I believe that a person cannot experience great happiness without having felt the most severe form of heartache and agony. I believe those who disagree with this statement have yet to experience either supreme happiness or true despair. Personally, I can say I never felt pure joy until I after went through the darkes moment of my short life.
January 10, 2009 started off like any other day. It was a Saturday and I woke up around 8:30 at my friend’s house and looked out the window and noticed that it was starting to rain a little. The day moved on like normal, we hung out, laughing and playing video games. A perfectly normal Saturday for a 12 year old boy. At around 2:10 I received a phone call from my mother who sounded extremely troubled. Her exact words were, “Matt you need to get home right now James is sick.” James is my older brother, 14 years old, who was away at a Therapeutic Boarding School. Being the ignorant sixth grader, I had no idea what was wrong so I took my time getting home. As soon as I walked through the door I immediately walked into a scene from a horror movie. Both my parents and grandparents were balling their eyes out. My parents grabbed me and took me into the next room. There my mother told me that my older brother had passed away suddenly from a severe illness. I will never forget hearing the pain on her voice as she tried with all her might to relay this tragic news to me.
The next following months I sank into a deep depression. I wish I could say that after a few months it got better but I would be lying. There were spurts of hope and many times where I was close to coming out of my depression only to fall back into the same pit I fell in that Saturday night in early January. The whole time I was in my pit I was searching for something that could help pull me out. I tried many things from surfing to hiking. All things I loved to do, but neither one had the power to pull me out of this depression.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year on May 5, 2013, four years after the death of my brother that I experienced the greatest form of happiness. On that Sunday I randomly decided to attend a church that a friend of mine was attending. I had never really believed in a higher calling until that Sunday morning when I received the greatest gift I have ever received. The gift of salvation, forgiveness, and hope all by accept Christ as my savior. It may sound cliché but within the actual hour of accepting Christ as my savior I felt a joy I had never felt before in my life. The pit I had fallen in was too deep for me to escape on my own, I needed the help of someone who will never leave my side, never judge, and never abandon me when the going gets rough. I have no doubt at all that it was God himself who dragged me out of that pit of despair. Just within the last two years I have grown immensely into the MAN who God wants me to be. I have become thirty times more grateful, caring, and forgiving. Having God in my life has made me strive to become a better man both spiritually and physically. These past two years have also shown me that I want to make the world a better place anyone I can. I have a burning passion to help people and I know that God’s will involves me striving to help other people. After 17 years of life I believe that by surviving the worst experience of my life, my eyes have been opened to a new level and I now live every day knowing not to hold anything back.
