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So pretty much it’s Easter. Happy Easter.

This past week my brother has been on boot leave (yay!) and pretty much it’s been fun. But honestly, it will never be the same around here. I don’t think I like the new norm. Ya know? Maybe it’s just end of year blues, but I think it’s more then that. I don’t feel useful where I’m at. I”m not content with the lot that has fallen on my shoulders. I don’t want to be who I am at this point. I want to be a normal teen girl who breaks curfew and dates jerks and gets a C in a class every once in a while.

Yeah, I got a 30 on the ACT. and it would be a lie to say I’m not proud of it. Because I am. I am so stinkin proud I got a 30 on the ACT. I’m not bragging. but considering that I have worked all my life to measure up to regents scholars and honor roll members and deans list members and doctors and dietitians and novelists and biochemical engineers… I’ve tried and tried to be as smart as my older siblings. I’ve followed a precedent of doing everything right. and frankly, I’ve already screwed that up. I’m not perfect. I have situational depression. I have been clinically diagnosed with anxiety. I’ve made some really really bad choices in my life, trusted some people I shouldn’t have trusted, thrust myself into that “dysfunctional” category. Everyone thinks I’m so smart, when really, I’m just as smart as the next person… and compared to my elder siblings, I’m nothing special. Granted I plopped my ACT score right in the middle of the spray, but when normal kids come in with their ACT scores and they just happened to be all 30s their families are jumping up and down screaming and kissing each other. Not in my family. Mind, this isn’t a criticism of my family, I didn’t get the highest score that my family has ever seen. And that’s my point. I don’t measure up. In the eyes of my family I’m average.

But here’s where the issue comes in. In my eyes I’m a freak of nature. By all rights I should be happy with my grades, my ACT score, my academic letter and bars… But I’m not. And maybe that’s because I set too high of standards, or people put too high of expectations on me, but honestly, I could get straight A+’s and get all the awards and recognitions and all that fun stuff that our society says is the best…. and I still would be striving towards something better.

Cuz I don’t belong here.

I don’t know where I belong.

and maybe, just maybe if I could be a normal teen and have a boyfriend and get drunk once in a while and go to every school dance there is, and get a 25 on the ACT and have people love me for who I am and that would be enough… maybe I wouldn’t feel so worthless on the inside.

But the truth is that nobody is good enough.

It doesn’t matter how hard I try, or how many awards I get: I’m always going to be empty. Cuz those things don’t fill me up.

There is nothing in the world that makes me happy and content. Nada. Which just drives home that point that I don’t belong here.

Today during the Easter service I played piano for church for the first time in almost 6 months. There I was, pounding away. listening to the songs, swaying to the music. and I could feel Him around me. Thickening the air. Sending chills up and down my back and springing tears to my eyes. I couldn’t help thinking “This is how it’s supposed to be.” Cuz that’s where I belong. Not on a stage, not in front of a piano. Not with tears in my eyes, or chills down my back… but in the presence of my God.

I am worthless.

To have a place to belong someone had to die.

I’m living someone else’s reward.

I screwed up and killed any chance I had for happiness. I broke the rules, I dodged blame, and I tried to pretend it didn’t happen…

And while I was doing my own thing, Jesus came and took the life that I had built for myself. A life where I don’t belong. A life full of loneliness and pain. Depression. Anger… A life that He didn’t deserve by any stretch of the imagination. A life that can only lead to death.

And because he died the worst kind of death, I was able to take his life. To move in with His family. To call God my father. To be perfect as Jesus is.

But I am a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord. Woe is me. But Jesus’ blood has touched my lips. My sins are forgiven, my guilt is taken away…

But I’m still stuck here. And that is the beauty of Easter.

Jesus isn’t still in some tomb somewhere. He conquered death. He rose again. And one day He will return for me. He’ll come on his white horse and He will take me away from this dying world.

No, I don’t want to be a normal teen. It’s my lack of normalcy that makes me realize how futile it all is. This place is not where I belong. I belong somewhere else with someone else doing something else.

And for a few moments today I was there.