To Write Love On Her Arms.

In view of my recent mulling over the brokenness of humanity through my own thoughts and conversations with friends in emotional pain, I am always looking for inspiration. I came across a good story on the internet. The story of Renee, who had a self-mutilation problem. She had a problem with love. She felt no love, so she did not love herself. Who's going to reach people like her? This generation is going to have to rise up and answer a lot of unanswered questions. It needs a manifestation of the power of God. Before we can manifest this to the world, we've got to heal ourselves. We've got to heal people like Renee, love them into communion with us, and thereby with the Savior. I think we're doing a terrible job right now. I am praying God will give me part of the puzzle and a venue for which to share that with everyone else. The people who nursed this girl back to health did not totally go about this the right way, in my humble opinion, but they're doing something. There is a generation of young, immature, 20-year old baby Christians who knows they should be doing something to love this world back into shape, but they don't know how. We've reached the point of desperation and being fed up with the sins of our fathers, but this is a crisis point. We're very vulnerable. All I can say is that God will have to sovereingly move to put us back together. Until then, we languish...


"Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her. She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm. The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms. "

-Taken from the website.