My name is Dave Huizing, Word of Life Local Church Missionary to Long Island, New York City, and Northern New Jersey. My beautiful wife, Kate, and I have been married for almost thirty years and have five great children (Josh, Chelsea, Jill (married to Jeremy), Abbianne, and Shauna).
Our passion is to reach the youth in our area with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Childrens' and Youth ministry partnerships with local churches.
Cell Phone: (631)807-0308
E-Mail us: dhuizing@wol.org
401 N Howell Ave., Riverhead, NY, 11901
Alexis Pilkington was West Islip High School's shining star on their soccer team. She was looking forward to going to college on a soccer scholarship. Everything in her young life seemed to be going well.
Last Sunday morning, March 21, 2010, Alexis Pilkington took her life, leaving her family and friends devastated by the loss. Why would this young girl with a such a promising future determine that life wasn't worth living anymore? The answer, it seems, was on her computer. Alexis was a member of a new social networking site called Formspring.me. The site is similar to other social networking sites in that people can post comments and leave messages for you and you can respond. the huge difference is that every message is anonymous, giving the writer the freedom to write anything without fear of being found out by the recipient. In this case, many of the comments left for Alexis were threatening and downright mean-spirited, full of personal and slanderous attacks on her character. Alexis was a victim of cyberbullying.
It used to be that bullying was left to school playgrounds and locker rooms by thugs who wanted to hustle you out of your lunch money or make fun of you because you got better grades than them. Everyone knew who the bullies were and stayed away from them. Your parents and other adults told you to ignore them and they would leave you alone. Of course if the bullies learned you snitched on them, life as you knew it would be over. With cyberbullying the dynamics are similar, with one major exception: many times you don't know who is bullying you. This was the case for Alexis. She was confronted daily with taunts from faceless, nameless bullies, whose only purpose it seems, was to make her life miserable. they didn't use fists to beat her down; they used words, that cut deep into her heart and broke her spirit. Desperate and feeling alone, instead of turning to her parents for help, she took the ultimate escape.
I am once again reminded of the power of words. As the title of this blog indicates, words do sometimes kill. Alexis Pilkington is a sad example of that. God's Word, in Proverbs 18:21, says," Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And those who love it will eat its fruit." What we say and how we say it influences and impacts our hearers, either edifying ot destroying them. How much more so the words we write?
As parents and youth leaders we must carefully weigh our words before we speak and challenge our students to do the same. They need to udnerstand that what they say-and write-can literally be the difference between life and death, as was the case with Alexis. The saddest part about her case is that even afte news of her suicide and what drove her to it, the cyberbullying continues, even today, on a Facebook page created as a memorial to her.
I am not sure where Alexis stood spiritually. I pray she had opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel. I know there are hundreds of students like Alexis Pilkingtons all around me and infront of me whenever I log on to Facebook; many of them are dealing with challenges much like hers. If you're in youth ministry, they are all around you too. I end with this prayer for all of us, written by Christian musician Brandon Heath:
"Give me your eyes for just one second, give me your eyes so I can see, everything that I keep missing, give me your love for humanity, give me your arms for the broken hearted, the ones that are far beyond my reach, give me your heart for the ones forgotten, give me your eyes so I can see" Lord, give us your eyes to see and the words of life to this generation.
What God is Doing...
 |
"When my daughter, Katelyn, was in Kindergarten there was a little boy in the same class that wasn't very nice to her. He always picked on her. Around the same time, she received her very first WOL quiet time journal. Whenever she came to a question where she would have to write down someone's name to pray for, she'd always write down this boy's name. It took a couple of years, but he started coming to [Olympians] Club. That first year he really worked hard, and he received a bronze medal. He was so proud of his accomplishment, that he wore it to the Spring program at school that night. There he stood...standing a little taller and beaming from ear-to-ear. I will never forget how God worked in this boy's heart." |
 |
|||||
"I believe it is the responsibility of every generation to reach their generation for Christ" - Jack Wyrtzen
Copyright ©2012 Word of Life Fellowship, Inc. All rights reserved.