“I am the architect of my own destruction”

It’s Thursday night and I’m standing in the back of the chapel of Camp Redwood Glen at Western Youth Institute 2015. The worship band is singing a great new praise and worship song. Most everyone there is singing and praising God with their voices, arms lifted. Not me though. I mean, I’m praising God, it just looks a little different. Mostly because I really hate singing. So I stand there and think about the lyrics, asking myself if they are applicable to my life and my journey with Jesus. If the words don’t align with where I am and what I believe, I think about what I need to do to get back to God being the center of it all.

Up to this point it has been an amazing week where about 200 young adults and their leaders traveled to the Santa Cruz mountains to be renewed and refreshed while having more fun than I have words to share in this blog, maybe I’ll share some of the fun in the next one…

Here I am standing in the back of the chapel, worshiping how I do- probably looking like I hate life (I lost track of how many times I had to explain to people that I wasn’t grumpy, or tired… I just have an at rest face that often looks a little… intimidating. I know, and I’m working on it. Just kidding I’m not really working on it. It’s just my face)

So I’m standing there, and I notice a girl standing in front of me. Amy Jo (her real name, used with permission). I met her on the first day. She caught my eye because… she is a weird girl, just like me. She has almost the same shade of unnatural fire engine red hair as I do. She is also pretty well covered in tattoos, just like me. When I first saw her I thought, “Oh! My people are here. I wonder if there are any more of us.” There were a few, but Amy Jo was different.

Thursday night was the first time I read the tattoo that took up the entirety of her right forearm. It is written in typewriter script, which I like because it’s a technically difficult style of lettering. All that to say, she goes to a good tattoo artist.

This night I notice the tattoo because her arms are lifted in unabashed praise. I read the tattoo. It says,

“I am the architect of my own destruction”.

My first thought was, “I think that might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”

Not the tattoo, but the contrast of what it was saying while her arm was lifted in praise and the lyrics of a powerful song projected on the huge wall in front of us.

It was like being able to see the past and present and future all at once.

Here was my thought process, judgment included, please forgive me:

“I’m sad that a girl so young would have that message forever on her body”

“She is either very brave or very crazy”

“I wonder if she still feels like that”

“(Here comes the honesty, please don’t judge me)

“I think there were lots of times in my life where I have thought the same thing. I’ve thought that I was the architect of my own destruction, but I would do all I could to keep it a secret.

I think about when I was in high school and my emotional pain and confusion were so severe that I took a razor to my skin in desperation. All I wanted was to feel normal. To feel loved. To feel wanted. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to explain why I felt the way I did so I hoped that if I cut then the emotional pain that held me hostage would flow out too. It didn’t work. The cutting just left me scarred. Scars you can see and scars you can’t. I was secretly the architect of my own destruction. “

There were other times too, but some days you feel okay about sharing your junk, and some days you don’t. Today, I just don’t. Sharing that one example is about all I can muster. My bravery is running low…

I loved talking to and getting to know Amy Jo. I loved to hear the stories of what God is going in her life, and to learn of the meaning behind the tattoo- that I misunderstood. The meaning behind it is different than what it seems at first glance.

I am thankful for the reminder that some of us wear our wounds on the inside in secret, some wear them on the outside, and some who are still struggling… do both. But no matter what we’ve been through, or have tattooed on our bodies, or what emotional pain has commandeered our brains, God is really just getting started. He’s in the business of healing and hope. Restoration and rebuilding. 

Grace for all. Grace today. More grace comes tomorrow.