||My Invisible Wound||

||A Path to Find||

     c h a p t e r | f i f t e e n

     The car stopped in front of the building. My mother turned the engine off, we got out of the car, and proceeded to head inside.

      "Do I have to?" I asked once more. My parents had been nagging me to go ever since they found out I ran away. They thought that I needed help—which in some way, I kind of did. But they also thought that I needed some guidance, and that God would help.

      "Yes," she said in a stern voice. "You need to find your path to travel on and continue on that road. Right now, you've stopped, probably even collided with someone else and rolled down a large hill. You need to get back up and find that path you were on before, or at least find a newer, better one." Lovely, I thought. My mother is full of metaphors today. How nice.

      A man opened the front doors for us and we walked by, saying our "Thank you's" to him. As we headed down the large hallway, most people we passed by creeped me out with their large smiles and kind words. It was the usual: "Welcome to our church," "Have a lovely day," and soon. I knew that they were just being polite, but it wasn't my day for being a happy person.

      One of the reasons probably was because it was Sunday, my last day of suspension from school, and it was 9:00am.

      I couldn't be the only one out there who wasn't the morning type either. Especially on weekends.

We into the auditorium and sat down in one of the chairs that we were able to find. There were tons of people in the church—it was like being at a concert.

      I put my coat down next to me on an empty chair, and took in everything. Large screens at the front, on two brick walls; a cross on the back wall with Jesus nailed to it, and a large stage with a lot of chairs on it, making a"U" shape, from the back to the sides.

      Once everyone knew it was time for the service, it became silent. A man approached the stage and went up to a podium. He put his hands on the sides like he was trying to convince people into something, as if he was using his body language for selling products. I quickly put the thought out of my head and paid attention to the Preacher.

      "Good morning everyone," he said into his microphone.

      "Good morning," the audience said in unison.

      "When I look out to you all, I see familiar faces. But the more I stare out to the crowd in this room, I see some people who I have never seen before. I want to welcome those of you who are new to our church, first off."He chuckled and stared down at his podium. But he looked up and continued on. "You know, this past week was pretty hard on me."Really? You don't say? "I met a young man in the hospital, fighting cancer. His name was Jonathon; he was a teenager who was getting through his last year of middle school. He had explained tome that he had been having multiple surgeries with the brain tumors that were constantly in a war with his body."

      The Preacher paused for a moment to breathe and he said, "He passed away Thursday night, the day that I met him."

      I looked around the room for a moment and saw a few people in tears. My attention went back to the man on the stage.

      "We have all encountered someone in our life that either changed us or we changed them. I think in that situation, Jonathon changed me; I knew that God answers our prayers, but when I heard the news, I think it finally hit me that there are times when His answers are not the ones we want to hear."

      A few people in the crowd were nodding, even saying "yes," and "yeah" a few times.

      "We pray for our loved ones or friends to survive life, or to get through a surgery, but there can be times when that person doesn't get what they want; whether it'd be a new job or to survive some tedious disease. God had answered your prayers, but they weren't enough to save your friend or loved one. And some of you probably do get discouraged, maybe wonder why it's happening. 'Did God just turn me away? Am I not worth being looked at by Him? Does He even love me?' I will say that yes, He loves you; that yes, He looks at you and sees you for who you are, but it isn't that He's turning you away, it's the fact that things happen for a reason.

      "What reason, though?" he screamed, sending chills down my spine because of how loud the speakers were. "We will never know. As sad as that is, the reason will never be revealed; it's a secret that is held in a classified folder, put into a classified room that is never touched. In fact, Angels may even guard that room to keep it all safe." He laughed with a few others who followed.

      "But," he said, "here's the thing. We don't meet people by accident; they are meant to cross our path for a reason." He paused. "Think of that, though. Things happen to us for a reason—so what about the people that we meet? We can't meet them randomly or by accident. We meet them for a reason; even if it's a tiny explanation like for changing our perceptive of a person or a personality. We may only meet them for a fraction of a second, but they can make a large impact on our life."

      "Yeah," I heard from the crowd, going out into whispers.

      "When I met Jonathon, it was he that made an impact on my life. I saw that we can't take life for granted because you never know what would happen in the future, either five seconds from now, twenty minutes, or two decades from now, that you won't be able to foresee what would happen. So you have to take life in your hands and live like there is no tomorrow."

      The audience applaud his speech and my mind went blank with everything else around me; the prayers, the songs, or even what the Preacher preached. After hearing that story, everything disappeared and I began to think of his words.

      I wasn't living my life; I was surviving it.

      My life wasn't as bad as Jonathan's, because I wasn't diagnosed with any disease that abused me in such horrid ways. I was fighting depression, a battle I've been fighting for a few years and I could never win the war. I kept going back to the field in hopes I could win, but I always lost.

      Something in me snapped.

      Tears slowly made their way out of my eyes and down my cheeks; my face was hot and red, but I tried not to cause attention to myself.

      Did I meet Elyes for a reason? And Jake? Were they supposed to make a large impact on my life? And how did Paige fit into that equation?

      I thought about her. I thought about how Paige and I met for a reason and I bet the reason why we met was because of my current state: insane, depressed . . . But somewhere, deep inside me, I didn't think that was the only reason. I thought that there was more to it, like the saying how there's more than meets the eye.