"I wanna look like love. Be more than just enough. For the hearts that are broken, coming undone."

Moving to a new place can be scary. Away from your friends, your family, and all that's familiar to you. I've been in Orlando for just over a year now. I'm finally starting to build a life for myself. I'm building new relationships. Starting over. Finding out who I am. It hasn't been easy though.

I've watched my colleagues who started around the same time I did build lifelong relationships with their full heart.  Just last week I took one of my friends to the airport so she could return home after being down here for just one week. Just in that one week she poured her heart into the people she met. And here I am, reluctant to dive into relationships with my full heart. I've discovered that my security walls are thicker than I thought they were. And have been up long before I even noticed that I put up walls. I am very cautious and very guarded when jumping into relationships. I only let you see what I want you to see. I keep you on the surface. In the year that I've been down here I've tried to work on stripping those walls down completely. I'm finding it's not that easy. 

My best friend of 14 years calls my walls my "security blanket". I never knew she even noticed my walls until here just recently. I never even noticed that I kept people at a distance until I was in college, just 5 years ago. And my coworkers can see them too. They don't understand why they're there. But they see them. These walls are not healthy, they're a hindrance. Is it really possible to permanently strip them away? To strip them away without rebuilding them every time somebody hurts me? 

How do I build this life? How do I pour my heart into relationships without the fear of rejection, criticism, or any other pain causing emotion? 

Depression is real folks. How you treat people shapes who they become. The words you say linger in their minds for years to come.

"You will be hated by all nations because of Me."

I work for a company with a union heavy environment. I am not a member of any union, nor do I have any desire to be a part of a union. Here recently I put a status on FB as to why I don't like unions. Two of my coworkers, both supporters of unions, commented as to why they thought unions were good. One of them said that unions protect people from being persecuted. This got me to thinking.

I'm already persecuted every day. It's 2014, where more and more things in our country are changing. I am a 27 year old pro life, God-fearing, heterosexual conservative. I live according to God's Word and try to do His will. I'm persecuted every day for this. In a time where cohabitation with your significant other but not your spouse is okay, where atheists and homosexuals are trying to take our rights away just so they can have rights of their own, where sex before marriage is normal.

Of course I'm persecuted for this. I am today's minority. I struggle with this every day. In a company with more than 75,000 employees it's hard to find ones to build spiritual community with. I hear the way my coworkers mock God and Christianity. In a time in my life where I should be ready to stop being so guarded and let my walls down to others around me, I can't.

I can't let my walls down. I can't tell them what God's doing in my life. I can't tell them how I can hear God's voice and feel His presence constantly around me. I can't tell them how He gives me the strength and patience to get through the long days and to handle the grumpy guests. I can't tell them anything about who I am because that's all silly nonsense to them. They can't understand any of that. They think it's all a joke.