BEAUTY FROM ASHES // GUEST POST

Hey there!!! I’m Lavinia; an eighteen y/o girl in love with my Saviour, fashion and all things pink.  I’m so excited to be able to do this guest post!! I should admit when Sarah first asked me to share part of my testimony I was a little like ahh... See I’ve only ever shared my testimony once before, to my graduating classmates and I wasn’t too happy with the way that one turned out. Anyways so new slate (blank word doc) whatever, let’s do this.

All my life I've been fully immersed in the Christian faith. I went to Christian schools and my family religiously attends church every Sunday. I went to Girls Rally and Sunday School so it was feasible for me to grow up thinking that I was a good little Christian girl. Like most children brought up in the same circumstances as me I accepted Jesus as my Saviour and Lord when I was four. Or that’s what my mother tells me. I don’t remember that but I remember not having a relationship with God for most my life up until now. Sure, some day’s I’d feel a twinge of guilt over how I acted and recommit, promise myself I’d stop acting as I did and try to follow Gods footsteps but after a few days the warm fuzzy feeling would wear off and I would continue with my life.

"All my life I've been fully immersed in the Christian faith"

Ever since I was a little girl I was what society deemed “boy-crazy”. I was the five y/o with a crush, the seven y/o who ran around after boys trying to get them to kiss her (they never did), and the 12v who obsessed over the same guy for longer than she should have. Unfortunately, that particular 12v mindset didn’t depart from me until a couple of months ago, but that’s a story for another day. The point I’m trying to get across is I was that girl who could fall in and out of like with a guy at a moment’s notice.

age: two.

When I was fifteen I was insanely in “love” with this guy. We were six days into our “official” relationship when he broke up with me for family reasons. Looking back that was the most 12v relationship of all time, probably belongs in the Guinness book of world records or something. But however stupid it seems now back then it absolutely crushed me. I kept running over those six days in my head trying to figure out what I could have done to change the mess I was in then. The friend and family dramas that followed in the weeks after that pushed me deeper and deeper into the web of depression I found myself entrapped in. About that time I became obsessed with the song Human by Christina Perri. In that song, she sings the lyrics “I can force a smile, I can fake a laugh” those six words became my mantra throughout year 11. Force a smile, fake a laugh, and everything will be okay. I convinced myself that if everything looked okay on the outside the lost feeling I had inside would slowly disappear, that I would forget that every day on the way home from school I just wanted to run in front of a bus and die. That year was the year I felt the furthest from God, my friends, my family, anything really. I was too scared to tell anyone what I was going through and how messed up my mind had gotten that I tried my hardest to fake normality. I would stand up on stage in worship every couple of Sundays and force a smile, fake a laugh, anything to convince the world around me that I wasn’t living in the ashes of my self-implosion. With the help of a friend, I rebuilt my shallow polystyrene world. I got to the point where I could smile and it wouldn’t be forced, some days I felt happy and others I thought I was falling back into the downward spiral. It was a very two steps forward one step back situation but thankfully I got out of that hole. 

After that life continued as normally as it could, I worked my butt off to bring my grades back to where they should be, to actually be friends with my friends and not the random loser girl who sat with them but never said anything. I made amends with my past and slipped back a few times but never as deep as I had been and tried my hardest to move on into my future.

A year and a half went by before I found myself at night church with a bunch of friends where the preacher was preaching a sermon from Matthew 6; focussing specifically on verse 33 where Jesus commands us to "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." He highlighted the fact that in order to seek God we have to come to him. He doesn't come to us. It literally hit me like a ton of bricks that for my whole life I had been rocking along identifying as a Christian but really I had never sought out the kingdom of God for myself. So on the 25th September 2016, I recommitted my life to the Lord.

but seek ye first the kingdom of God.

Ever since then I've been constantly learning more about who God is and what it means to be a Christian but for me, the biggest lesson I (finally) learned was a couple of months ago when I was at work. I was busy working drive thru (I work at Maccas) with another girl; when one of the managers (who wasn't even running the shift) came in all high and mighty saying that we were so slow, that we were letting down the whole team, it was all our fault that drive was backed up and I was just standing there like bruh? We just got told that kitchen was slow (by the actual manager of the shift). She just looked at me and was like "No Lavinia this one's your fault." Then I got sent on a break and thought everything would work itself out while I was gone. It didn’t. The girl I was working with finished her shift so I was in the drive thru all by myself while it was still crazy busy and IDK this manager chick just got stuck in my head and all I could hear as I took the orders was how bad I was and how I was letting down the whole team. In that moment everything that had happened since the beginning of the year; all the failed friendships, the stuffed up life plans, the ridicule, the opinions and the disappointment all just piled up into one big tumbleweed of shit and I just melted down right there in front of some strange women who probably low key started freaking out. I mean what do you do when the cashier just starts bawling her eyes out for no reason?? I guess that’s the great thing about life you can go from cloud nine to 55 feet under in 2 seconds flat.This wasn’t a new thing for me. Well, it kind of was. Normally people get into my head when I'm on my own and I break down there. Somehow that all seems more manageable than in public, in the middle of my shift, in front of some random.  I haven’t been as low as I got that night in since I was fifteen.

“Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough.”

So I'm standing there sobbing my way through orders and this guy drives up to the window to pay for his food, sees that I'm resembling a human panda and asks me if I was okay? For some reason, I just told it to him straight, that I screwed up so bad, not just tonight, but my whole life and I genuinely had no clue of how I was ever going to get it back on track. He took a long look at me and just said "Jesus loves you. No matter what you’ve done he loves you." And it was like something finally clicked. I had been told this fact for so so so so soooooo long but I never really understood it until then. He loves me in spite of the fact that I failed high school. He loves me even though I can't do anything without second guessing and over analysing every little fact. HE LOVES ME.

So yes, I still get high and low sometimes but unlike the past eighteen years, I have someone who's with me where ever I am, however, I feel and loves me through all of my insecurities and anxiety and I find that to be a truly beautiful thing!!!! I hope you know this awesome truth the same way I do, but if you don't feel free to comment below or message me (all my social media links are on my blog) or Sarah and we'd be stoked to talk to you!! Hope you've had as much fun reading this as I had sharing it with you! 

See ya around pal,

XO Lavinia