to write love on her arms

TO

WRITE

LOVE

On her arms

Renee is 19.When I meet her cocaine is fresh in her system.She hasn't slept in 36 hours, she won't for another 24.It is a fimilar blurr of coke,pot,pills & alcohal.She has agreed to meet us , to listen and to let us pray.We ask Renee to come with us & leave this broken night.She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow , but she isn't read now.This is too great a change.We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.She as known such great pain;haunted dreams as a child, the near constant pressence of evil ever since.She has felt the touch of awful naked men,battled depression and addiction and attempted suicide.Her arms remember razor blades,fifty scars that speak on self inflicted wounds.Six hours hafter i meet her she is feeling trapped 2 groups of "friends" offering oppisite ideas.Everyone is asleep.The sun rises.She drinks long from a bottle of liquor takes a razor blade from the table & locks herself in the bathroom.She cuts herself using the blade to write "fucked up" in large letters across her forearm. The nurse at the treatment finds the wound several hours later.The center has no detox ,names her too great a risk and does not except her.For the next 5days she is ours to love we become her hospital & the possibility of healing fills our living room with life.It is unspoken & there are only a few of us but we will be her church,the body of christ coming alive to meet her needs.To Write Love On Her Arms.She is full of contrast more alive and closer to death than anyone.I've known Like a johnny cash song or some theater star.She owns an attitude & humor beyond her 19 years and when she tells me her story she is humble and quiet and kind shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit priviledge but breaking as she shares.Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words & on consecutive evenings I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her shes beautiful. I think its god reminding her.I've never walked this road but i decide that if were going to run a 5 day rehab its going to be the coolest in the country.Its gonna be rock and roll.We start with the basics lots of fun,too much starbucks and way to many cigarettes.She hands me her last razor blade tells me its the one she used to cut her arm & her last lines of cocaine 5 nights before.She had it with her ever since shares that tonight it will be the hardest night & she shouldnt have it.I hold it carefully thank her & know instantly this moment this gift will stay with me.It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts,when we trade death for life.As we arrive at the treatment center she finishes "the stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds,we miss them in the storms tell them to remember hope.we have hope".I have watched life come back to her & it has been a priviledge.When our time with her began someone suggested shifts but that is the language of buisness.Love is something better.I have been challenged and changed reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions.

Febuary 13 2008 half a million people wrote love on their arms,it means alot to people who have suffered this way to expierence a show of love.Please support this cause of suicide awareness and repost this story on a glog,blog,fb,vf,myspace,twitter anywhere. & check out the website www.twloha.com <3 love is the movment write love on your arms cuz ur show of love could change someones life <3 Remember Febuary 13th is the day