You Can Take It Off (When You're Ready) [Twenty One Pilots]

Chapter Twenty Seven: Loser

Lena had never been the queen of organization, but her tendency to be late to everything had severely increased these past few weeks. She wasn't sure why, but she was having a very hard time staying on schedule and she hated this. Mentally scolding herself for forgetting to set an alarm clock last night, she forced an apologizing smile at the volunteers on each side of the door before entering the building.

Everyone else was already sat down, and a few heads turned when she made her way towards the seats, searching for familiar faces in the crowd. Lena felt the warmth rise to her cheeks as she couldn't find anyone she knew, and she almost resigned herself to sitting alone at the very back of the assembly when a hand shot up, closer to the front. It waved, and Lena followed the straight line of a muscly arm to the face of Jay, Tyler's younger brother. 

Lena let out a sigh of relief as she finally made her way, as silently and quickly as she could, to the line of chairs where most of Tyler's family was sitting. Hopefully, the first seat was free, and her heart swelled at the thought that they had kept it like that just for her. 

"Hi, sis!" Jay whispered happily, side-hugging her. "Don't worry, it's only just started."

Lena smiled at him, glancing swiftly at the row beside Jay. Her eyes crossed Kelly's, and immediately Lena felt a wave of heat rush to her cheeks again, although Tyler's mom smiled genuinely. Great. She hadn't been introduced to the Joseph's for that long and she was already showing herself on her bad sides. She knew how important church was to them, and she had managed to be late. Lena clenched her fists, mad at herself as the pastor continued his sermon.

"If you believe you are a loser, you will lose and stay down," the pastor said from the stage they had set up in the room, a tv screen behind him repeating the phrase in bold white letters. "If you believe you're invaluable, if you believe that you don't have worth, if you believe you're not important, if you believe that God doesn't love you... If you've learned that through certain things throughout your life, then when you fall, you'll stay down because you'll essentially believe that what's happened to you is really a result of who you are."

Lena looked down, trying to catch her breath from the run that had led her to her chair. But it seemed like her heart didn't want to cooperate. It was still beating fast, the words she had just heard resonating with every beat.

"But if you believe in your heart that you are a winner, if you believe that you have a value, that God loves you and that you matter, when you fall, you'll be able to stand back up. You'll go 'My failings, my falling doesn't represent me, it represents something that happened to me, it's really not who I am. I am something else'.  So what I wanna take you guys through today is just an exercise about what are those pieces of information that have affected your beliefs about yourself." Joel, the pastor, paused for a second, looking deeply around the audience before breaking a smile. "I know, you didn't think you would be going to counseling when you woke up this morning, right?"

Lena's head perked up at the joke, and she let out a small chuckle. This church was definitely like no other, and although she still wasn't sure what she believed in, or if she believed at all, Lena liked the atmosphere. Waking up early on a Sunday morning didn't even feel like a deadly task - well, except for this morning - and that was saying something. She actually liked going to church.

"What has shaped your strongest belief about yourself?" Joel continued, pacing the stage, and Lena thought about the question for a second. She wasn't even sure how she could answer it - so many experiences, good and bad, had shaped the person she was today, and some continued to do so. Actually, Lena wasn't sure she wanted to answer that question at all. It would require her to dig into her past, and that was something too painful to even think about.