To live as to live for – It's Me Emily

I wrote this piece for my Women & Religion class final as my mission statement. I definitely used a few familiar bits from this blog as well as some of this story I have told before, but nevertheless, it’s something I’m so proud of that I strung together and figured I’d share the whole thing. Enjoy:)

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O divine master grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen

I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a granddaughter. I am a child of God. I am a student. I am a contributor to my school, my society. I am a voter. I am a Democrat. I am a Catholic. I am a friend. I am a woman. I am a roommate. I am a sorority woman. I am a shoulder to cry on. I am a crier. I am an organizer. I am lost. I am a volunteer. I am an employee. I am a leader. I am an intern. I am wounded. I am strong. I am weird. I am an ESFJ. I am an enneagram type 2. I am a Cancer. I am proud. I am worthy. I am sad. I am happy. I am expressive. I am logistic. I am stuck. I am tired. I am disconnected. I am busy. I am focused. I am white. I am straight. I am angry, frustrated, confused. I am faithful. I am joyous. I am loved and give love. I am a lot of things. I am Emily. And I live as to live for.

In October of 2015, the fall of my senior year of high school, my older brother, Thomas, passed away. After years of struggling with his gender and sexual identity, bipolar depression, and other mental health issues, my brother sadly took his own life. To this day, my brother’s death is the worst thing I, along with my family, have ever experienced. I had never known true sadness and heartbreak until this time. I had never experienced such despair and doubt. I had never felt more in a moment of darkness.

Thomas was truly one of the most authentic people I have known. He was the best person, completely crazy and weird, but the weirdest cool, or the coolest weird person you ever could meet. He was eccentric and wild and truly just did whatever he wanted. He was all about authenticity, individuality, being weird and different, and being whoever you wanted to be. He believed there was no definition of normal so the only thing you truly could be was your individual self. He was incredibly smart. He loved language and travel. He had the biggest heart. He was all about caring, loving, and serving others. He did whatever he could do to help others out, even if it meant he suffered or had to sacrifice himself. He was the best big brother to me and my two younger siblings. He loved us so much and he was incredible. I used to be incredibly judgmental, and a part of the time I still am. I judge people, things, and situations to figure out the next move in my plans. That’s the J of ESFJ. But the J used to take charge and my response to people being different was negative and rude. Thomas was very eccentric, and I judged him for being weird at times. So, he would look at me and say, “Ok, then be weird!”. I used to think nothing more of him saying that at the time. Then, almost a year after his death, I decided to tattoo the words “be weird” on my left wrist in his honor. I’ve used these words as a daily reminder to myself to stay different, judge a little less, and use being weird as a positive rather than a derogatory insult. I have strived to live on and live out his message and put his energy back into the world while he cannot. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always worked for me in my best interests.

I have put a lot of pressure on myself to be a certain someone. Death does things to the people that are left behind. As the individual who has lost someone, it makes you more vulnerable yet more aware. It makes you feel bad and sometimes selfish for complaining about how things are going in your life because you know it could be worse. Then, it makes you a little more annoyed when you see others complain because you have lost someone who doesn’t get a chance anymore. It makes you feel pity for the person who is gone that never gets to do the things you can continue to do as you are alive. Yet, it makes you pity yourself because you have lost someone. It also adds pressure. Since Thomas’ passing, I have felt the need to carry on stronger and better because he does not get to. I tattooed his words onto my body in a sentimental and honorable way, but then sometimes feel the need to live like him more than I am. Every time I judge a situation, I feel a sense of hatred towards my actions because that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing as the loved one who dedicated part of herself to carrying out Thomas’ life. Once I came to college, I added a Women’s & Gender Studies minor because I wanted to learn more about LGBTQ+ rights and fight for individuals in the community like Thomas. I did that for him. Even before that, I received a scholarship from LMU because I wrote an essay about him. I did that to honor him, and I have him to thank. So often in the past five years, I have felt that I need to live for him, and that’s a lot of pressure. Plus, he’s not the only sibling I have to think about.

One of the proudest things I will ever be is a sister. There is something so special about getting to have automatic best friends from the moment you and/or a sibling is born. I was lucky in that I am the second of four and the oldest daughter. I had Thomas to play with the second I came into the world and then got two more siblings to play with—and sometimes boss around—when my younger sister, Allison, and my younger brother, Jonathan were born. I admire my siblings so much. They are some of the smartest, most accomplished, and wonderful people in my life. I could not be prouder to know them and watch them succeed. I aspire to be like them. Yet, I am the oldest. Being one of the oldest siblings, growing up, there was already an instinctive pressure to lead by example and conquer the steps of life for my siblings to follow along. Upon Thomas’ passing, I put even more pressure on myself to be this example as there was no one above me to do it first. I have felt that I need to live for my siblings to be able to follow.

Purpose has also been something I have thought about so much in my life. During my freshman year of high school, I journaled about how I felt I had found my one purpose. It was to entertain. I was a dancer growing up, beginning at the age of 2. Dance was my sport, passion, art, and life. I danced at my studio for 17 years until it closed during the summer of 2017. My best friends who became family were made at my dance studio and my teachers were mentors and second moms to me. I have always been very good at school, but especially during my early years of high school, I only longed to be done with the school day so that I could leave and go to the dance studio. Freshman year of high school I thought I wanted to dance for the rest of my life. I started setting my sights on going to college on the West Coast to get involved with the commercial dance industry that exists out there. Dance was my everything and being able to dance gave me my purpose. Entertaining meant that I could bring a smile to someone’s face which in return would put a smile on mine. That was my being. To bring joy to receive joy. I felt I needed to live for the purpose of giving someone else an unforgettable feeling. Through all these components of my life—dance, my brother, my younger siblings—I have lived my life for others.

Now, I feel as if I’ve made it to the real part of my story—my sophomore year of college. I began this paper with the St. Francis of Assisi Prayer because that’s how my sophomore year of college began. In August of 2017, right before I left to head back to LA for school, a solar eclipse encapsulated the nation. I was lucky enough to be home in Kansas, directly in the path of the total solar eclipse, where we got to experience the moon engulfing the Earth in a shadow as it blocked the sun’s light for approximately 5 minutes. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences of my life. The Sunday before the eclipse, my home church’s priest gave a very beautiful homily in which he referenced the St. Francis of Assisi Prayer with the solar eclipse and some of the world’s current events. In August of 2017, the world was experiencing horrific acts of racism, hatred, supremacy, and violence. My priest quoted St. Francis stating, “Where there is hatred, let me sow love…. where there is doubt, faith…. where there is darkness, light”. That Sunday, he spoke about knowing love and how important it is to acknowledge there is no “them”, there is only “us”. He inspired us all to know and show love and light, to be the difference in the times of darkness. He spoke of how the moon is a reflection of the light of the sun and it shines upon the world’s night skies to light up the dark. We are all reflections of the light of Christ (the Son) meant to shine all across the world and that at times, we are eclipses full of hatred and violence blocking the light but that we can pass on and shine our light again. Where there is despair, let us be the hope. I loved this message and went home to write down the words he spoke of from St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayer in my journal. That prayer was carried with me through my sophomore year in that journal. But the truth is, I never opened it.

Sophomore year, I hit a low in my faith. I was struggling a lot with missing my brother and not having any connection with God. When my brother passed away, I rejected God for a bit, assuming there wasn’t one if something so horrible in my life could happen. But eventually, I found my way back to God and religion through my belief in the afterlife. I came to be at peace with the concept that Thomas was by God’s side in heaven. This caused my faith to be very heavily tied to my relationship with my brother. Sophomore year as I was losing sight of one, I lost sight of the other. No connection to Thomas equaled no connection to God. I felt Thomas slipping away as I finally surpassed him in age and time lived on this Earth that year. I felt God slip away as I could no longer reconcile with the idea that Thomas died not believing in my God, so how on earth could he be at peace in heaven? I was lost, confused, angry, in the dark, in despair, and doubting everything.

I had not been to Thomas’ grave in about a year by May of 2018. I was home for a week between the time we finished finals to the time I left for my Ignacio Companion Trip that I led to Cambodia. During that week, I finally felt compelled to go speak to Thomas. I remember crying and sitting in the cemetery for almost an hour. Right as I was leaving, I decided to do a lap and walk around the full gravesite. My parents had added in a bench to his gravesite within the year and the words they had engraved on the back of the bench made me cry once more. These were the words:

I went home, opened up that journal, and cried reading aloud the St. Francis of Assisi Prayer once more. I then packed my bags and flew off to Cambodia.

My Ignacio Companion Trip to Cambodia changed everything for me. I’ll spare many of the details of the experience, but I will recall the most important days. Cambodia made me rethink the word purpose. I met so many amazing children, educators, and people of God throughout my two weeks in-country who had all come from various backgrounds, religions, cultures, passions, and geographical locations to somehow end up serving their calling at that moment in Phenom Penh, Cambodia. Hearing about their journeys and stories put me in a state of awe with the purposes that had brought them to do the things they were doing. Somehow, someway, by someone, —whether it’s God to you or not—every individual I crossed paths within those two weeks was meant to be there in that moment because my God had purposed it. Purpose was not just a single statement about how I was supposed to be an entertainer for the rest of my life and to make others happy as I once understood it. That was my purpose at the time. Cambodia showed me that purpose can change and grow within each moment and each space. God can purpose many things to happen, many paths to be crossed, and many journeys to be taken. And I think I will trust Him because I’ve had the life-changing pleasure of seeing God.

On May 19, 2018, our IC group went to Angkor Wat, the largest Buddhist temple in the world. I remember immediately walking on the premises of the temple and saying to one of my friends, “I feel him”. To this day, I cannot tell you if I was referring to my brother or God. But she held my hand and cried with me as we walked around exploring the temple. The feelings I experienced that day as I walked around were like fire in my bones. I couldn’t help but think of Thomas. Upon his death, Thomas no longer identified as a Catholic and for a while was an atheist. However, he had begun to explore religion again through Buddhism. Walking around that day, I just felt that he would have loved to have seen Angkor Wat. It’s important for me to also share that leading up to this day, I was at a new all-time low in having faith in myself and feeling hopeful or joyous. I was feeling more darkness, doubt, despair, and disconnect from God than ever. We had the opportunity to climb to the very center, the highest point in the temple. I made the exhausting climb in 100-degree heat to reach the top. Once there, I stood at the balcony of the temple and looked out across the grounds. It was breathtaking. Then, in an indescribable moment, I closed my eyes as a refreshing breeze blew through my sweaty skin and wind-swept tangled hair. When I opened my eyes again, for just a split second, I saw an image of God and Thomas walking side by side down the main path towards me, towards the temple. I got so scared that I closed my eyes again and when I opened them, they were gone. And then, I wept.

At that moment, my faith had been restored. I felt reborn again in the image of God. I felt a peace that I had not felt in forever and, most definitely, not since Thomas had passed. Thomas was walking towards the Buddhist temple he could identify with just as my God was walking towards me. They were doing it side by side, in harmony, in peace. To me, that moment was the ultimate reassurance that Thomas and I, no matter where he is in the afterlife, no matter what religion he believed in, no matter what God I see, and no matter where he and I go next, we will keep on living. For it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Cambodia was the ultimate ending to a very difficult year. But it was the beginning of a whole new life in Christ for me. It was a chance to begin again, and so, I did. I had been working to come to terms with the guilt I had felt in Thomas’ death and the pressure of living for his life. I had struggled with being the example my siblings could look to and making life decisions that were for them to strive and live for. I was thinking about career paths that would work towards a better life for someone else. Cambodia pushed me to be in the moment and just live so that I could be at peace. Since then, I have been working in becoming, leading, worshiping, and continuously searching within my faith, my family, and my purpose. This past year, through a conversation with one of my favorite campus ministers at LMU, I came to find the message I’ve always wanted. I live as I live for. I want to make a life for me. I want to make decisions on my own terms. I want to believe in a God who fulfills and satisfies me. I want to pursue a career in public relations because I like social media and, I want to ultimately become a mother who can serve her children and her family. But I never want to forget to live for a goal, a purpose, and a person who meant the absolute world to me. I cannot forget that Thomas’ life got me a scholarship at LMU, a new minor in my studies, and even a first tattoo on my left wrist. I cannot forget that my siblings, whether they say it or not, have me to forge the path for them in certain steps of life. I cannot ignore that I am a type 2 on the enneagram scale who wants to do things for other people so they can become better individuals or have better lives. I just have to remember that the other side to be a type 2 is that to stay motivated, I need to live life for myself a little too. I need to be affirmed that I am doing a good job and that life will go on living even if I take a minute for myself. I can be the opposite of what I have thought I was to be at times. Thomas for sure was. He was weird when others chose normal. He was joyful when others were sad. I strive for light where there is darkness. I search for faith where there is doubt. I can be both. I am loved by so many as I love so many. And I live as to live for so that I may too one day, in my death, be born to eternal life.