My story (disclaimer it’s super long but I wanted to be genuine with my words)
When I was around six the first thing that shook my world, my parents divorce, happened and I didn’t have God in my life. I truly didn’t have him until this past summer but I’ll get to that later on.
I was growing up without a real honest relationship with God so when my sister left for college and my parents got divorced and my mom moved me down here to Georgia without my family I started to distance myself from my mom already… and I was 6. My dad also promised me he would move down here and I clearly remember the day I realized that wasn’t going to happen because it was the first time someone had ever broken my heart.
From then on my mom and I stayed in Georgia where a few years later she got a boyfriend and he quickly became my best friend and taught me how to drive stick and play Texas hold ‘em and basically just be that father figure that I desperately wanted. One day my mom had to call 911 because he had overdosed.. long story short he was an retired marine who got addicted to pain killers because of some things that happened over seas. With the circumstances we were in my mom lost her job and she was paying for some expenses for him because he had permanent tremors from when he overdosed. We then had to move and I had to switch schools in the middle of 7th grade and I started to get bullied for no reason at all other then the fact that I was new. I quickly became depressed and suicidal because of everything going on. I was so young I had no idea how to live with the hurt and I didn’t know God like I do now so I felt completely alone. It eventually came to a point where I would come home crying everyday because I would come from one bad situation to another, that’s when I attempted to end my life. That was by far the most heart wrenching moment of my life and the only thing that made me not do it was a bible verse from 1 Timothy 4:12 that I had hanging on my wall. I had this feeling that there was more to live for and that I wouldn’t feel alone forever.
Sadly his addiction was strong and he ended up passing away and I just buried that pain deep inside of myself.
Fast forward to second semester of junior year I was only going to church for the social aspect and had basically put on an act since he died. I never really gave myself time to grieve because I hid my feelings and with the constant resentment I felt towards my mom I was surprised I wasn’t depressed like I was. That is until my best friends dad passed away. This wasn’t like how it normally is like his daughters were the first real friends I had ever made and to this day we are still friends and it’s been 10 years now. Their dad was someone I looked up to, he made me feel loved like he would his own daughters. I remember when he would kiss me on the forehead and tell me goodnight and tuck me in whenever I would sleep over. Or when he would constantly say that I was the adopted child and he would tell the waitress that when we would go out for dinner. When he passed away so unexpectedly it just let out all the feelings I had repressed. I started to drink and smoke and completely forget that there was a God. I didnt care about anything and I lived like this for 6 months. Constant partying, not caring about myself, trying to numb the pain because I was too upset with God for taking these two who meant so much to me away.
Something awesome happened before this though, my friend convinced me to sign up for a mission trip to Costa Rica… little did I know this would change my life. It was like God was just waiting there for me. He made me feel loved again after that trip. I opened up to all of the 74 people on that trip about my struggles and I had never felt love like that before. And then the best part is that when I opened up so did a lot of other people and I was thinking to myself there’s no way there is not a God. Like if an ordinary person like me can have that effect then there has to be a larger reason… which is God. I also meet this little boy Ian at the school I was helping and he had the purest love and the brightest smile and I was just amazed. I realized that God is with me no matter what and that he didn’t promise that things were going to be easy but that the reward was something greater then I could even imagine.
Next year I decided to take a gap year and go on a mission trip for nine months and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. God has given me people in my life that I never thought I deserved and I could not be more thankful. Learning to except that my past is apart me and it only makes me stronger is something that only God helped me understand and I will be forever grateful for his unconditional love and his never ending forgiveness.
