Hey guys, this is my first post so I want to share with you my story, if you have the time. I would like to start out with my childhood, I was born into a Christian home in Austin, Texas. But, I moved to Fort Worth when I was one year old, and started attending Christ Chapel. I was always the funny kid that could make anyone laugh, but I was not much of a rule follower. At 3 years old, I accepted Christ into my heart, but I really had no idea what that meant. When I was 6 years old, my mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, this was very hard on me because my stable life became unsettled. And then, the following year was filled with extremely difficult memories, that will forever haunt me. This resulted in my parents getting a divorce.
When I started middle school everything changed for me, I started hanging out with people I wasn’t supposed to, and started making the wrong decisions. But, the dumbest decisions I have ever made were freshman and sophomore year of high school. At the tender age of 15, I was getting into drugs, drinking, and partying. This downward spiral continued through out my sophomore year, with prescription drug abuse and extreme alcohol abuse. All of this resulted in me having to withdraw from my high school and enroll in an outpatient rehabilitation center for the rest of my sophomore year. This experience was very eye opening for me because I got to see many different people from many different walks of life. During my time there I began to have bad anxiety and depression, this resulted in me feeling very sad and low all the time. After I left the center, I never used those drugs ever again, and I thank God for that. But, a few months after, I began drinking and partying like I used to. This continued throughout my junior year. I used to justify my drinking by thinking ,” at least I’m not doing drugs”. But, throughout my junior year I found my self drinking constantly, on week days as well as on weekends. I also used to drive drunk constantly. A few weeks into the summer of 2015, I knew I needed to make a change in my life,but I didn’t know how.
A few weeks before that day, I signed up to go on a mission trip to El Salvador with the high school ministry at my church. Honestly, the only reason I signed up was because my friends were going. So, during one of the meetings before we left on the trip, the pastor (Micheal Burr) asked us to practice sharing our testimonies because we were going to share them with the children in El Salvador. I had never shared my testimony before, I didn’t even think I had one, but I decided to try it anyways. One of the leaders in the high school ministry (Graham McMillan) took me to the side and I stated sharing my story with him, but when I got to the end I realized my testimony wasn’t over. I realized I never truly put my faith in Jesus Christ, and so right there on the spot, I prayed for God to take over in my life. Right after that prayer I felt my burdens lifted from my shoulders and I truly gave God my life. At that moment I knew God wanted me to be his disciple. Since that day I have been all in for God, He’s the bomb.
