To Write Love On Her Arms

To Write Love On Her Arms, or TWLOHA, is a movement that began a couple years back when a man named Jamie met a girl named Renee.

Below, I will post the video and the stories.
I'll give you as much information as I can in the hopes that you will read it, it will touch you, and you'll pass this information along. Email it. Post it on Facebook. Myspace. Text it. Go up to random people and read it to them. It doesn't matter what you do.
TWLOHA is a non-profit REAL DEAL and has saved thousands of lives.

To send out the message and do as little as touch one heart, is the most that any of us, especially Renee, could has for.
If one person could be affected, that's amazing enough.
So far mulitply that 1 by 80 THOUSAND who's lives were literally saved.
Mulitply those 80,000 by those who use TWLOHA as an every day reminder about why life is beautiful.
Mulitply that number by those who support it just because in some way it touched their lives, saved a friend, spoke to them, or made them cry.
Rescue IS possible.

What I'm doing right now is everything I can to get it out even further.
A few of us have emailed David on the matter, as well.
We know that if we can get DAVID COOK in on the movement, more lives will be saved. His fans, YOU and I, follow his lead. We're convinced that if David wears so much as a wrist band, fans will see that, fans who may be suffering. And their lives, too, can be saved.
David is in the bigtime, clearly. However, we know how much his fans mean to him.
Anything we can do, we're going for because anything that can save a life is worth a try.
I strongly believe that if David stood behind this, it would save so many more.
Switchfoot, Hawthorne Heights, Behind the Trees, Fall Out Boy, Paramore and many others are supporters, too.

I believe that if Renee is alive and well today, anybody can be.
Jamie and friends pulled her out of the darkest depths and they are all ready to use her story and her writing to continue this movement.
We are not alone in this world.
Renee is living proof.

Please read for yourself and read the story that has saved my life, as well as many others.

I use it as an everyday reminder that my story is not over and that I need to make the most of my life.
Had I not taken that chance, I never would have met David. I know that for sure.
I also use it so that when I hit my low points I am reminded of the things I may sometimes forget. I am loved and will eternally be loved. As are you.



This is the link to the site:
http://www.twloha.com/page.php?id=6

Here is what Jamie has had to say:

MISSION STATEMENT:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

VISION:


The vision is that we actually believe these things…


You were created to love and be loved. You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known. You need to know that your story is important and that you're part of a bigger story. You need to know that your life matters.

We live in a difficult world, a broken world. My friend Byron is very smart - he says that life is hard for most people most of the time. We believe that everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments. You need to know that you're not alone in the places you feel stuck.

We all wake to the human condition. We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss. Millions of people live with problems of pain. Millions of homes are filled with questions – moments and seasons and cycles that come as thieves and aim to stay. We know that pain is very real. It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real.

You need to know that rescue is possible, that freedom is possible, that God is still in the business of redemption. We're seeing it happen. We're seeing lives change as people get the help they need. People sitting across from a counselor for the first time. People stepping into treatment. In desperate moments, people calling a suicide hotline. We know that the first step to recovery is the hardest to take. We want to say here that it's worth it, that your life is worth fighting for, that it's possible to change.

Beyond treatment, we believe that community is essential, that people need other people, that we were never meant to do life alone.

The vision is that community and hope and help would replace secrets and silence.

The vision is people putting down guns and blades and bottles.

The vision is that we can reduce the suicide rate in America and around the world.

The vision is that we would learn what it means to love our friends, and that we would love ourselves enough to get the help we need.

The vision is better endings. The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships. The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love. The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise. The vision is people becoming incredible parents, people breaking cycles, making change.

The vision is the possibility that your best days are ahead.

The vision is the possibility that we're more loved than we'll ever know.

The vision is hope, and hope is real.


You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.



BEGIN:
This began as an attempt to tell a story and a way to help a friend in Spring 2006. The story and the life it represented were both things of contrast – pain and hope, addiction and sobriety, regret and the possibility of freedom. The story’s title “To Write Love on Her Arms” was also a goal, believing that a better life was possible. We started selling t-shirts as a way to pay for our friend’s treatment, and we made a MySpace page to give the whole thing a home. Our friends in Switchfoot and Anberlin were among the first to wear these shirts. In the days that followed, we learned quickly that the story we were telling represented people everywhere. We began to hear from people in need of help, and others asking what they could do to help their friends. We heard from people who had lost loved ones to suicide. Many said that these were questions they had never asked and parts of their story that they had never shared. Others were honest in a different way, confessing these were issues they knew little or nothing about. It seemed we had stumbled upon a bigger story, and a conversation that needed to be had.

Over the last two and a half years, we’ve responded to 80,000 messages from people in 40 different countries. We’ve had the opportunity to bring this conversation, and a message of hope and help, to concerts, universities, festivals and churches. We’ve learned that these are not American issues, not white issues or “emo” issues. These are issues of humanity, problems of pain that affect millions of people around the world.

We’ve learned that two out of three people who struggle with depression never seek help, and that untreated depression is the leading cause of suicide. In America alone, it’s estimated that 19 million people live with depression, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death among those 18-24 years old.


The good news is that depression is very treatable, that a very real hope exists in the face of these issues. We’ve met people who are getting the help they need, sitting across from a counselor for the first time, stepping into treatment, or reaching out to a suicide hotline in a desperate moment.

To Write Love On Her Arms
Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "**** UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her c hurch, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes

more
Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.


Renee does ask you to remember now.
She wrote a book. It's available on the site's store.
It's a collection of her journal pages. She shares the past feelings she had to tell her story.
It takes an incredibly strong woman for that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHaFrS3TE04[/youtube]

They also work with Invisible Children.
But that's a story for another time.

Youtube Vids Are Up And Running!

I know they're late, but my computer finally let me on and all that jazz.

http://www.youtube.com/user/lindseysparrow

There's my channel.

Number numbers.

So I leave for a few days and I come back to a zillion threads for David numbers!!

This gave me an idea. Are you obsessed with getting numbers?
Get your David's Number Number here! lol.

I'm following the trend.

How do I have -2 messages?!

That's right.
According to my inbox I have -2 messages.
That's right. NEGATIVE 2.

My friend Kim.

So one of my closest friends, Kim, has been gone ALL summer long. And I was totally saddened by this because we didn't get to hang out! NOT ONCE!
She's now a junior in high school. I'm a freshman in college.
Damn. We're getting old. Anyway.
I decided to give her a ring today and catch up. Believe me. We NEED to catch up. Haha.
Anyway, she was telling me all about work and how my old job has changed so much since the two of us left (I quit and she went on a trip).
Anywho. All of a sudden she says, "So what's this I hear about meeting David Cook and being on the news?"
BAHAHA! Apparently a TON of people at my old job and at my old school know about it.
I thought that was really cool.
So I told her as much as I could about it and promised she'd hear more soon because my phone was dying and I'd love to hang out with her and show her pictures.
The whole time she was telling me she hated me (lovingly of course) and I was laughing so hard because had she not gone to Texas I would have taken her with me to meet him.
She was actually the first person I thought of taking.
I'm sad she didn't get to come along.
She's an Archie, MJ and David fan, so I need to introduce her to this site and Mavid. Lol. I can't wait to share everything with her when we have more time.
I'm totally stoked. She's a HUGE AI fan (and I really think she should audition) and she LOOOVES David. I've gotta get her all of his music and soem of MJ's.
She's gonna die.
I felt bad though because she was really sad that she was out of town when this all happened. And until today I had no way of getting a hold of her to tell her! GAHHH!!

I love her. Hopefully I can get her cookified and all for bromance asap.

Who am I kidding? I know I will.