In college I worked many jobs, trying to keep up with the never ending monthly bills working to stay in school and stay out of debt. But finally, one semester I landed it: the perfect college girl 20-something job that would work around my crazy class schedule and be totally fun at the same time! Most days after class I rushed off to work dressed in all black, hair done-check, bright lipstick-check, jogging as fast as I could go in high heels down the busy streets of downtown Chicago. Most of the time I worked in the dressing rooms, with pink paper cards and a pen in hand, the latest glitzy bra hanging from my wrist, and a pink measuring tape hanging around my neck. I would assume that most of you gals already guessed it, yes, I worked at the well known Victorias Secret. The job had its con’s of course like any job: late hours, managers yelling in your little earpiece headset, and cranky customers. But most of the time it wasn’t that bad, I mean, I got to hang out with a bunch of girls all day chatting about underwear and bras! At the end of the day, I made money and had a pretty good time, and heck- I left my shift smelling like “sexy vixen” perfume! Meanwhile I happened to be taking a class with a woman who would rock my world faster that you could say “push-up”…(haha). My professor went on a rant one day (like most days) about exactly what she thought about the dreaded Victorias Secret…Intensely taking notes, barely keeping up with the woman, I suddenly gulped, feeling as though I was suddenly placed in an oven, and I began to perspire. Yes, I felt like a rotisserie chicken in the middle of the classroom, sensing the intense red light of the heat lamp cooking my insides as my soul seemed to rotate within me. Everything she had to say about this Victorias Secret was negative…She didn’t know I worked there. (Thank the Lord! Or I probably would have been beaten with a stick by my professor as a classroom spectacle right there!) However, she began to explain something I had never thought about before…What she said was almost exactly how she put it in her book, “Unseduced and Unshaken,” which was written just a year after this instance:

But, we are seduced, pushing down spiritual conviction to accommodate what everyone is doing. We walk by, looking into the window at the sumptuous, anorexic ally this yet well-endowed model only to glance down hesitantly at ourselves, feeling a kind of despair. Perhaps, though, something in there will make me look more beautiful, we tell ourselves. Oddly enough, only a handful of times have I heard anyone talk publicly about whether or not a Christian woman should shop at Victoria’s Secret though I have had the conversation with a number of women in private. Most Christian women I talk to never did or don’t think about it anymore. Or I’ve heard them argue that the lingerie fits well. Okay, but it’s not as though there’s a lack of places to find intimate wear. Every major department store carries a substantial, varied, and attractive collection without such blatant soft-porn messages or invitations to compare ourselves to an impossible standard. Interestingly, the women I know who have started to think about the subject are often married and have discovered that their husbands have a pornography problem. Suddenly, this kind of catalogue doesn’t seem so neutral. Combine that with the V.S. ads on television and the annual modeling show, and one can see the philosophical motivation. At the time I stopped being able to go into the store even to buy the lotions I had used for awhile, I saw the first objection to Victoria’s Secret. It was not so much about the moral compromise involved but about the objectification of women, the woman-as-whore image that Victoria’s Secret encourages, something that has nothing to do with how God calls men to view women or women to view themselves. (de Rosset 109)

Of course, I listened intently as she rattled on, and left the classroom that day completely in silence. I began to think. Think. Suddenly, I had a breakthrough that night, as two worlds collided: Work and Identity. There I was, standing around the obnoxiously pink and white striped store that night, working the closing shift, really thinking for the first time the influence this place had on women and what then, in essence, I was promoting as being an employee. What does Victorias Secret Promote? Sexy. What is portrayed as “sexy” on these giant pictures of women all around me? Anorexia, fake boobs, sparkly bras, and basically everything that is against what God has given us to preserve and protect as valuable: our body. Don’t eat, don’t be grateful for the beautiful body that you have - instead, surgically “enhance” it to the standards of our sick and twisted world, and uncover yourself as much as is possible without being arrested for being indecent in public…and in this day and age, you basically have to be completely naked to cross that line. Victorias Secret is not alone in the retail industry in advertising the lies that our society will have women believe today about the indecency and downright disrespectfulness that we must commit to our own bodies to be deemed “sexy.” But V.S. is probably the biggest and most well known for being the standard of sexy, that women from all over want to measure up to so badly. But why? I believe it is an identity crisis. I see women come into this store day in and day out seeking to be something that they are not - hoping to be anything but what they are. They fall into the trap of the endless pursuit of defining ourselves in what we look like.

 Now, I am going to take a short pause here for a moment and say this: EVERY WOMAN HAS TRIED THIS! I am not pointing out a singular woman right now, or even a type. I am saying that we are all in the same boat here ladies (can I get am amen?!) 

 Someone once said “until we realize that our identity is completely in Christ, we seek to define ourselves in outward expressions.” It is an amazing, maybe completely unexplainable, thing to describe what it means to say that my identity is in Christ. I went through a hard season of life back in college sometime ago, when I learned the truth about myself, and it wasn’t pretty. It was while I was working at Victoria’s Secret, just a few months before I was about to go overseas to do ministry with the Lighthouse, an organization that reaches out to the women caught in prostitution in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. But at the end of the dark valley, God finally brought to my eyes the fact that, I may not be seeking self-worth through sex or prostitution, but through the superficial image I see in advertisements that I so badly want to resemble. I am that woman. So what kind of sad gospel was I going to offer these women whom I anticipated meeting in Amsterdam, if all I had to say for who I was in Christ was hidden behind a facade of hypocrisy? Who am I? …In a way, my physical appearance had become how I sought to define myself. 

 Finding ones identity in Christ is an act of complete obedience and surrender; realizing that you are giving up the control of your life, or the control that you think you have anyway. It is also a willingness to trust; to trust in His plan for your life, and to trust that He will provide for every single day of that plan. Don’t ask me why, but after that I impulsively cut my long blonde locks off and traded them in for an extremely short hairdo. When I looked in the mirror for the first time at the end of this learning season, I realized there was no hiding …I felt exposed. God has used my lack of hair to show me sort of a symbol or reminder of what my identity rests in. My hair and looks do not define me, my identity is found in Christ alone, who gives me confidence in the beauty of the transformation He has done in my life. In the Bible, God sent the message to His people through the prophet Zechariah that He would "refine them like silver and test them like gold" (13:9). This is painful process sometimes, that involves feeling utterly exposed, but this is what He promises: "They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are my people,' and they will say, 'The LORD is our God.'" No, my conscience would not allow me to work at the elusive Victoria’s Secret anymore, so I quit. But I quit knowing that the Lord would provide for my bills that I didn’t know how I was going to pay, He would provide for my future that I constantly stressed over, and He would be faithful to answer me in my distress, because I know that I am God’s - and He is always faithful to His people.

 I would like to end this (extremely long and rather “chatty”) account of my life by simply saying that I know we are all at a different point in our spiritual journeys. I am not going to look down on you for buying underwear at a certain store, that is your decision (and I willingly admit that I love some of Victoria’s Secret’s bras)…but I would hope that anyone reading this would be encouraged to think about why they do the things they do. I am not defined by where I buy my underwear, but by a God who demands obedience and trust in Him. But if you are representing the King of all kings, you better be careful choosing who to stand behind on this earth and how you display yourself. So I leave you with this quote from the book written by one of my favorite professors that I spoke of earlier: To be a Christian woman of dignity, a woman must know who she is before God; she must have dealt thoughtfully with her personhood and made decisions about who she will be. Dignity is a strong, chosen, deliberate way of life, the result of the totality of a persons choices and worldview. (de Rosset 24)

This story was written by a dear friend of mine and it's incredible. God has greatly blessed me with her friendship even though we practically never see each other due to distance. I pray that her story inspires you like it did me. Manda is a beautiful young girl with a fire for God; she loves Doctor Who and has a lovely singing voice.

"The story started when I was younger. I've always had issues with anxiety, and worrying about everything. Well as I grew older this anxiety just kept on getting worse and worse. I was never well liked by any of the kids in my school, it was a small private school, so it made people in general hard to avoid. I only ever made three good friends coming out of there, and two of them were in the grade below me.

But that's besides the point.

I've always had problems with defending myself. Against words, people, insults-both verbal and physical, I just couldn't do it. Maybe I was smart, but it didn't matter, not to these kids. All that mattered to them was that they found satisfaction in making you cry. So, I guess you could say I had a bit of a bullying problem. That on it's own would've been manageable, if it wasn't for eight years, with the same people, who knew everything about you and how to make you tick.

By eighth-grade I was depressed. I would come home from school, and sometimes I would cry, but the majority of the time I would just lay in my bed and feel numb to everything. Which couldn't be normal, right? So I would lay there, and to get myself to feel something, anything, that was when I began self harm. By itself, I probably would've been alright. I would say that there was a pretty high chance that I would've stopped on my own. I had a high pain tolerance, it didn't do much for me anyways, I didn't go deep enough, whatever my excuse, I was fine. Until I got to high school.

I had never been to a public school before, you have to understand. So going from a grade of 23 to a class size of 27, and a grade size of 682 was a bit of an adjustment to make. Worse still, I didn't know anyone. So being my natural self, I decided to try out or volleyball, and somehow I managed to make our freshman team.

I made a two good friends through that-or so I thought- and we became close and hung out a bit, until one night at a team sleepover, the three of us were alone in a room. We began to talk about our lives and somehow the topic of self harm came up. I had wanted to say something to these girls for so long about my problem, but I had always been afraid that they would judge me, but once one of my friends shared, I caved. To be honest, this is one of the things that I regret the most at this point, because of all of the damage it causes in the future. Needless to say, the third girl, who hadn't spoken yet, was shocked by our statements, and she vowed to try and help us through the year.

So the year went on. And for a while, I was fine. That is, until I started paying attention. I started seeing the people around me and I started comparing myself to them. Why was she so tall and I so short? Why was I SO fat? Ewwww I looked so gross in comparison to that girl... The list was endless, and almost all of it came back to physical beauty, because I didn't know any of them well enough to know their personalities.

That's when I stopped eating. I looked at myself, didn't like what I saw, and figured I should change. But then... I didn't know what to do, so I went with the most logical step - not eating. Which all seemed fine until I started getting easily dehydrated at volleyball practices and getting migraines and hunger pains so often throughout the day that I couldn't focus. Plus, after all of my effort -I still hadn't lost much weight! So I went back to eating and feeling miserable, but still eating, so that wasn't as much of a concern. Looking back, it was a dangerous plan, and I'm lucky I stopped with it when I did- I can see that now, but at the time, it certainly seemed feasible.

But then, things started happening. I found out that my family thought that I had been raped as a child. Now, I understand why they didn't want me to know that they thought that, but... As a 15 year old, what was I supposed to do with that information? I was scared and hurt, and I felt ashamed and dirty and broken. I had known that it happened to people, but I had never once imagined that I would've been put in that position, to try and wrestle with the feelings inside of me.

That was when I started to self harm again, but this time, I was serious. It wasn't anything juvenile or insignificant, now I was working for scars. It was an awful idea, really, but I kept at it throughout the year. Plus, being a girl, there was drama surrounding my life, which just added to the stress. I was so confused and upset and torn that I didn't know what to do with myself. I began to seriously think about killing myself. Not just fleeting thoughts, like "I'll kill myself if we have to take a test" more like "I can't handle what I'm going through anymore, I'd rather die than be here". Also around this time, in one of my club volleyball team's tournament, I had obtained a concussion, which was not helping the confusion. So I talked to my friend, (the third girl, if you were wondering) and she was a bit worried, but she promised not to say anything. But then, I started getting called down to the office. Once a week, sometimes twice a week, but I never got to know why. And then one day, after a particularly long and upsetting conversation with my friend, I was called in to talk to my social worker. "A friend of mine was worried," she said, "that I had a plan to kill myself. That I was ready, I had a date, and I had a plan thought out already". Hearing this, I adamantly denied the claims and of course, was allowed to leave for the time being, but I walked out furious. There was only one person who could have known about that, and it was that third girl.

I was so bitter about that incident that I refused to talk to her for the rest of the year. (It happened in April, so it wasn't too long, but it was long enough) We stopped chatting via Facebook, in school, interacting; nothing at all. I would never have told her, but it killed me. To see us like that. To not have anyone left. It was brutal.

But then summer happened, with an amazing experience at my summer camp that forever changed my life. And all of a sudden, school was back, and church, and slowly but surely, my anxiety started creeping back in.

Now, I was living in fear of different things. My friend and I had made up, so now my only problem was being at home. At this point, I've realized there's no delicate way to say that someone is abusive, and for me, it's my mother. In her defense, she actually has some sort of problem in her brain that originated after my sister's birth, but she hasn't done anything to address it- which is entirely on her. I had lived for 16 years at this point, and I had always thought that I was the perfectionist. I could sit at a piano for hours, lose track of time because I needed to play my song perfectly. I was ADD, OCD, and crazy; it just made sense. But then I realized how much I depended on what my parents thought. Because I had always been so much of a perfectionist, my parents had always been proud of me and my grades. And then all of a sudden this year, my grades slipped in some of my classes and all of a sudden, they weren't proud, they were ashamed of me. So much so that they told me I wouldn't have a future and that I didn't belong in their family and that I was wasting the time in my life.

And so the self harm cycle started again. I had been clean for 354 days, and then I screwed it all up because I got emotional. I felt so stupid and worthless and pathetic. And then, yet again, I turned back to suicide. First I tried medicine, but that just wasn't working. I was too tolerant to what I would've used for it to work, so I gave up there. And then one day, after a particularly brutal round of self harm, I realized I could just do that. I had read up on it statistically. Most people fail when they try to slit their wrists. But I knew how, and I could finally control it. So I went for it, and instantly regretted it. I had narrowly avoided missing a major artery, and so all I've got is a scar to remind me. No one knew, not my sister, or my family, or my friends. They just assumed that I was fine. And I was, in their eyes. But I learned, which is the important part. 

Here's what I've figured out. I'm never going to have everything under my control. But, what I can't control I can entrust to God, because I know that He'll do what's best for me, and He'll only give me as much as I can handle. Is it going to be a long road? Sure. Am I going to have more difficulties along the way? Definitely. But I can say with the utmost certainty, that my God will be with me every step of the way. So, although my recovery may not be perfect- I may still fall into a temptation of the devil, or think about suicide again- God will always be there to pick me back up when I fall. He is my support- He will always be the cornerstone of my life, patiently waiting for me to build off of Him, even when I get distracted or I stray from his plan.

You may ask, if all of this happened, then how do you know God is real? And good?

God is real because it's proven. If for no other reason than the archaeological and historical evidence, God is real. But he's also real because I've read about Him in the Bible-the most important book of my life, and everything that is in the Bible is the truth, it's His word.

He's good because He says that He will make all things work together for the good of those who love Him and follow according to his word. I do love Him, and He knows that I'm going to face struggles, and I'm going to fall down, and I'm going to stray from him sometimes, and while that's not an excuse, He readily forgives me every time I turn away. He's given me this life for a reason, and if the reason is to become bolder about telling people my story so I can finally help someone, then here I am. That's the point isn't it? 

I'm here.

After I take into account the things I've been through, the people I've met, who have influenced and shaped me, the place I've been; I can say that I'm still standing. Have I been beaten down a few times? Sure, but you know what? It's just made me a better fighter. In the bible, we are called to put on the armor of God, and finally I've realized how. Let the world come at you, embrace it- God has a plan for you, and He's ready to see it happen as soon as you open yourself up to it. So why wait? The more time you spend away from Him, on your own path, the longer it will be for you to leave your wide path, and venture onto His narrow road. But let me tell you, it's certainly worth it."

Ok, I'm going to be honest with you, when my sister told me she wanted me to write for RAIM, I was like “Whoa.... shut the front door”. At the time, I didn't think I had a problem, I was just an average 7th grader...... who was in a mental hospital. But that's way too far in. Ok, so about a year ago, I noticed something was REALLY wrong with me, I would start thinking about things like death, heck, I even slept in a corpse-like pose. But you know, I thought “Eh, I'm going through puberty, it's just an emo phase”. And then I started like... getting angry at myself. Just for messing up on one tiny thing that doesn’t even matter I would get angry and just tell myself “God, I am incredibly stupid” or “Wow, great job Miguel, Is it possible for you to get any dumber?”. One day, I looked in the mirror and I had a gut, I wasn’t even like fat or anything, I just had a gut, and then it started. My first self harm stage, Bulimia. I would go into the school bathrooms and force my fingers down my throat, throwing up and being satisfied afterward. I tried to stop, but I couldn't, I had sort of, an addiction. I would look at myself in the mirror and I would still say “Nope, not good enough, force those fingers down there again ya hippopotamus”. Thankfully, God blessed me with friends that cared about me, and once they found out, they went straight to my teacher. My teacher told my parents and we had a BIG meeting about it, my parents thought I was being rebellious and doing it for attention. Little did they know, it was just the beginning of a big problem. About a month later, I was outside with my friends, I remember this day like it was yesterday. It was November 9th, Two days after my birthday. School got off early and I started hanging out with some friends, then I made the stupid mistake of putting one in a choke hold. I held on for two long and he was sent to the ground, breathing hard. Then everyone started screaming “What the hell man?” and “What the f*** is wrong with you?”. They called me horrible names. My sister went to pick me up that day, and when they told her, it was even worse. She started walking towards the train station to go home, I stayed behind. I was crying and crying, and I looked at the street, suddenly the thought came to me “Fast cars, long street, wanna die?” and I approached the street. I held myself back, I couldn’t kill myself, not for a bad day, but I could punish myself. I grabbed a rock and started throwing it and hitting it against my arm. When I finished, I concealed my bruised arm with my sweater and then decided to walk home with my sister. Diana was pissed and decided to make me WALK home, like WALK. During that walk, I called my friend Dayle, and her sister Faith. I was crying and told them I was going to kill myself. Once I got home they were there, they had bible verses and words of encouragement ready, they were armed and not dangerous.... Oy I suck at jokes.... ANYWAYS!!  I still think that the world was laughing at me that day “Happy birthday! Sorry for the late gift, but you get Depression and Suicidal Ideas!!!!”. Fast forward some months later. My friend Molly had cut her arms, I looked at her arms and thought “Maybe I should try that”. I went home and cut my arm three times, I thought it was cool and I got to thinking “Hey, Why kill myself when I can do this?”. So from then on, whenever I felt angry, I went to the bathroom, grabbed my brothers razor, and cut myself. Then one night, My siblings saw that I cut myself, and my parents found out. They thought it was for attention again. In January, I was having the worst day in school, and I thought about killing myself. I had tried to over dose with some antibiotics, and I tried to cut my veins more than once. So I told my friends that it was my last day. They went to the counselor. After about 4 hours of my parents coming over and a therapist, they decided it best to send me to a hospital. My mother wept, my father prayed, and my sister hugged me. Then, I spent the first night at the hospital, scared and alone. During my time at the hospital, I cried and cried, My roommate Hunter being there for me and comforting me, and I still pray to God and thank him for giving me such a great guy to have there for me. Two weeks later, I was home free, but there was still depression lingering in there, now my parents knew it was serious and not for attention. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. I acted my way out of that hospital and I had known it. Four days later, I cried and cried in my room, rushed to the bathroom, and tried to slit my wrists. Faith's Mom called the police, and to the hospital I went again. During my time at that hospital I decided to actually pray a lot, because I knew people loved me, and if I died who knows who I would have hurt? I thought “Ok, Seems like God can help me, so let's do it” and I started praying more. I got out of that hospital feeling great, and I enjoyed life. Sometimes I lay in bed thinking about my life, and as beautiful as it is, it will be even more beautiful if I keep living. Yes I do still think about death, yes I do still think about killing myself, but I hold on. I have people that love me and care for me. If I can't live for myself, I live for them. I think “My Job here is done, If I were to die, I'd be ok with it, and I'd be happy, I've already helped other people”. But even though I've helped people now, who knows how many people I'll help even more in the future. This is what I'm saying guys, just look at your life, there has to be ONE person at least ONE person that cares about you. Live for them, and when you're ready, start living for yourself. This struggle is something that will make us stronger in the end, yes lots of us have lost this battle, but let's win it, for the kids that died, and for the kids that feel alone. You're not alone, you're never alone, there is someone out there that finds you great. You wake up every morning for a reason, some of you  log on to RAIM for encouragement and hope, some of you give life another chance, and it doesn’t even matter what you do but you pick yourself up and do something that’s the important thing, you wake up because there is something for you to do, someone you will inspire, someone that maybe in 5 years, will help you too. You were put on this earth for a reason, doubt yourself all you want, your internal beauty is something no one can deny, if you don't think you're beautiful, or strong, just look at yourself right now, you're reading this, and you're alive. If you've made it this far, you can make it even farther. Keep marching, you brave soldiers. My story may not be the most inspiring, and I don't have it as hard as other people, but it doesn’t matter whether you're story is inspiring, or hard, whatever your story is, it matters. Your LIFE matters. You can become the greatest thing you have ever thought of, it may be hard now, but who knows, in a few years, it'll all seem like a bad dream. I love all of you with all my heart, and please, please, keep marching. God bless all you beautiful strong people, I love you, Goodbye. :)