Hey guys! So I don’t know if any of you all have ever heard of an organization called To Write Love on Her Arms, if not I highly recommend visiting TWLOHA.com. I really support this group. It basically brings awareness about self injury, drug abuse, and suicide in teens and gives hope to all those teens who partake in those actions.

It all started with the story of a girl named Renee who was rescued and saved by the love of a group of people from her church. The story is on the web site but I will just copy and past it here but don't let that stop you all from visiting the website. Also, read to the end because my favor is at the way bottom.

The Story of TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

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."

I 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 church, 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.

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.

So yeah here is where my favor comes in. Beginning tomorrow Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 6:00am everyone is invited to write LOVE on their arms through Saturday May 31, 2008 at 9:00pm in honor of the 18 out of 274,000 teens who kill themselves, the 1 in 5 teens who consider (think) suicide, the 1 in 6 who made plans, the 1 in 12 who had attempted suicide, and the 8 out of 10 who ask for help before they commit suicide

The point of this organization is to let people know that people hurt and when it gets to the point where they are so low that the need a life line people are there to help them.

THE PAINS NEEDS TO END NOW.

So come on everyone. Write LOVE on your arms!!!

[x_BabyG_x]

((((Court_knee))))... Love is the movement...

I've been a huge supporter of TWLOHA for some time now, they are great, the story of Reene is absolutely amazing and so inspiring and as soon as my first wage comes in Im ordering a t-shirt!

babyg xXx

p.s - the TWLOHA logo is also my wallpaper for my laptop and phone yeeahhhh x

i have two shirts and a braclet babyg!
oh and i also have the bag that says love is the movement
i think it is so cool that you support them too!
my mom thinks its sort of stupid.
LOVE IS THE MOVEMENT is my myspace logo
so are you going to write love on your arm tomorrow?

[x_BabyG_x]

Of course - and as if you have all that stuff - jealous!

I shall also take a piccie and put it on here lol. If your on facebook aswell, theres a TWLOHA group on there, I got my boyfriend and everyone to join it just because

babyg xXx

lol it was my moms credit card lol she was like why does it say that? i was like ummm its a band.

but yeah i'm on face book =] i will have to look into that

post script: you should add me to your facebook friends

[x_BabyG_x]

But then you wil discover the real me, mwahhahahaaa!!! hehe

I shall pm you

babyg xXx

oh no!
the real you!
that sounds... scary.

jay kay

[x_BabyG_x]

Im not that scary honest hehe x

lol okay well i will have to go see your face book and get back to you on that lol

[(JD)]

Is this a National movement, for this next week?

[Kiya]

OK. will. I even have special tatoo pens for kids that are non toxic =) the idea being that i will use these instead of SI and it has worked a time or two. And for the recod, cuz i feel like tooting my own horn, i've not SIed in 46 days. come close enough, but still "sober".
kiya

yes lol its national i didnt jsut make it up

and wow thats fantastic!!!! 46 days is amazing its only been 4 days for me.

doing it!

[BalishBun]

I love the name of that group!

thanks rain!!!!

you guys are amazing!

so who wrote love on their arms so far?

[Clandestine]

I support TWLOHA too since January of this year. ;]

<font color="purple">Clandestine</font>

coool.

it didnt seem like many people here cared about it but idk. i wrote it all week.