So I'm Invisible?

I had the wonderful privilege of being asked to share my story or something that I felt is should share with my youth group! So originally, I was going to have my topic be addictions, like things that we are addicted to that are tearing us away from God but I felt God laying on my heart that my topic need to be about loving and including others! I actually had almost all of a speech written for the addiction topic and I didn't really want to change it because I already had a lot planed out for it but in the end I changed it! So this is my speech that I gave at my youth group last year! I hope you enjoy!=D

                                So I’m Invisible?                11/26/13

 

Hi! I know most of you already know me and for those of you who don’t, my name is Ashley Rocha. I’m a sophomore and Homeschooled and have been a member of Wayside for almost six years. The story I’m about to tell you I chose to share because it is a topic I feel God is used me to share and bring to your attention and something I have personally experienced the pain of and see other experiencing as well. And that is the topic of rejection and exclusion. 

Before I moved here six years ago, I lived in Kansas for six years also. I lived in a little town called Lindsborg, and in that town was my Elementary School. So my last years before moving here, I was in third grade. I had a best friend and she wasn’t very popular but I was. Pretty much everyone at that school wanted to be my best friend because at that time I had to ride a tricycle everywhere I went because of a leg surgery I had had. I had a lot of friends, but like I said, I also had a best friend who would stick by me everywhere I went. She was basically like another sister to me and we did everything to best friend girls would do! We sat together at lunch, bought friendship necklaces and never took them off, and were always gym partners. She was just the greatest friend in the world, but the only odd thing was that she only treated me like that when we were in school. Of course at the time I was to young to realize that it’s quite normal for people to be friends with other people just for the advantages, but when I found out that my family was going to be moving over 600 miles away I wasn’t really ready to believe it. I told my best friend and she never left my side till the day I left. She showed very minimal emotion the finial hour we had together at school but I was very crushed and heart broken. To me, I left another sister behind that I may not see for many months. After being gone for a couple weeks, I called one of my other close friends to see how she was, then I asked how my best friend was doing, she said she was doing just fine. To me it all seemed just to great. I asked if she ever talked about me. She said no never. I later discovered that my best friend felt I betrayed her by me moving and that I left her to never be talked to or popular again. I when back to go see her a few months later and it was true, she had completely changed. She was rude to me and to my friends. I had never felt unwanted or rejected before in my life and this feeling was completely new to me and it stung like nothing I had ever felt. I was a nine year old who was rejected by my best friend, had moved away, and had no idea how to make new friends. To be honest, some of the first days here at Wayside I didn’t feel very included or wanted by my peers at all, and that was not easy coming to from what I had just left. So tonight I just want to remind you of the importance of including people, people of all kinds. Cause you may never know what they just left.

So I’m going to ask you a question. Have you ever felt rejected, ignored, invisible perhaps? Well like me story shares I definitely have. But what about those of you who have never felt this way or maybe haven’t in a long time, what can you get from this? Well I want to help you to step into someone else’s shoe for a minute and help you better understand what the maybe not so included people are feeling.

The first thing we all need to realize is that people need other people, Christians need other Christians. It’s a simple fact. We are just created by God that. Adam needed a partner in his likeness and so did Eve. How many of you think you could go through the entire time you’ve lived so far not talking to a single other human being. I’m not saying that that is likely to happen but I just want you to imagine what a world without each other would be like. In your best times and worst. Now did you know that at least one person in this room right now probably feels that way? I’m not here to point fingers and say, look at what your not seeing and not doing, but to reveal the heartbreaking truth. And we can’t pretend it’s not real, cause it is. Did you know that suicide is the third most common reason for teen deaths and hundreds of websites tell this and also share that feeling rejected and alone especially in hard time are one of the main reasons teens do it.

The second thing I want to point out is that, we CAN NOT be picky about the people we chose to talk to and befriend. Jesus wasn’t. Even though we are all his children, Jesus knew not everyone he encountered on earth would chose to follow him, and that some of them hated everything he was, yet he showed love and befriended them all. Guys it isn’t easy to do but hard work isn’t EASY, it’s hard. What if we lived in a world where we were all treated by the way people viewed us, on the outside first. Well a lot more people wouldn’t have friends that do today. See there’s the kind of people that are hard to relate to based on the fact that they might have mental problems and that’s always so hard to connect with because they don’t know the difference between a friend and a foe. And then there’s the physical differences. See these I relate to and I must admit I have been bullied but never to the point of some. For sometime I wondered if my old best friend loved anything about ME. Sometimes I just felt like it was because of what I was allowed to do and what I didn’t have to do or if helping me was just to much work for anyone to handle or if they would feel responsible to sit out with me as more of a chore, not that they really wanted to. So there’s all different types of people, the crazy outgoing people and the shy people. Not everyone is going to fit your style of good friend but everyone goes in some category. I personally feel God has brought to my attention that I do exclude people because of the type of person that they are and that I have to stop. So I’m making it a goal of mine to stop having categories for people that I know and instead try my best as a simple human to love everyone no matter who they are.

And the last point, I want to make goes to those of you who feel rejected and left out now. The number one thing I’ve learned is you can’t make friends if your standing in a corner. You’ve got to be willing to do your part. I use to stand around thinking that it was other peoples job to welcome me all the time and that if they were going to be my friend they would have to find me. That’s not the way it works.  We have to be willing to do our part and step out of our corners because we might be the one that ends up making someone else’s day not the other way around. We’ve got to be willing to try.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far in my life is that people want to be loved and included and it’s not always easy to step out of our comfort zones and for some of us maybe it is, but you don’t know where all your friends come from and you don’t know their families and you don’t know their relationship with God. So let’s go with what we do know. We need each other and were created for fellowship every single one of us. The outgoing girl, the quiet guy, and your siblings. All of us want to be loved and excepted.

So the last thing I want to say is this, guys we’ve only got one life so lets give it all we got. The second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself and in this we obey the greatest request that was ever asked of us, to love God with all our hearts and give him ALL the glory. Some people God only brings into our lives once, we only have one chance to make an impact on them. So I’m going to put up a fight. What about you? Thank you!   

 

P.S. I'm glad God lead me to change the topic because I ended up REALLY feeling like that was what everyone in our entire youth group need to hear!=D Thank u Jesus for changing the topic to what it need to be!!=D