Sometimes I still stay awake at night remembering the nightmares I have placed on myself. Remembering the horrible things I have done to myself and other people. My chest tightens as I think that I started to just blend into the world. Scratch that. I didn’t start to blend, I conformed. I gave up all my morals for my search for happiness. All it has left me with is endless nightmares and emptiness.
For the longest time I have been searching for happiness. The sad part is I have always searched in the all the wrong places. My biggest struggle and lost cause for my search for happiness is girls. I always tried to find happiness in the opposite gender. Im sure most of you know it doesn’t exactly work. Sure, girls gave me a false sense of happiness and contentment but it NEVER lasted. ever.
Relient K puts how I was feeling perfectly. A little dramatic but perfect. “Explore the cave that is my chest, a torch reveals there is nothing left. Your whispers echo off the walls and you hear my distant calls. The voice of who I used to be screaming out, someone, someone please. Please shine a light into the black and wade through the depths and bring me back.”
What a fool I made of myself. Thinking that someone could give me the happiness only Christ could give me. I searched so long for that person that could make me happy. After all that searching and heart ache I felt the most lost and empty I have ever felt in my entire life. I turned into the guy who girl’s dads dreaded them hanging out with me. They KNEW I had a few things on my mind and protecting their daughters purity was very low on the list. I conformed to the world’s view of what a man was supposed to be. You were looked up too the more girls you could get with. It made me into a hollow shell of what a man should be. Actually, lets scratch that too. A man would protect a girl’s purity. A boy, wouldn’t.
I have lived the last few years thinking I was becoming more of a man each day and yet I found it hard to hold my head up high while watching the man I could be wither away. There are so many reasons that prompted a change in me, but probably the biggest reason was my sister. I would look at guys and think “Oh heck no”. I wouldn’t let a guy like him near her. I’d kill him and go to jail before I would let someone like that touch her. The sad part is, I am one of those guys. I was that guy to girls. I had become the exact person I want my sister to stay away from. I know for a fact my dad wouldn’t want a guy like me dating my sister.
The biggest thing that haunts me is that one day I will have to sit down with my future wife and tell her I did not wait for her. Tell her how I was selfish and didn’t want to wait for her. I wanted my self satisfaction right then and there. My wife is out there somewhere and I should have been guarding her heart. On top of that I wasn’t protecting the hearts of women who would one day have a husband that was not going to be me.
For so long I have needed an escape. I needed someone to “wade through the depths and bring ME back.” Luckily, the love from a perfect savior has searched and found me. I was His lost, dirty, and broken sheep. He came in found me in my darkness and reminded me of who I am. I am HIS. He has made it known that my sins are as far as the east is from the west. He has set me free and I am no longer enslaved to the darkness that has kept me chained for so many years!
Usually while going on a trip like this I would be hoping to pursue a girl. Usually. Not this trip! Jesus has called me to pursue Him and Him alone right now. Our relationship is the one that needs mending. I have been so far gone from Him that I will be strictly going after him. No girl will ever stand in the way of me and my savior again. I am so excited to work side by side with my SISTERS in christ and become a more godly man. It is so awesome how at peace I am with this! It is such a weight off my shoulders! This trip is not about me anyways. It is about serving Christ and mending a broken world. This trip is not about anyone finding their spouse. Jesus is coming first in my life since I have so eagerly and willing put him last.
