felt revival. Jesus turned my black roses red with just the sound of his voice. As he held me that night I witnessed him create beauty from pain in my life.
So here I am today still being healed. Although you may think this happened way earlier in my walk with God, your wrong. This happened within 2-3 days ago. How I managed to hide my layer of pain for so long I do not honestly know. If I would have just given all the pieces of my heart to Jesus the day he asked for them my relationship with him wouldn't have become a mask to hide my broken layer. Jeremiah 30:17 says, "I will give you back your health and heal all your wounds, says the Lord." Jesus WANTS to heal us, but he won't MAKE us be healed. I ran from him for a whole year, but he was patient with me. He helped me to trust him with that "untouchable layer" in my life. He didn't force me to let him in, he just let me know he was willing to COME in. God works through love, God is love. His love is what brought beauty from my pain that night. Jesus set me free from the secret life I was enslaved to. All that pain, and all those secrets are becoming testimonies now, which I will use for the glory of God. So if your struggling from pain.......pain thats eating you alive, pain that you've been running from, or pain your just refusing to acknowledge let Jesus heal you. He WANTS to heal you, he LOVES you. Be honest with him and with everyone else and take off your "mask of perfection". Don't hide your pain, especially not from God. What good does it do to try and hide something from the all knowing God? Don't be fooled by people who look as though they never hurt. Everybody hurts, everybody has felt pain, and God is perfectly able to heal them from that pain. God loves and cares for his children. It hurts him to see us broken, but it hurts him even worse to see us running away from his love wearing that mask...........looking back at him trying to cover ourselves up with "perfection".

Defined by a Mirror

Looking at my reflection isn't always satisfying. I could push and pick at my body hoping it would mold into something beaufiul, but it would just stay the same. I was finding that it wasn't easy to be a perfect beautiful teenager along with looking like everybody else. This world is continuously bombarding us with lies of who wer're supposed to be and how we need to look to fit in . I had a constant battle with these lies but I came to find that God was the only one who could turuthfully define us and to him we are all beautiful.
In the days of my feud against the mirror's lies I would wake up in the morning and head straight to the shower. I thought of it as an easy rememdy for my extremely frizzy morning hair. When out of the shower I would spend hours looking into the mirror hoping to cover up the childish freckles and teenage zits on my face. I usually had no luck and ended up looking like a ghost instead. I didn't eat breakfast on account of I thought keeping away from food would help me lose my giant man thighs. I had a feeling that God wasn't approving of my attitude towards myself, but I continued.
School was a big deal for me. It was where I put the mirror's lies to test. After all it was fitting in at school that made me want to destroy my unique image. All day constant thoughts of how freakishly weird I must look compared to others ran through my head. I didn't have all the cool clothes that were in style, so I just tried to pull it off in jeans and a T-shirt. Almost every class period I would ask to use the bathroom so I could go check to see if I still at least looked human, and every time I would look into the mirror I'd wish I could look like my friends. They were beautiful, popular, and everyone liked them.
The obsession with trying to fit in became my main thought. For all I knew I looked like a domesticated chimpanzee at school. After my tiring day at eductaion palace, a.k.a. school, I would go home and flip through magazines searching for a way to hide my hideousness under the trends of the world. Although I didn't end up looking like Barbie I did manage a spitting image of her dog. When evening mealtime came I would tell my parental units that I had a mound of homework as big as Eiffel Tower so I could keep operation "loose my man thighs" in tact. Nobody wants a girl with blubbering whale thighs in their school I thought. God didn't think I had blubbering whale thighs. He attempted to tell me how beautiful I was to him, but of course I didn't listen.
At that point in my life my self esteem couldn't have been higher than a 2 on a scale of 100, and since I wasn't happy with myself I would change styles every few months trying to find one that I thought would improve my image. I started with a ditzy cheerleader type, that seemed to be what guys were into. This time I actually suceeded in being like Barbie. Sadly it was more like Barbie on crack and I made a complete fool of myself. Then I went to skater punk. Let's just say I ended up looking like a white gangster wannabe. So not only was I out of style, blessed with man thighs, and hungry a lot, but I was now a good example of a schizophrenic.
I decided to think over all my actions and note my improvements to get my mind off my failures, and to show God that my techniques were working so he wouldn't have to be ashamed of me anymore. The funny thing was the more I thought the less improvement I saw. Not eating didn't get me normal sized thighs, it got me hungry. Not to mention my many attmeps with cosmetics didn't get me beautiful, it got me a huge bill from Wal-Mart, and my style changes just got me considered fake and confused about who I truly was. Maybe God was right I thought? Who I was did not come from a mirror or magazine. It came from God. He really does think I'm beautiful, and my techniques certainly weren't healthy. Letting that mirror define me just made me someone I was not. I was made in the image of God and my unhealthy diet and constant obsession with the mirror was destroying that image.
If you think about it the world is just a big heap of manure, and the more we conform to it the more we'll look like it. That's what I did. I wanted so badly to be like everyone else that I conformed to the world, but God showed me that by being a Christian I was different. I'm happy with who I am and how I look. God would rather me dress in clothes that fit, and to try and be modest with my body. It definately isn't in style, and I probably won't be considered cool wearing clothes like that, but I can confidently say that God's opinion is much more important now.
Being a Christian brings me a lot more morals than most people. Now I can gladly say that dressing modestly is one of them. God made me exactly who he wanted and that makes me beautiful along with all the other people in the world. Even with my huge blubbering whale thighs, I can feel good about myself because they are just another unique feature of my design. Now when I face the mirror I can look and see more than just me I see the beauty of my creator and that's a perfect sight to see.

"Don't be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewlery, or beautiful clothes. You should be know for the beatuy that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God."
1 Peter 3:3-4

You know a lot of people ask me what it's like to be a Christian in high school. usually I give them an answer they don't really want to hear. Not because I say it's horrible or I don't like it, but because I tell them the truth. Most people expect me to answer the question of, "Whats it like to wear the Christian image at high school?" I serve God with all my heart 100%. He comes before friends, sports, school, family, money, and all the other idols of the world. Nobody wants to hear all the work and sacrifice it takes to be a Christian in high school, they just want to hear what they can get out of it to please themselves. Sure everybody loves the kids that walk around with Jesus loves you T-shirts on, but they have a problem with the kids that walk around with bibles, or wear clothes that actually fit. Why is it that the Christians that live the Christian lifestyle sit at home on Friday nights while the ones with the Jesus loves you T-shirts go out and party? Why are the true servants not cool, but the ones that wear the images are?

I'm definately not a popular girl in high school but I can tell you right now that if being popular means I have to act and be like the popular kids in my school then I would never in a million years want that title. To me I see high school as a big test of my faith. Now faith is something that I was extremely blessed with so I have no problem being different. One of the things I really get harassed for is my stand for purity. I don't date or get involved in that little try and win my heart game. My heart is not a prize for a boy to win, but a symbol of my affection towards my God. I wear a purity ring on my wedding finger that says, "True Love Waits", and one of my old guy friends that I had before I became a Christian asked if he could see it. I of course let him see it and I noticed that he studied it over and over trying to find a way to make it say something different, and when he finally realized it didn't he looked up disgusted at me and said, "why would you wear something like that?" I began to explain my stand for Jesus and purity, but him and his friend immediately began to laugh at me. I of course didn't really feel to wonderful for my stand after that, but I began to seek God and purity even more, determined to overcome the rejection. Later that month I again had the chance to share my faith with my friend. This time he actually listened to me, he even smiled at me for a little bit.
So life as a Christian in high school is just filled with challenges. You just have to be ready and be faithful to God. Expect to be persecuted for living the way you do because not everyone will think it's cool right away, and when they don't it just gives you the opportunity to make it cool. That's something the Christian images don't have. You have to be ready, and back yourself up with scripture though. You know those long nights when you sit at home alone and rejected, use if for God's glory and read your bible. Get closer to him so that he can get closer to the world.

You know all those fakers with the cool Jesus loves you T-shirts are just a bunch of so called "cool" kids advertising a false lifestyle. So people see a person with a Jesus loves you shirt out getting drunk or making out in the halls they are surely gonna think, "hey this Jesus guy sounds pretty cool." Yeah he is cool, but not for those reasons. So they are going to start wearing this image and playing this part just because of that T-shirt?! YES! If you understand the teen generation at all that will definately be what happens. What they are missing now is the best part about being a Christian and that's an awesome relationship with the one and only Jesus Christ! People don't see the love of Jesus through a T-shirt, they see it through the person wearing it, and if that person is doing things that aren't so Christian well then they are going to lead that person astray. People are constantly being introduced to a false image of our amazing God, and when they talk to or see a true servant they think, "well hey, you don't have to go to church, or live a life totally commited to God to be a Christian. I mean Johnny goes out and parties and he's a Christian. This girl is just a weirdo!" So there ya have it. We went from Christians to weirdos just like that while all the "Jesus Loves You" T-shirt people are prancing around in popularity showing a false lifestyle.
I have a Christian friend who "wears the image". She talks to me about God when we're alone, but then she lives the "popularity lifestyle" at school. I have people come up to me and tell me all the time that my "so called friends" are always talking about how weird I am for living the way I do behind my back. It hurts me sure, but not because they think I'm weird, its because I know they are struggling with the "popularity lifestyle". I am seriuously spending more and more time alone because people don't like hanging out with a true Christian. They don't like to be around someone who brings conviction to them for their sin. They don't want to fully give their life to God, they just want enough to satisfy them without losing anything.
So being a Christian in high school is way different then most people would expect. I mean, would you have enough faith to turn down drugs, alcohol, sex, and the whole "popularity lifestyle"? Would you be able to pray over someone in front of your whole class, or give up relationships you know are pulling you down? I've realized through my walk with God that I am a very blessed child to be put up to all these challenges. I wake up in the morning expecting a challenge and am constantly in the word preparing myself for it. Each day I come back stronger and stronger. Not to mention the encouragement that I've given to other people. We may feel useless at school, but everyday at least one person is effected by your lifestyle. I have people come up to me all the time to ask me to pray or just comfort them. Usually they are from the "popular lifestyle" goup and have realized that what they are doing will never complete them. I have chances to share Jesus everyday!
Even though I do have a lot of faith and am strong in Christ I do struggle. I can't lie and tell you I've never had problems because that's not true. Often I feel alone, scared, and depressed. I don't really have many people to talk to about my struggles because I have a horrible problem with trust. I can't trust people when I tell them stuff so I just dont, and when someone does get me to tell them something I always feel bad that I told later. I feel like I am taken advantage of a lot. Like people come to me when they need something or just want comfort, but God helped me to see that a lot of the time thats what we do to him. We use him as a big teddy bear and then throw him in the closet when things get all better. So God is always there when I feel alone and am struggling, but now I can say that i'm always here when he wants me too.
Now that you have a glimpse of what the life of a Christian in high school is like. I pray that you will reach out to teens and help them not to "wear the image" but to live the life. Parents if you have a Christian teen at home, or youth pastors, you should constantly check up on your kids. It's harder than you may think and most people try to hide their feelings about it. Our teen generation is in crisis and we need to realize that just because someone wears a Christian image doesn't mean they are living for God. We need to reach out to our teens and save them from this false lifestyle that is so popular in todays society. As for the Christian teens reading this, let your light shine! Dare to be different, and I pray that God will bless you as much as he did me.

"Don't let the excitement of your youth cause you to forget your creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and no long enjoy living."
Ecclesiastes 12:1

"I want you to promise, O women of Jerusalem, not to awaken love until the time is right."
Song of Songs 8:4