God Is Not a NY Yankees Fan

by Gabi
(Somewhere in Maine... :))

Umm, hi!

My name is Gabi.

First off, before you start freaking over the title, read the whole thing. It's an analogy, not literal! :)

Secondly, my parents are divorced, but it has all been worked out for good, just like God promises! :) I have a wonderful step-mom, step-dad, and little sister. I am so blessed to have them. I still wish sometimes that none of it had ever happened (easy is never cheap) but I'm okay! Nothing is too big for the Father to handle. His family isn't dysfunctional, jah? :)

I'm just a normal 15-year-old girl who has been raised all her life in a Christian home. Jesus is the most important part of my life; He's my best friend! :) I regret to say He hasn't always been. Like I said, I'm the norm, not any better than anyone else...

Uh, hence the regret. :)

Like most people, I've had, well... problems with feeling like everyone will abandon me. You see, when I was five, my parents were divorced. Really, while I was in the middle of it all, I wasn't bothered. It was years later that the hurt began to surface.

I remember a lot of stuff that happened that I had kind of... blown over until I actually started thinking about it. It didn't "make sense" (my reasoning was actually kind of warped as you will see) until I got into a public school and made my first real friends.

My best friend (who at the time was not Jesus... sadly, I had kinda put Him on the back burner) was always with me. We were inseparable. Church, school, running errands; you name it, we were together.

One year when I went away to visit my dad for the summer, she decided to start spending more times with her other friends. After that, everything went wrong. She was into all kinds of bad things. Boyfriends, nasty music, icky clothes, she had it all. Pretty soon, she realized that I wouldn't... couldn't support her choices. Out the door I went.

Suddenly I got these thoughts in my head that it was all my fault. It was my fault she left. It was my fault she chose wrong. Dad's and Mom's divorce was the next thing I blamed myself for. What if I had just been a better kid? What if there was something I could have done to prevent the split?

And do you know what? It kept happening. Friend after friend ditched me. Family member after family member didn't remember my name at family reunions.

I'm admitting it, I was messed up big time! When a 13-year-old is so depressed that they almost give up breathing every night, there's something wrong. In truth, the only thing keeping me from suicide was that I had accidentally seen too many CSI episodes when my dad and step-mother watched it. I decided that the horror of finding my dead body would outweigh the loss of my "stupidity".

I know what you're thinking! "Uhh, yeah, I am so encouraged now! Yippee doodles!" :) Well let me finish and tell you what happened to wake me up;

I'm a huge sports fan. Everything. I love it! I'll watch re-runs of hockey games just for the fun of it! :) Anywho, I was watching this one baseball game between the New York Yankees and I forget who else. The stadium was absolutely stuffed to the rim with NY fans in their pinstriped jerseys, waving their cheesy foam fingers around; this game was a big deal. After the first few innings, it became apparent that the Yanks were doing pretty badly. There was a commercial break in the 6th and when the screen switched back to the game, every pinstripe in the place was gone. All of them. Then I got that quiet little voice in my heart. The one that's so soft, it makes you want to cry.

This is what it said;

God is not a Yankee's fan.

That's it. That's all. Up where I live currently, everyone's a Boston Red Sox fan which equals a minor population of those pinstripe types. You see that phrase slapped on the bumper of every vehicle! It's on hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs, sweatshirts, etc.

These words I passed over as "majorly over-reactive" spoken by my Creator had the power to make me bawl like the Boston Bruins had lost the Stanley Cup in double overtime. :)

You might be all like "Wut?!?! Whazzat supposed to mean to me?!"

Well, maybe nothing. But perhaps there's someone who can identify with the comparison.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the best I can do is wrap this up with a little summary. :)

Jesus is not a fair-weather friend. He will not leave you just because you flub up. He loves you, He gave absolutely everything to make it so you can know Him and spend eternity with Him! If you can simply just know how much you mean to Him, your worries would melt away. I still have times when dying sounds pretty good, but I'm not suicidal. :)

Also, the other big thing I have learned from my experiences is the reason why bad things happen. It's not always your fault. It's not God's fault. He doesn't kill people because He wants them in Heaven. He doesn't put cancer and other serious diseases on us to teach us a lesson.

In fact, that whole concept is exactly the opposite of His true nature. Think about it. He died for you. He died a terrible, slow, painful death for you. He died that you would have life and have it more abundantly! He died so you'd be healed! Jesus took what you deserved and has given you as a gift what He deserved!

Anytoots, where was I? Oh! Right.

Bad things happen to us because in the beginning, God created us to have a free will. To choose. Unfortunately, after the fall, we started choosing wrong. And unfortunately, those choices affect more than just ourselves. Parents' choices to divorce hurts their children. It has nothing to do with the kid, it's the mom and dad's decision and the child has nowhere else to go but with them.

And face it! Most of the time we have a chance to make the right choice and we don't. Have you ever done something that was concluded with tragic results (like a bent ego, haha!) and you just knew you shouldn't do that but you went ahead anyway? Yeah, I have. At first I'm upset, but at the end of the day, I just have to laugh and say "I'm such a dweeb!" :)

If this has helped you in the smallest way, given you new perspective, or even just made you laugh, I've succeeded. :) Smile, Jesus loves you!