“A Foot In Each World”
Posted by Missy in April 2011
Shortly after the drastic change in our school happened, I began attending a youth group. This youth group was good for me in many ways and I’ll never regret going there, but at the same time, it put me under peer pressure that I had never really experienced much of before. For the first time, I was just beginning to come out of being really shy and oh how I wanted to fit in! I had closed myself off because of hurtful friendships in the past and not let anyone near my age around me for several years, so, suddenly being in a youth group was a huge change for me. It didn’t take long before I almost completely abandoned skirts in my attempt to fit in. After that, for some reason, I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I had just let go of something very good. Even though I stopped wearing skirts most of the time, I could never seem to stop doing so on Sundays because my parents had always taught me to joyfully dress nice, out of respect for God and others around me. And also, mama said, because daddy liked to see his girls all dressed up.
The idea of wearing a skirt had sunk in much deeper in my sister then it did in me and she never seemed to be as easily influenced or want to fit in as badly as I did.
I never did manage to “fit in” as I wanted to. I always tried to keep a
foot in each world. On one side, I wanted to be the modern, in style girl, and on the other side, I still was clinging to that feeling that when I stopped wearing skirts, I had lost something valuable.
After attending that youth group for a couple of years, I climbed to the status of “popular.” Not top notch popular, but right up there on the list. I sang, and played keyboard with the worship team and was invited to hang out with the much more popular girls. This thrilled me, but it didn’t fulfill me. I never did feel like I belonged or fit in.
When I was almost seventeen, another group of home schoolers entered the picture. I had joined a Christian, western website that was made up of a bunch of home schooled kids, all of whom lived in other states. This group of home schoolers was different and were very much like the families that I had always admired and wanted to be like in my early teens. The website was full of fun and non-serious topics, but through it I was able to get a glimpse once again of the kind of person that I wanted to be. I became friends with a couple of kids about my age on there, and though, we never talked about anything serious, the way they lived out their life and faith really impacted my whole world.
(Continued in Part 4)
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