i will be your someone

This video has not left my mind since I first saw it and read all of the news articles about this young woman who tragically took her life last week at the age of 15, about a month after uploading this video. I have been trying to process my emotions and collect my thoughts enough to adequately express what this story, and the many others like it, has stirred within me.

It is incredible to me what people will say...carefully shrouded in anonymity; their cowardice protected behind a computer screen. And, believe me...I have plenty to say to those people. But my first instinct is to want to reach through that computer screen and talk to Amanda. Especially when she holds up that second to the last card that reads...

"I have nobody...I need someone."

Here is what I would like to say to Amanda...Oh, how I wish I could have said it earlier...that anyone could have said it. Because I truly believe that, in the midst of a chorus of cowardly hate, one heart being brave with love can move mountains. Here is what I wish I would have seen as a response to that video instead of the "she deserved it" and "she was weak"...words that continued to be posted even after her death. Here are the words I wish she could have heard:

YOU HAVE SOMEONE. I will be your someone. You are not alone.

This is just one story and there are countless others like it. Our words are powerful...they can be a wellspring of life or they can literally take life away. I'm not really concerned with people's arguments that she was somehow responsible for the kind of harassment that she received. This was a 15 year old girl. She was a dearly loved daughter of our Heavenly Father and no one deserves this kind of treatment. These are our children...both the bullied and the bullies. They have weapons at their fingertips and can chip away at someone's spirit with the click of a mouse. And what is incredible in these situations is that, even when it seems there are masses of people against you, sometimes all it takes is for one person to be FOR you to make all the difference.

There are so many things I want to say...so much more I wish that I could do. But one thing that I know I can do is instill in my children the immense power and weight that their words can carry...power to build up and to tear down. God help me to model this for them. Because I know all too often I let the ugliness in myself be reflected in my own words. And I can see it in my own children's eyes when I let frustrations get the best of me and when I know I've chipped away a little piece of them. How thankful I am that I know the grace of a loving Heavenly Father who, amidst all my brokenness, pursues me and will not ever let me go. I long to live a life that sees the broken, hurting and lonely and tells them YOU HAVE SOMEONE. I WILL BE YOUR SOMEONE.

In the words of one of my favorite prayers, from Saint Francis of Assisi...

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.