I have shared with my audience the reality that as a teenager I was bullied.

I didn’t have many friends in my small town. I grew up in a Mennonite town so it was kind of a different growing up experience than what most people endure.

I made friends with girls from other small towns and had a wonderful boyfriend that I dated during the summer.

Yet when I was in school no one would talk to me and if they did talk, it was usually a rude or insulting comment.

There are times I have questioned God as to why he allowed this. The reason why I was bullied was that I had a very serious illness at 11 years old. I had Viral Encephalitis.

As a result of this illness, I had to learn how to walk again and socialization was difficult because my friends dropped me like a hot potato in the pursuit of popularity.

My friends and the town had prayed for a miracle but when God healed me they said I had changed. I thought, “You try spending six weeks in a coma, coming out in a wheelchair and having to learn how to walk again and see if you don’t change.”

I have wondered many times why God allowed that situation to happen. I was a very sweet kid who never bullied anyone so it wasn’t like I had to learn any lessons.

Recently I have been reading through Matthew and I realized Jesus wasn’t welcomed in his hometown either. In Mark 6:4 the Bible says, Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.”

I don’t know that I am honored everywhere else but I do know that God had placed a calling on my life to become a Christian author. I also know that there is no way I could have written a novel that I have just finished if I had stayed in that town.

I think maybe if you are really loved by your family and the town you grow up in you may not be that tempted to reach out to others. You also may not be courageous enough to go out of your comfort zone.

That is the only explanation I can come up with for the vicious bullying I encountered.

So if you are being bullied or have a child who is being bullied. Tell them to hold on, keep pressing forward and someday you will realize that the people you grew up with really don’t matter.