My prayer for today is for my siblings. I was blessed with three wonderful siblings, a sister and two brothers. But I also had a chance at life as an only child, so there are eight years between me and my little sister, and ten years between me and my youngest brother. Having that age difference in there sometimes brings me happy memories, some sad ones, and some that just bring pain and fear. Two of my siblings are now at an age where some of my regrets in life come from.
When I was growing up in a small town school in the middle of the country, grades 5-8 were taken to another neighboring small town and to the school building there. (the two towns had consolidated their school systems when I was in second grade.) Those days when I was in 5-8 grade I collectively refer to as my Bradshaw Days. Well my Bradshaw days were definitely a distinctive time in my life, one that I would change if I could relive it. First of all, I grew up in a Christian home, and went to church (and still do) on a regular basis. I loved the town I lived in, and the friends I had, the church I was a part of, and my whole life situation in general. I was always the nice, innocent little Christian girl in elementary who never did anything wrong. But my Bradshaw days changed that.
My "education" began in 5th grade. It was then that I started learning cuss words, sarcasm, and how to be "gutter-minded." And as the years went on between 5th-8th grades, I lost more and more of the innocence I had had when starting that chapter of my life. Now my school also was part of a group home program, in which kids were taken away from bad homes, or they were sent to live in the middle of nowhere as a punishment for a crime that they had done, or some other various reasons. We would start to get these troubled kids in junior high, and they would come in with a boatload of cuss words in their mouths, and often times very gutter-minded, having learned no other way to live. By the time I started to be around those kinds of kids, I already knew what they talked about, and so all innocence was gone. I could no longer plead ignorance to the things they talked about. I also became friends with a few, which did nothing to help me stay out of that filth. My friends that I grew up with in school were by this time no better, because they talked the same way, and acted the same way as those group home kids, without the added past crimes, however. I also did not have a support group of friends in school with me who were from the same church as I was: I was, and still am, the only one from my home church my age. My biggest regret from my Bradshaw days was a wanting to know the things I learned. I wanted to be able to talk to all my friends without them looking at me differently. I wanted to know the things they knew, and I knew that none of it was pleasing to God. I knew, but still chose what was bad.
It went on like that, me living in my new stage of knowledge through high school, but high school did change a bit for me. I hung out with less and less of the group home kids, and the ones that I did hang out with went to my church, and acted like this life was changing them, and that they were becoming closer with God. I also lost a friend that I had grown up with. All through junior high, we had been growing apart, and things really fell through after she left the school to do her own online classes. I was starting to crawl out of the life that I had lived in my Bradshaw days. But, with it being a public high school, I was not out of it yet.
Moving to a Christian college has been such a blessing for me, and it has been here at college that I have had the most growth in my relationship with Christ. I am surrounded now by so many great Christian friends who help encourage me. But my Bradshaw days will continue to haunt me. Always echoing in the back of my mind are thoughts that were thoughts of high school, thoughts that display the lost innocence I had once had. It is a struggle that I think will follow me for the rest of my life, but with God's help, I'll be able to fully overcome it, and those echoes won't be so loud and clamoring.
My sister and brother are now in 5th grade, and my youngest brother is in 3rd. But I am so scared for them all. 5th grade was the beginnings of my biggest regrets, and I don't want my siblings to have to suffer the same pain I did. I pray that God will protect them, and let them hold on to their innocence. I think my sister will have a better time of it, however. Most of her friends in school are friends that she's grown up with in church. She will have the support system I never did. But I worry more for my brother. He doesn't have that support system that our sister does because he is the only boy in our church his age. Like me, he doesn't have that support system in place at school, and his friends are the kind of friends who I can see acting more like the non-christian kids that they will face in junior high. My brother is also a lot like me in his personality, so I fear for him and this new chapter in his life. I also fear for my youngest brother. My two brothers are like peas in a pod, so whatever influences my older brother will influence my youngest brother as well. If innocence is lost, it will be lost on all of them, at the same time.
So I pray that my regrets in life will not be regrets that my siblings face.
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