One Thing Remains – testimony – (part 1)

One Final Thing
 
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
 
We leave today.  We leave.  Today.  And there was one final thing we needed to know before we left: that the presence of the Lord is the only thing that is non-negotiable, every single day of this race. 
 
I thought I was ready to go, that everything was wrapped up and taken care of.  But we heard a testimony last night so overwhelming, so certain, so liberating, so personal, that through it the Lord revealed to me the last thing I need to leave behind before we go. 
 
And that’s my own story.  My full testimony. 

I grew up, as many do, in a nice traditional family in a nice traditional neighborhood, somehow managing to grow up in a church without ever growing up in an understanding of the Gospel. 
 
My parents bent over backwards trying to provide for my sister and I.  And as I gained momentum in taking advantage of the opportunity this afforded me, I also staunchly grew in my own self-indulgence and independence.  While my childhood memories of my parents are fond ones, a cycle somehow began where I stopped needing my parents to be there for me, and so stopped trusting my parents to be there for me.  And as I grew, the gap between my parents and I grew as well, to the point that I felt like I barely knew my parents and they barely knew me.
 
Family life was stagnating, and I began to think quite highly of myself, investing in my own education and performance.  By the time the end of high school rolled around and I moved into Princeton, church, and any faith that was wrapped up in it, had fallen out of my life almost completely.  The God I had always taken for granted was now being subtly mocked and dismantled by fine sounding arguments and alluring temptations of liberation.  And I fell for it hard. 
 
It wasn’t as if I felt like my faith was in danger at all.  I had almost forgotten what faith even meant, or what it might be for.  It wasn’t as if I was actively rebelling either.  But before I knew it, what started as a harmless drink and a harmless puff turned into a very dangerous dependence that was having me drunk or high the majority of the week, if not all of it. 
 
Let me back up.  For as good as things were going, I hadn’t been happy for a while.  The independence I was so proud of grew in me a cynicism that I’m still shaking off to this day.  High school had been a long struggle of insecurity and depression, which I have since found out can be attributed to the Bipolar Disorder my grandfather almost certainly passed on to me.  This was all coupled with the confusion and estrangement that typically arises when a middle school boy like me suddenly realizes that he’s unquestionably, undeniably attracted to other guys. 
This was something that I took yeeeears to acknowledge, and then spent yeeeears fighting against.  It wasn’t what I wanted, it wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted to live, it wasn’t what I believed to be healthy or attractive, and it was something I absolutely didn’t want anyone to know about for as long as I lived.
 
And then something wonderful happened: I fell in love with an incredible woman.  Her name was Tina Stowick, and up until then she was the best thing that ever happened to me.  We started dating halfway through my junior year, and knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together shortly after.  She graduated a year before I did and we kept dating, never even considering the option of a break up.  And despite my sexual preferences, I was really truly happy with her, and ready to give up what I considered a minor aberration for a chance to grow old with her.
 
As she moved into college and we started dating long distance, we discovered that we were great at it.  We spent the next three years together, steady as a rock while the world changed around us.  She moved to Western and then I got into Princeton and moved out east.  And as I got more involved in my own education and the partying that came with it, she worked her way through law enforcement, then ROTC, then into the Reserves, and then finally became Active Duty.  And I remember the talk we had so vividly, that with the 4 years she had to commit to active duty, the only way we would be able to live together on base was if we were related or married.  And so that was the plan, to marry right out of school, to bounce around bases for 3 years, and then move on with our lives, together. 
 
But of course God had different plans.  2 years ago, I came back from a life-changing summer in India, and Tina from a life-changing summer at a military training camp.  So life changing, that she felt called to commit an entire 20-year career to the military.  I remember the first time we saw each other at the end of that summer, how different things felt.  I knew her better than anybody, and it didn’t take more than a stiff silence and a hesitancy to make eye contact to let me know that something was up.  And when I confronted her about it, she told me point blank, that she thought it was unfair to either of us to commit to each other, when life was clearly pulling us separate ways.  And in the end, I agreed.
 
And it destroyed me.  In a single day I went from having plans to grow old with my best friend to not being able to talk to her at all.  Everything I knew, everything I had held as constant and affirming and an answer had all at once disappeared from beneath my feet.  I went back to school junior year unable to stand it.  After a week of not being able to sleep, my friends finally convinced me to go in for counseling, and I spent that entire semester sinking lower and lower into a self-destructive depression. 
 
I was so bitter.  Sooooo bitter!  I spent almost every night drinking myself unconscious, not remembering most of it, doing damage to almost every friendship I had.  And I finally had the chance to explore, for the first time, my own sexuality.  It was the only thing I had left to pursue, the promise of identity that came at the end of sexual liberation.  I hooked up with girls, I hooked up with guys… anything and everything to feel validated and worthwhile.  For the first time in my life, I was pursuing sexual indulgence the way my body was wired to desire it.  But I found something at the end of this I didn’t expect… and that was emptiness.  The experiences I had that semester were honestly horrible.  The validation I sought to find absolutely in no way existed.  I felt degraded, spent, hollow, hopeless, and lonelier than I have ever felt.  Everything that I had hoped to find answers in was leaving me empty; the liberty I had hoped to find was completely hollow. 
 
And it was in this moment that I ran out of reasons to care.  There was a formal event that December, where it’s customary to dress up real nice and get really drunk.  I don’t remember anything past 7:00 that night.  But my roommate randomly came home early, just to pick something up, and found me on the couch, incoherent and bleeding profusely from both wrists.  I woke up that next morning with only one hint of what had happened, a memory that haunted me like a dream.  This was later confirmed by my roommate, who helped clean me up that night.  I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that brief moment of clarity in an otherwise blackout experience, brought about by an intensity of focus or sharp pain.  But I faintly remember, only for a second, looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom the night before, and being so disgusted with my own reflection that I beat my wrists on the edge of the mirror until I couldn’t feel anything, and the blood was flowing so thickly that I could leave every reflective surface in the bathroom covered so that I didn’t have to look at my own reflection.  I was taken to the hospital and stitched up, with a broken bone in one of the hands.  And I spent the rest of that week confined to the couch with mono and hepatitis, contracted from the confluence of all the drinking and blood loss I had put myself through.
 
I remember that week being the worst week of my entire life.  I had always known I needed to be careful of suicidal thoughts due to the depression and obsession I grew into, and the fact that I had unconsciously made a decision to seriously endanger my own life, that I had let it get that far – it made me sick.
 
I came home for winter break completely numb.  I had nothing left to give.  Nowhere left to turn.  Everything I had turned to for answers had led me to attempt to take my own life, and I was just done.  But thankfully as done as I was, God was only getting started.  

[Continued in part 2]