Final Friday Night Service

Sermonette on Resilience

by Sam Rae

For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to be a shield and not a sword. Someone who protects, who stands firm, who’s reliable. A person others can turn to when the world gets a little too loud or too heavy.

I think about moments like when my best friend Joshua broke his leg on the monkey bars when we were 10 years old. I carried him the whole 15 minutes it took to walk from the park to his house. Or on my 13th birthday, when our school was running a fundraiser. Everyone else left early, but I stayed behind to help pack up, even though it meant missing out on my birthday plans.

Being a shield, sometimes, means you get worn down. And sometimes, it means you break a little. I learned this during the pandemic in 2020; the world stopped. As a 14 going on 15-year-old, I was still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be.

When you’re young, everything about who you are can feel muddled, like a puzzle with pieces that don’t quite fit yet. Before COVID, I was confident, loud, unapologetic, and surrounded by friends. The kind of kid who caused mischief in department stores and ran from security guards just for fun. I was carefree. Happy. And most importantly, I felt safe in myself.

When the lockdowns happened, that version of me disappeared. It felt like the world hit ‘pause,’ but only for me. Everyone else seemed to grow up and move forward to find their place, but I felt stuck. And when school reopened, things got worse. I found out I had hypothyroidism, a condition that messes with your metabolism. My body wasn’t making enough hormones, so I gained weight fast. My hair also thinned so much that I had bald spots.

Returning to school meant returning to the cruel words of my classmates. They pointed out everything I was already painfully aware of: the bald spots, the weight gain. “You’re bald.” “You’re fat.” “You’re queer.” They’d say it repeatedly, like it was a joke. But it was never funny.

I became a shell of who I was. Quiet. Withdrawn. I’d sit at my window and stare at the moon, its craters and shadows, and wonder why the world found that beautiful, but not me. Why could the moon be imperfect, while my imperfections made me a target?

Eventually, I took a break from school. I told myself this would be the time I fixed all the things people didn’t like about me. So, I changed. I started eating only high-fiber foods to try to control my weight. I skipped meals. I used caffeine shampoos to get my hair to grow back. I stopped talking and started observing. I became quiet, and fragile.

Camp instilled in me to ‘do the right thing for the right reasons.’ But what I was doing was the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I was hurting myself to make other people comfortable. People who wouldn’t have looked my way even if I disappeared entirely. I lost my friends. I became so sick I couldn’t even return to school when I wanted to.

However, in that time, it gave me something I hadn’t had before: a chance to help myself, slowly and with purpose. I could choose which pieces I’d use when it came to rebuilding.

It wasn’t until my school counsellor came to visit me at home that I realised I was following the wrong path. In a way, it was like he pulled me out of the alternate reality I’d been living in. One where I believed that if I changed enough, I’d finally be worth something. He told me that I was throwing away the best parts of myself in exchange for things that were never flaws to begin with, or just didn’t matter as much as I thought they did. Our conversation stuck with me. Nobody had shown up for me in that way before. It made me realise that our bodies aren’t permanent; they change, they age, they heal, and ultimately, they grow. But the way we treat others and the kindness we show is what actually lasts.

When I returned to school in the autumn, I worked hard. I earned straight As and got into the top university in my city. More than that, I started to feel like myself again. Last summer, I made the decision to come to camp. That was the moment I finally felt free. I wore what I wanted. I dyed my hair. I stopped hiding. No one judged me for it; they welcomed me.

I didn’t have to hold my shield alone anymore. I was surrounded by other people with shields too, people who raised theirs to protect each other. It made all the difference.

Being resilient isn’t about never falling. It’s about how many times you get back up. It’s about rebuilding after the break, it’s about choosing kindness even when the world is cruel. And it’s about being a shield for yourself, and for others.

If you ever feel like you’ve lost yourself, or that your imperfections are too big to carry, look up at the sky and remember that if the moon is still beautiful, with its imperfections, so are you.

Thank you.