Sowing a Seed in the Sore Spot
By Ari Phillip
I was 15 when I found out, on Valentine’s Day, my first boyfriend was seeing 6 other girls at the same time as he was dating me for almost a year. I had never cried so hard up to that point in my life. It made no sense to me how someone could say they loved you and not mean it. I thought I was experiencing love. A love I felt I had never had. I didn’t realize it at the time but that was the beginning of becoming a very numb person emotionally. I didn’t realize as a teen I was becoming “closed off, building a wall” around my heart.
But over the years I learned that it is wise to quickly forgive people that hurt you, no matter what they did to you, as you can literally make yourself physically sick by holding on to anger, fear and un-forgiveness. It also allows them, to hold power over you which is not healthy for you. And by the way, they don’t know or care that your still hurting. We learn as children from our parents how to handle people that hurt us. But what if you grew up in a home, like I did, where my father shot my mom twice trying to kill her when I was four. While he was in Jail my mom met my step dad when I was 6 and my step dad led a fear filled home with abuse til I was 15. My mom had a lot of healing ahead and couldn’t teach me at the time how to love, what love was, how to forgive or how a woman should be treated. We were in survival mode for many years after all that.
They say that the type of relationship you have with your father is the type of relationship you start out having with God. So if you had a dad, like I did, who said he was coming to get me and didn’t or a step dad that when you didn’t tip toe around him you might be in for a scary night… it took me a long time to look feel like anyone could actually love me. So I didn’t really trust God or look at him like a Father.
I said all that to say that as I have healed and forgiven my Dad, Stepdad, ex boyfriends and friends I decided to volunteer my time and talents to my church and other ministries that work with youth. You can be a one on one mentor by making time with just one youth, through many different organizations, once a month. You can do as I do and be involved with a ministry like www.cmjministries.org that has a once a year amazing, dynamic, youth focused camp that un-plugs 6th – 12th graders just once a year and takes them for 3 nights with no electronics to www.pinesummitcamp.com to do grade and gender specific breakout sessions with pastors, teachers, athletes from around the nation. There is an evening service that focuses on reminding or for the first time helping them remember they are loved by God. We pour love into them and tell them they have a purpose and a destiny and that the things that they have done or things that have been done to them up until this point DONOT define who they are. Only God defines you. I wish someone would have reached out to me and told me I was important, that there was love for me, that I mattered, that I didn’t have to seek vengeance on anyone because God would use what had happened to me to reach out to someone that could relate to me. That is what Sowing a Seed in the Sore Spot is.
My Pastor, Dr. Charles Johnson taught me for the first time, last year, about putting a prayer to every seed you plant. That whenever you sow a seed, that seed needs a purpose and your prayers give it a purpose. A seed of money, a seed of your time, your talents and gifts. He said you tithe at home and sow where you want to go. Well I have gone to a place of genuine healing, joy, love and have hope again. I have peace, forgiveness in my heart because whenever I give my time to something that can give hope to a child it mends my own wounds. I don’t have children yet but because I know that a seed reproduces after its own kind, the seeds of time and prayers I sow into children I don’t know will be reaped by my nieces and nephews in Oregon. I know that protection is there and that when they need doors to open in their lives they will because I Sowed my Seed in my Sore Spot.
ARI PHILLIP





