PureVolume

Tonight the South is on Fire.

To Write LOVE On Her Arms.

To Write Love On Her Arms


I found out about TWLOHA about a year or two ago. It changed my life. The story can be found in the blog simply titled "To Write Love On Her Arms". This organization gives hopes to those who feel hopeless and are without the strength to seek help for themselves. I was especially touched by this group of people because I was that girl. The girl who pushed everyone away because she wanted to be strong enough to do it alone. The girl who's pain encompassed her every thought, her every dream, her every day. The girl who everyday just hoped to survive. And each day that I went on was a day I was brave, just fighting the lie that giving up is the way. I was heavily addicted in a sense to self-inflicted pain. It became my only way out. My only hope. But through God, I found another sense of hope. He showed me people that truely cared. And that's what TWLOHA does for people. It gives them a feeling of hope. It gives them strength to make it through the next day.


I support To Write Love On Her Arms fully. In teenage life these days, we're just lucky to get out of highschool alive, much less without some sort of addiction. It seems everyone is simply pressuring us to be EVERYTHING. And we think hey, this seems like the right way to live. Or we just lose all since of passion for anything, and we turn to anything that can look like a way to make it out. But with people who care, like the ones who work at TWOLHA, teenagers have a chance again.








Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

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.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired. After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff. She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

Leave a Comment

Tonight, I'm getting ripped wide open.

So we'll sit at this table with our hands in our laps,
And we've had a few drinks,
And we've shared a few laughs.
But now those days have passed,
And they're not coming back.
It's a shame, because that's all that I had.

And we'll sing out loud for hours
Until the morning that we know we can't avoid.
These nights are notable and priceless.
I swear that every word I say
I mean until my dying day.
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing,
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing.

So keep things quiet
Until the rest of the street falls asleep.
Then we'll break out
And show everyone just what we're made of.
We're so young,
Let's abuse it all and have a little fun,
I'll drink to that let's drink to that.

And we'll sing out loud for hours
Until the morning that we know we can't avoid.
These nights are notable and priceless.
I swear that every word I say
I mean until my dying day.
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing,
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing.

I've got some problems
But we've got ten dollars.
That's enough to get us wasted before the night is over.
These past five days I've been completely sober,
But tonight I'm getting ripped wide open.


And we'll sing out loud for hours
Until the morning that we know we can't avoid.
These nights are notable and priceless.
I swear that every word I say
I mean until my dying day.
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing,
It's a shame when I wake I can't recall a thing.

Leave a Comment

Trying.

Sweetheart,
I'm trying to forget everything you are.
Everything you were to me.
Everything I wanted us to be.

Baby,
I'm trying to remember how I was before you.
Everything I could smile about.
Everything I hadn't figured out.

Darling,
I'm trying to leave what we had in the past.
Everything that we had done.
Everything we planned to come.

Lover,
I'm trying to forgive you for all the heartbreak you caused.
Everything you promised me.
Everything you turned to be.

Dear,
I'm trying to learn how to stop believing your lies.
Everything you say to me.
Everything you swear we can be.

Doll,
I'm trying to remember how I was before us.
Everything I knew to be true.
Everything before I met you.

Sweety,
I'm trying to teach my self that when you call, you don't mean well at all.
I'm learning how to stop the pain, Oh lover, you're so vain.
I'm forgetting how things were before, whenever I had to have more.
But more was you, and things went wrong. And you promised me everything.
"We are meant to be," you said to me.
"I love you more than you know," you said to me, you're so low.
"Will you marry me?" Oh, baby, I thought we were meant to be.

BbyFace,
Tonight I'll remember what we had with angst.
Tonight I'll remember the look on your face,
When you promised me your everything.
When you promised me I was your everything.

Leave a Comment