rebelling against low expectations
Today, I looked out the window and saw a stray peacock whom my family has affectionately named “Elmer” walking through my front lawn. The sun was shining down on his feathers in breathtaking brilliance, showcasing the deep turquoises, blues, and greens his Creator gifted him with. I thought back to a few months ago when his tail feathers began to break, and eventually fell out. Elmer didn’t...
I remember a certain evening vividly. I was eight-years-old, curled up against a castle of pillows, watching TV with my daddy. We were watching a show where people were doing hard things that required a lot of strength. Suddenly, a tall man (who looked like he should’ve been part of a biker gang) took the stage. He grabbed a Teflon coated frying pan and rolled it up with his bare hands. To...
If you were accused of doing something you didn’t, how would you react? Once upon a time, I’d have fought the accusation. But something happened several months ago that changed my opinion. In October, my class put on a skit. We needed a mop bucket, so we got permission to use the janitor’s. After we performed the skit, we returned the bucket to the janitor and didn’t give it another...
Valentine’s Day was stained with blood. The first thing I saw when I logged into Twitter was the words “school shooting” and “Florida” used in the same sentence. My first, selfish thought was, Where? Near here? And then, Oh no. Not again. Our collective hearts are heavy, not only with the news of this tragedy, but with the weight of similar horrors that seem to come on each other’s heels...
Sometimes brokenness, tragedy, and suffering are just words. Empty and meaningless. Other times, they have a face and name—a heart and life behind them. On February 15th, as I drove to work, each word took on form as I heard on the radio about the horrific school shooting in Florida. Yet again, devastation and heartbreak personified. Tragedy upon tragedy heaped themselves in my mind. The...
“Stop suffering!” reads the words emblazoned across the front of a church building not too far away from my home in L.A. I can’t say I know the people who put those words up because I’ve never even stepped foot inside the building. I don’t know what denomination the church is a part of or the heart of the people attending it. I’m sure they’re good people with love and hearts even bigger than mine...
When someone we love receives a chronic illness diagnosis, it is easy to feel helpless. It doesn’t matter if they are our younger brother, our mother, or our best friend. We can still feel like we are too young to help them. For most of us chronic illness is huge and scary and unknown. What can we possibly do? Yet you don’t have to be a certain age to love someone. Love is about relationships...
I began developing the symptoms of my multiple chronic illnesses at the age of 13. People always seem to feel sorry for me about the early onset of my illnesses, and have expressed their sympathy by saying things like, “You’re too young to be sick.” This may sound crazy, but I have learned to view my suffering in a different way. God has taught me to see it as a blessing. Life...
Editor’s Note: This article is longer than most that we usually publish on TheRebelution. Yet Kristin’s piece is unusual – she tells her deeply personal and difficult story of physical suffering and requested we publish it as one post. I encourage you to spend the extra time to read this incredible testimony. — Jaquelle (Editor-in-Chief) Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion...
“I just feel so dead. I am so torn up inside. Worthless. Believing lies [and] feeling incapable of believing truth. But I just have to. I am desperate. Angry. I need God yet I feel extremely angry at God. I feel hopeless. This battle never ends. I just want to die.” I penned these words in my journal not two years ago, not nine months ago, but yesterday and they expressed what I wanted to scream...
rebelling against low expectations
