Sister Freaks (3 page)
For Anna, it’s one long, smooth, and steady race. She’s rowing strong, and she’s sure to finish well.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
(1 Corinthians
9:24
)
shannon wright
A Change of Plans
S
hannon Wright jokingly confesses that growing up as a Southern Baptist in Texas, she wasn’t sure Presbyterians were even Christians. Today twenty-seven-year-old Shannon serves as a deacon in her inner-city, evangelical Presbyterian church. And although she planned to move away from her home state of Texas after graduation from Wellesley, she’s returned there to pursue a calling that wasn’t quite what she had in mind either.
Shannon’s dream was the excitement and prestige of a literary career. “At seventeen,” she says, “I imagined myself at twenty-seven as a writer in New York, wearing a little black dress and dropping witty one-liners to the worshipful crowd.”
But after her sophomore year in college, as she was pursuing her carefully mapped-out plan of becoming a journalist, Shannon’s direction changed. The newspaper summer job that she had lined up fell through, and instead Shannon found herself answering the call of a homeless shelter to run a summer program for kids. She calls the job a “baptism by fire” introduction to issues of race and social justice that she’d only read about before: “For the first time I saw how crushing poverty can be to the spirit, and how ugly the physical manifestations of racism are. But at the same time, I was introduced to children who were bright and resilient and funny and savvy in the face of it all, who demonstrated unshakable faith and irrepressible spirits.”
It was also the first time Shannon learned how it felt to be in the minority, where her hair and skin color were the exception and where she had to acclimate to someone else’s culture. The hard questions she began to ask about where her life might be heading were uncomfortable, but she says they were unmistakably “the probing of the Spirit, leading me slowly off the road I had been groomed for.” Instead of worldly success and respect and influence—“the kind of stuff your dad can brag about on the golf course”—Shannon felt a pull toward something she knew would “challenge me every day, show up every weakness I had, play on all my vulnerabilities, invest me with responsibility which I don’t always discharge well, and put me right in the midst of the salvation drama.”
While she’d planned on garnering publishing successes and accolades, Shannon now recounts a different kind of reality: she deals each day with AIDS babies, people struggling with drug relapses, abused children, and the overt racism frequently directed at them. And for inspiration, she reads Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Saint Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day.
Instead of writing scintillating pieces for the mass market, she writes letters to a drug-addicted mother who has lost her children and is dying herself of AIDS, to say: “You are loved. You have a Shepherd. Your life is not a waste. Your children will be cared for. You are a daughter of the King, and He is present in your suffering and He thinks you are beautiful, and He can still redeem you and bring you to glory.”
This young woman who imagined herself as a media mover and shaker is these days growing into “an imperfect vessel that gets to be a conduit of perfect grace.” And Shannon says it’s the reason she shows up every day. “You get to stand with them in the trenches,” she says. “You tell the stories of the miracles because we know they do happen, and you don’t pretend it doesn’t break your heart, because some days, it does.”
In spring of 2004, Shannon received an unexpected invitation to be the commencement speaker for a small Christian high school in another state. She spent a lot of time thinking about what to say to young people who were just a few years younger than herself—what sorts of words might ring true to eager eighteen-year-olds going off in pursuit of their dreams. Her audience received her words with more than a little discomfort. Her speech’s frankness and honesty were stripped of the usual “the world is your oyster” platitudes. But within a few days it was making its way across the Internet to a broader audience than she ever imagined.
What did she say that caused such a stir? “Fear not.” She urged the graduating class of 2004 not to be afraid of failing, of disappointing people, or of their own unique callings and paths.
“Don’t be afraid of the world,” she told them. “You have nothing to fear from the world. Christ has already told you He has overcome it. Engage it. Understand it. Know why people think the way they think, what they care about, what they’re afraid of, what makes them laugh, and what keeps them up at three in the morning. Remember the first Bible verse you ever learned: ‘For God so loved the world.’ God does love the world, and the sign of a God-lover is to love the things He loves.”
She also implored them not to be afraid of the church, in what she described as “all of its multi-hued, chaotic, messy glory.” She assured them that as they came to know more believers of other stripes, “there will be days when you think,
God has no standards and no taste
. Other days, of course, this is what gives you hope for yourself.” Instead of being fenced in behind denominational boundaries and caught up in theological squabbles, Shannon asked her audience not to be afraid of other worship styles or different denominational norms.
So, while she’s not communicating in quite the way she might have planned at seventeen, this young writer/social activist/church leader is finding her voice and helping others find theirs. And she’s not so worried anymore about what others might think: “It can be the most liberating thing in the world to refuse to be held hostage by the expectations of others, even when those others are incredibly loving and well-meaning people,” Shannon says. “Ultimately, the call of Christ is one that only you can discern. So go ahead and disappoint some people and show yourself that it won’t kill you.
“I’m still standing. Disappointment hasn’t made me wither up and die. I stay as close to the call of Christ as I can, I start over when I mess up, and I get over it when people aren’t happy with me. And I’m a bit freer than I was at seventeen—not all the way there, to be sure, but a little farther down the road.”
Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
(1 Corinthians
15:58
)
danielle, tara, crystal, and kimberly
A House of Hope
W
hen thirteen-year-old Danielle stepped into the spotlight at a national women’s conference in San Antonio, Texas, it was probably a good thing she couldn’t see the ten thousand or so women in the Alamodome waiting to hear what she had to say. But her voice was calm and clear, and when she finished speaking, the auditorium erupted with applause and her audience stood to its feet.
This is what she told them: “Hi, my name is Danielle. I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. I’ve been in House of Hope for nine months now. My life was pretty good until I was ten years old and my grandpa died. After that, my parents got divorced, and because of it I had to switch schools a lot. My grades dropped from A’s to F’s. Then, at the age of eleven, I started smoking marijuana, dating older guys, drinking, and going to clubs. Then, because I wanted to look like my friends, I started selling my body to buy new clothes. What I didn’t buy I shoplifted. I got involved in gangs, witchcraft, and pornography. I ran away several times and was arrested. Finally, I was brought to House of Hope.”
As Danielle spoke, the room was quieter than it had been all weekend. “Soon after I got to House of Hope, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I was actually baptized in October. I am a ‘born-again virgin.’ My family is being restored, which I thought would never happen, and I learned that Jesus Christ is going to love, accept, and forgive me no matter what.
“I want to be brave and courageous like Queen Esther in the Bible. I am taking the chance of losing my popularity just as she did to help others, to help save my generation.” Danielle then asked her sisters in the Lord, “Would you please pray that I keep making good choices?” And she thanked them for listening to her story.
House of Hope was established in 1985 by Sara Trollinger, a former schoolteacher who believed God was leading her to begin a ministry to troubled teens. She felt she should provide a place where they could learn responsibility and respect for authority and experience the healing and restoring touch of God on their lives. Nearly twenty years later, House of Hope has been instrumental in changing thousands of lives. Sara’s goal is to have a House of Hope in every major city in America by 2010.
Young girls like Danielle are not just quitting drugs and learning to live sexually pure lives again. They’re finding Christ and finding their voices—and speaking boldly about how their lives have turned around.
Tara grew up with an alcoholic mother and a critical stepfather who was also physically abusive. When she was seven years old, she was molested by one of his friends—something both parents denied ever happened. By the time she was barely a teenager, Tara had begun to smoke, have sex, and poison her body with cocaine and other drugs.
“I began to fight with my mom over everything,” says Tara, “taking advantage of her when she was drunk and not listening to what she told me to do. I was a mess and she was a mess. I was confused and full of shame, and I hated myself for the mistakes I had made.”
At House of Hope, Tara met Christ, received counseling, and began to rebuild her relationship with her mom. She says simply, “House of Hope saved my life. My mom and I are getting the tools we need to survive in this world, and I’m keeping myself now for the man God has for me.” Tara’s favorite verse is Psalm 9:9: “The
LORD
is a refuge for the oppressed, / a stronghold in times of trouble.” And she hasn’t just memorized it, she’s living it: “Now I run to Jesus when I’m in trouble,” she says. “He is my stronghold.”
Crystal, too, found a refuge at House of Hope. She grew up in church, but by the time she was fourteen her life was slipping out of control. “My father was on drugs and was a very abusive man,” she explains. “My mother remarried a man who molested me when I was seven years old. Finally the anger inside of me began to explode.
“I started skipping school, got into the wrong crowd, and began sneaking out of the house. My grades went from B’s to F’s. One night when I was drinking I lost my virginity to a stranger. I was full of shame. I began taking Ecstasy, got alcohol poisoning, and was hospitalized. I was arrested for shoplifting, and that’s when my mom took me to House of Hope.”
What Crystal found there was Jesus. “I didn’t realize before who He really was,” she says. “At House of Hope I made the decision to dedicate my life to Him, and already I see changes. I’m still dealing with a lot, but I’m relying on God to help me get through it. I know He is changing me day by day. As the Bible says in Isaiah 54:4, I will not be put to shame, or humiliated or disgraced for the mistakes I made in my youth. God has erased them from my life and is making me into a new person. He won’t take me out of the temptations of this world, but He will protect me and work with me so I can make good choices. I know He’ll take care of me as long as I trust Him.”
Kimberly grew up a pastor’s daughter, and her parents were very strict. “I was not even allowed to wear jeans to youth group,” she says. “I felt like an oddball.” But when Kimberly was thirteen, her father left the church and her family has never returned. “My world fell apart,” she remembers. “It was hard to see God as a loving Father when my own father had let me down. So I started looking for the love I needed in all the wrong places: alcohol, drugs, and friends who pulled me down. That’s when I lost my virginity.”
Kimberly hit bottom when she was molested by a relative who warned that if she told anyone, he would kill her. Her mother took her to House of Hope to see if healing was possible. “There I found the real Jesus for myself,” Kimberly explains. “I like the verse in Isaiah that says God’s love has delivered my soul from the pit and He has cast all my sins behind His back [Isa. 38:17]. I have forgiven the people who hurt me. And God has blessed me with the talent to sing, so I want to use my voice to praise Jesus forever.”
Danielle, Tara, Crystal, and Kimberly have hope for the future. They are all grateful for the way God met them where they were and saved them just in time. And they want to tell their stories to other girls who may be wondering if God is big enough to save them.
They know He is.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
(2 Corinthians
5:17
)
WEEK ONE JOURNAL
• In what ways is the mind-set of a servant different from the mind-set of the world?
• Why do you think God designed us to live this way?
• What kinds of challenges would you expect to face if servanthood became your lifestyle?
• What would be some of the possible rewards?
• What Bible verse or passage of Scripture has been most meaningful to you this week? Why?
crystal woodman
Get Me Out Alive
C
rystal Woodman’s biggest concern that Tuesday morning was her physics test. She hadn’t studied, and she needed every free minute during the day to cram. When lunch period started, she convinced her friends, Seth and Sara, to come with her to the library instead of going off campus as they usually did.
She had been actively involved in church and youth group as a child, but in high school Crystal had turned away from God to get involved in the party scene. After a few years of trying to be “cool” by experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and boys, Crystal began to see how empty her life was and went back to church. Not entirely committed to either lifestyle, she swung back and forth between the party kids and the church kids, drawn to the deep relationships she saw in Christians like Seth and Sara but also craving the popularity of the “in” crowd.