My name is Ethan Pugh, I’m 18 years old, and I am a senior at Carmel Christian School. To know a little bit about me, I am a follower of Christ and a musician- I absolutely love using my talents in worship. I love to adventure. I have a deep passion for the gospel of Jesus and teaching the Word of God.
This Blog is a small summary about my story and how the Lord came into my life.
To give you a picture for how I met the Lord, I want to take you back to my 8th grade year. For me, God was always apart of my life. I was raised up with two loving parents who knew God and devoted their life to serving Him. But throughout it all, I was merely adopting their relationship with God and thinking that was okay.
My life as an 8th grader was going well- I was starting my first year in a real school setting (home schooled up until this year), and I was getting to know a few people in my class. Months into school, I would raise my hand in Bible class, asking for a prayer request. I would share that my father was having a brain surgery and he needed prayer as he was in the hospital. I remember seeing him walk outside my front door, thinking he would be back soon and not even realizing the possibility that he would never come home.
On November 10th, 2010, my father began his surgery. His reasoning for getting the surgery was to extract a part of his brain that was causing epileptic seizures his whole life. The surgery went very well and the doctors were confident in a speedy recovery. A few days after the surgery, something was not normal with my Dad. After many doctors searched for what was wrong with my Dad, they finally found that he had acquired spinal meningitis in the surgery. This ran throughout his spinal fluid and into his brain, greatly debilitating his nervous system.
I spent that year in a daze. My mom was always with my Dad at the hospital, and my brothers were always gone or busy with school it seemed like. I remember one day I was in my social studies class and my principal took me out telling me that my dad had a seizure while in ICU, after the surgery, or the doctors thought he had a stroke. I spent Christmas day in ICU that year, seeing my dad hooked up to wires and monitors. He looked like he was lifeless, staring at the wall, not even knowing my name.
And for me, as an 8th grader at home not really knowing whats going on, spent my time alone at the house. I spent my days struggling in school, thinking about my dad. I didn’t read my bible often, and I didn’t know what it meant to seek God, or to know God. So, to summarize the next 2 years of my life (8th-9th grade), I guess you can say I was angry with God. I would find my self saying, “Why Lord, have you taken away my father and hurt my mother and family so deeply?”. I guess you can say I rebelled against God. I doubted His existence, and whenever someone talked about God I would shut it out. Yet I still had a deep hole in my soul, longing for something to satisfy. I sought fulfillment in anything I could find. Being well liked, pleasures of the World- but it never fully satisfied me.
The summer of my 10th grade year was the time I say the Lord truly brought me down. It was much like He brought me out to the deepest darkest place of the wilderness, where He met me. After 2 years of pushing aside the pain and hurt from my Dad’s situation, it finally hit me. Wow, my dad may never be the same- How do I deal with that? I mean really, it is a surreal feeling once you realize this, because it was like I went fishing with your dad just 2 weeks ago. The reality sank in finally, and it tore me up inside. I would find myself weeping, so broken over the revelation that my Dad wasn’t there anymore. I looked at my bible on my desk, picked it up for the first time in years, and read what ever I found. I got lost in the Book of Numbers, spent some time in Genesis, but I finally came across one book I had never read before, James. One of the very first verses I read, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
I broke down. It was like I asked a question and it was answered in the text. I reread it over and over. “What does it mean to have pure joy admist suffering?” I thought, “That’s like a contradiction within itself.” To summarize that summer, It was a time the Lord truly brought me down to let me realize one truth. That He was leading me out in the wilderness by the kindness of His heart so that I could know God, and that I could share His holiness with Him. What an amazing picture of a loving heavenly Father. It was the picture of a Fatherly Discipline I had never realized. Realizing that I had rebelled against God, whom created me, died for me, spilt His blood to unchain the bondage of death. I was so convicted. I had turned away from Him and by the loving eyes of the Father he chose me, brought me out, and because He loved me brought me into a place where my eyes could be opened to see the reality of my heart. I was broken, in need of a savior- loving Jesus. But through pain and suffering, He restored my heart and gave me a new name.
So, here I am today. Humbled and restored by the grace of God, through such a dark time. When people tell me, “there is no good in your dad’s experience”, I immediately stop them and say, “The Lord used it. Because of my dad’s experience, I am walking with the Lord in a genuine way. My Dad resides at Sardis Oak Nursing Home this day, and I am amazed at the strength he has had throughout a time of physical pain and suffering.
Through all and all, the last years of my high school years have been a time where the Lord has taught me so many things. Teaching me what it means to be fully satisfied in the presence of God, how I can have total dependence on Him, and the power of Jesus and the need to share the gospel in this world. I stand here today, seeing how the Lord faithfully preserved me and kept me in His care, even when I didn’t feel it. I see His great love for me, His overwhelming glory, and through that, I have a desire to share this same gospel and this same salvation story with others. I pray that the Lord would give me a life that desires His will rather than mine, and that He would give me a zealous fire for the spread and teaching of His gospel.
My hope is that the Lord would put people in my life to partner in supporting me for this journey that comes before me.
Ethan Pugh
