I’m celebrating my 25th birthday this Friday. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been out of high school for seven years. From the outside it seems like I have a pretty sweet life. God has blessed me with such an amazing and beautiful wife, a great family, and lots of friends. On top of that I’m traveling the world with my best friend, Erin. But if I’m honest with you, I have to admit that my life has been far from sweet for quite some time.
Until I graduated high school I would have considered myself to be a pretty hard worker in most everything I did. When I started college many things changed. I received a football scholarship from the college in my hometown, and I knew that football would be a big adjustment. I had no worries about anything else though. I quickly discovered that all this new freedom might be a little harder to manage that what I originally thought. I didn’t waste any time skipping class or not completing assignments. I did manage to barely pass all my classes that year. After spending the next summer as an intern for the youth group at my church I felt God calling me to ministry. I was approached about the possibility on keeping my position at the church through the next school year. After much prayer, I felt that God wanted me to pursue that opportunity and surrender my desire to play football. Unfortunately, the job at the church didn’t work out. This left me very confused and actually was the start of my battle with depression.
The next 3 years were a downward slope to my eventual all time low. I wasn’t really mad at God or didn’t turn my back on him. I was just really confused. I didn’t understand how I could be so confident that I was doing what God wanted me to do, and then none of it worked out. It just didn’t make any sense to me. Most of my life I’ve struggled with a fear of rejection and wanting to be accepted, especially when it came to girls. So during this time girls were the first place I looked for acceptance. If I wasn’t in a relationship then I was definitely looking for one. This is also when my struggle with pornography started. On top of all this, I had no interest in school and pretty much no interest in anything else. I never had any suicidal thoughts, but I definitely felt extremely hopeless. There were a few glimpses of the possibility of things turning around. One summer one of my best friends and I had the opportunity to serve as the interim youth ministers for the church we attended. It was a lot of fun, and probably the most fulfilling thing I had experienced up until that point. I spent the next summer in California where I was fortunate enough to participate in a discipleship program through my campus ministry. It was the first time I had ever been away from home for an extended amount of time. After that summer I felt like I was really headed in the right direction, but it was more challenging than I was expecting. I didn’t find anyone who could relate to what I had experienced, and I was quickly discouraged. It didn’t take long to fall back into my life that was so miserably comfortable. I fell back into the pornography trap, and I was in deeper than ever before. This dark, secret sin took control of my life. I felt so hopeless again, and I didn’t know how to get out of the mess I had created. That was during the fall of 2006. During that semester of school I failed nine hours of class, made a “D” in one class, and dropped one class. I finally reached my lowest point.
To be continued…
