Cutting Edge Gets Stitched, Self-Adjusting Attitudes Interviews

[Maggie]

I Felt Worthless
Singer/songwriter Lanae' Hale's struggle with cutting and self-worth.
from Todd Hertz

Not Good Enough: New artist Lanae Hale was a teenager plagued with insecurities. But you probably would have never guessed. She was very involved in school, grew up in the church, sang on the worship team, and was a student-leader in her youth group. "But inside, I never thought I was good enough or pretty enough," she said. "I heard about God's love a lot but didn't think he loved me. I believed it about everyone else, but not for myself."

When a serious romantic relationship ended before her senior year of high school, Lanae felt her self-doubt was confirmed. "I decided I wasn't worth anything," she said.

A Growing Addiction: After the breakup, she couldn't control her emotions. In a moment of desperation, she used a metal angel figurine, a gift from her grandmother, to dig deep into her skin. "Because cutting and hurting is an addiction, this habit just kept growing," she said. "Whenever I became upset or emotional, I would dig or cut. Somehow, I thought I was fixing my own problems, but it only made me more broken. I was only walking farther from God."

True Worth: After more than two years of cutting, Lanae "suddenly realized that nothing I was doing—cutting, alcohol, sleeping pills—could ever give me the peace that I knew God could bring. I couldn't fix my hurt. I could temporarily numb it, but it would always come back full-force and leave me feeling more empty and alone. For the first time, I thought, Why am I running away from what I know is true?

"Nothing really changed at first, but as her family began to reach out to her, and as she discovered Scripture like Psalms 139 and 149, her life slowly began to change.

"I begged Jesus to heal me, but like any addiction, it was not a quick, easy fix; it was a process," Lanae said. "When I re-committed to God, asked him to heal me, and gave the control back to him, he began to pour this love into me I'd never known. This was the love I'd always heard about, but now I began to see that it did apply to me. I saw who I was in him. I felt Christ's love and forgiveness shine for me in a real way."

Ignite says: If you struggle with self-injury, please tell an adult. You can also find help though:
S.A.F.E. Alternatives:
1-800-DON'T-CUT and selfinjury.com
Dawson McAllister Hopeline:
1-800-394-HOPE or thehopeline.com


Copyright © 2009 by the author or IYF

[Maggie]

David Crowder's Remedy for a Hurting World


Ignite Your Faith An igniteyourfaith.com exclusive interview The David Crowder Band album, Remedy (Sixsteps/Sparrow), came out of the band's concerns over social justice and compassion for others. In fact, the album kicked off the band's "Surely We Can Change Something" campaign which collected thousands of donated goods for local homeless shelters as the band toured around the country. (You can get a feel for that tour with the new Remedy Club Tour Edition DVD & CD which includes the album and more than 85 minutes of live music shot in high definition.) As David Crowder was encouraging listeners to "be the remedy" in their communities, Ignite Your Faith knew he'd be the perfect cover guy for our Fall Issue that contains several stories about serving others. You can only read our story on David, "A Beautiful Moment," in the mag, but here is a transcript of Ignite's interview with David about the purpose of Remedy, the difference between compassion and justice, and why some homeless shelters were shocked by Crowder fans.

The readers of Ignite Your Faith named you the best worship leader of the year. Do you have a message to pass along to the readers?

Well, most of my self-worth comes from winning awards like this. So they're going to get me through another year. I've now got one year that I can know that I'm doing alright. I'm just kidding. Seriously, this is a pretty big deal. But you know, our band looks at what we're doing in really simplistic terms. We're just a little band at a little church in Waco and we're writing songs to try to voice faith for the people that we know and live life with. It's amazing to see these little songs find life and voice elsewhere. Since that happens, it's proof that what God is doing in a little space in Waco, Texas, is meaningful and can give grace to people far from where we live. Which is really, really cool.

You mentioned how your songs come out of your church community. So what discussions are happening in your community right now?

I think Remedy is a good indication of where our conversations have been—and seem to be pretty indicative of the whole of our culture. We've been talking a whole lot about social justice issues. What's our responsibility as people who have been blessed with a lot? How do we pull the people up who are downtrodden? How do we go about loving our neighbor in our current culture? Our neighbor has gotten really, really close, thanks to technology. Because the other side of the world is just a click away, a lot changes.

It's a beautiful moment right now. Everyone from American Idol to corporate America are working to help other parts of the world. But what does this social justice focus mean for us? How do Christians designate themselves as different from the world when the concerns are universal? When the mission of the church lines up with mainstream culture's attempt at interacting with the global community, it seems like there's a slightly missing piece that designates us as a people of faith. I mean, what makes us different? What makes our attempts to help any different than the attempts of the atheist? If a Christian and an atheist are working along side each other in hurricane recovery, what's the difference between the two?

On the Remedy Club Tour, you asked concertgoers to bring towels and socks for local shelters. How'd that start?

We were part of a deal like this in Atlanta with Passion. They did this and it was amazing. Just to see a tangible, real demonstration—a huge pile of donated goods— of how you were trying to help others was really powerful to students. I think it helped them realize, "Hey, we can actually do this" and spur them on to bigger giving and serving opportunities. There's an empowerment that happened. And so we thought, Let's see if we can tote this idea around the country with us. There's been a phenomenal response, and it's led to a lot of thought about compassion.

I was telling a friend of mine about the towels and socks. I was really excited—and he sort of sprinkled a little water on me to dampen my excitement. Actually, what he said was really insightful and it changed a lot of my thoughts.

He said, "David, there's a difference between compassion and justice. Compassion is when we're all sitting on the side of a river watching people drown and respond by pulling them out. But justice is when somebody pokes their head up and says, 'You know what? I'm going to go upstream and see who keeps throwing everybody into the river.'"

Somebody needs go upstream and get to the bottom of the issues that are causing these things. Of course, we also need compassion. That is a necessary response. We can't stand at the side of the river and allow the people to drown, but we have to be involved in changing the system, as well.

And so we always challenge students, kids, parents, whoever is in front of us. Somebody's got to give their lives to these issues and be willing to spend the time and the energy and have the fortitude to not wind up in hopelessness. It doesn't end with towels and socks.

You said that there's been a phenomenal response to the band's call for donations of towels and socks. What kind of things are you seeing?

We just kept seeing unexpected moments happen where homeless people would come to the venue to grab the clothes and be unprepared for the sheer quantity.

In New York, there were a couple of guys from a shelter who walked to the venue. They were given enough money for a couple of cabs back to the shelter to carry the donations. Let me just say: It was impossible to fit all of the stuff into two cabs. So, they're calling the shelter going, "You're not going to believe this, but there's no way this is going to fit in two cabs."Â

That's powerful for people who have nothing. They probably suspect that this is just another group of people coming to consume another night of music. They've paid for tickets and they're sitting in a plush little theater. But all that gets flipped on them and they're thinking, Why in the world do these people care about our plight back at the shelter? That, I think, is a beautiful thing.

I also think that seeing that we can make a difference empowers people. It lets them at least see that there's potential. We can change things.

 As a teen or a young believer, how did you see the Christian service thing? When did that first start becoming real to you?

I was fortunate. My dad was a part of the Bus Ministry in our church. So my Sunday mornings were spent on the bus going with him, grabbing donuts, and heading into the less-fortunate side town to fill the bus up to bring people to our very affluent Baptist church.

My dad also had rental property in this same area of town. Our Saturdays were spent over there repairing whatever was broken. I think spending time in this area and around these great people gave me a different perspective. I felt a lot of hopelessness. I mean, I've watched my dad pour into these people for years—with very little change. Not much visible good came from his efforts.

That's my biggest fear for kids and even adults when working in these tough issues of social justice: these problems are really difficult problems. There are no easy fixes. When you hear stories of success—like with how many socks we're collecting—it looks easy. It looks really simple and you feel an immediate result. But that's just the beginning. Global crisis issues are difficult items. You know, you raise money and get mosquito nets for kids in Africa, but then you have the greater population and they can't be cared for by the current health care system. You fix one thing and cause another problem. It's complex. So, every night of this tour that we did the socks and towels, we've also talked about how difficult these world issues really are.

 Obviously, you're a worship leader sitting here talking about justice, so what do you think is the correlation between worship and social action?

In any massive cultural shift—whether it be the civil rights movement or the union worker movement—there's always been art and music that has accompanied these shifts. We thought, "Wouldn't it make the most sense for us to look back on history and see that this complete shift in mindset globally was accompanied by the worship music of the church?"

So that led us to vow to do our little part. And I hope we are.

--from IYF

[Maggie]

I Buried My Pain
Group 1 Crew's Blanca talks about dealing with old hurts.
by Todd Hertz IYF

Avoiding the Past: As she was growing up, Group 1 Crew's Blanca Reyes was wounded emotionally by sexual abuse, low self-esteem and her parents' messy divorce. When she met Christ at 17, those hurts didn't just go away.

"I hate dealing with issues," she says. "So these were wounds I'd buried deep down. I chose not to deal with them. I wanted instead to just move on with my life. But the biggest part of growth is dealing with your issues. God taught me how to forgive and let go. He cleansed those wounds. Dealing with those old hurts really helped me."

Supporting Friends: How did God help Blanca deal with the past? She says it all began with this heartfelt prayer: "God, I'm going to make this decision to serve you. I want to give you everything, but it's going to be hard doing this by myself."

Not long after praying that prayer, Blanca "stumbled" into a Bible study for musicians. "Those 12 people became my best friends, held me accountable and guided me through my new faith," she says.

Don't Do It Alone: Opening up about her past was very difficult and scary for Blanca. "I knew with my own strength I wouldn't do it," she says. "I needed God's strength." Still, she continued to struggle. Then, finally, she hit a point where she thought, Man, I just can't keep this up. I'm not strong enough to deal with this on my own anymore.

As difficult as it was to open up, there was someone she felt she could trust with her feelings and pain—her church's pastor. When she could no longer carry the burden of hiding her past, she called him and said, "I have all these issues I've gone through with my life, but I haven't spoken about them or opened up to anybody."

With his encouragement, she released it all. Blanca's pastor cried with her, prayed with her and told her he'd always be there for her. And he has been.

"Finding people who cared and who shared my burden made all the difference," Blanca said. "I totally recommend anybody who's hurting to speak with their pastor, a youth leader, their parents, or a trusted adult from church. You don't have to carry it alone."