I start at Green River CC on the 20th.

It's going to be tough. Not just because I will be getting no rest, either. Because I'm going to be with real-world people now. Not my carefully selected People. Not even the normal lazy-Christian crowd I'd find at church or most homeschool events. 

These are real people. They don't think like me, they don't dress like me, and they don't talk like me. They don't believe what I believe. They probably don't listen to George Gershwin and Wynton Marsalis in their rooms when they study. They don’t use large words (or medium-sized words, generally speaking).

The girls dress with a purpose in mind that is directly opposite my own purpose. They flirt and touch and laugh too loud and sometimes curse.

I’m not writing about this to point out the sins of the world. It’s more to point out my own sin.

And that is that I very, very easily bend to peer pressure when there isn’t any close friend nearby to keep me grounded. I seem like an odd one, I know. I look a lot like someone who doesn’t care what they think of me. But none of you who know me have seen me when there’s no anchor around.

I’m an actress. I have power to… convince. I can study habit and pattern, learn to imitate it. I can talk like them, learn their language. I can research. If it feels like a survival technique, I will exhert tremendous effort in hopes of being accepted.

I become not myself.

My priorities skew. I can be a glutton for attention, and I will work toward making people give it to me. I can capture male attention if I really try. And that seems to be what I gravitate towards when there’s no one of Importance around to latch onto. I veer away from female friendships because to me, they’re poison. And normal guys are much, much different than the young men I’m real friends with. They think on a rather different plain. I’m sure it’s possible to become “just friends” with a “normal” teenage guy… but they still flirt. And I am far too good at flirting back. Let us not go into details, here…. Suffice it to say I have not always stood as morally firm as I do now. I stay away from that old part of my being like it’s radioactive most of the time, because I understand its danger. I understand how much it can ruin. But under pressure, out in the real world, it’s so very hard not to do what I know will make then accept me. It doesn’t even have to be drastic or terribly noticeable – it’s the little things that seed all sorts of relapses in the rest of my life.

I know I can slip into that again just as easily as I can chop my hair short (like I did the other day. >.< I almost regret it…)

So I need two things from you guys.

One – prayer, and LOTS of it.  I am far weaker than you think me. But prayer has changed my life so much in the past year… I need it to keep coming and blessing me, because without it and without Him I am completely defenseless.

Two – Major accountability. Watch me, listen to me, make sure I’m staying Brenna. The Brenna who’s been around lately, the one who has her priorities mostly in line with God’s priorities (or at least tries). The Brenna who tries to respect the minds and hearts of the guys around her. The Brenna who believes that “it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good rather than doing evil.” (1 Peter 3:17)

I love you all.

Here’s to the survival of Truth.

-=Brenna=-