Hey everyone. As you might have figured, I am a new author to this site. I saw that people were sharing their testimonies on here, so I figured it would be a good kind of introduction.
My story is rooted in my search for something beyond this world. I looked to the world to fill my void inside. After quite a few attempts, I finally realized one day that nothing in this vile earth could fulfill what I really needed. But for me to realize that, there was a cost. Sure, I didn’t go as far into the pleasures of the world as others…but even so, I still had so much frustration with it that eventually I would have ended up jumping in my own coffin, anxious to be fed to the soil. Suicide.
Growing up as a homeschooler, I was always around my family. The only time I was around other people was when I went to church. For a while I made my circumstances worse than they could have been. I shied away from others when I was a kid. I always kept to myself. I was even given the name, “The Quiet One.” The usual kid who got left out of things and got picked last and what-not. I always felt that for someone to befriend me, they had to come to me first. I always read excessively to escape from reality, and because I just loved it so much. I’ve been a book worm since I was three years old. I was picked on a lot, and I always thought of myself as a ghost to others. I felt neglected even in my Sunday school setting, and I basically had no friends and envied those who did. I did come to my mom at the age of seven (What a great age to do that…eh?) and I told her I wanted to be saved. I knew Christ was in my heart, but I didn’t acknowledge Him as my savior and my friend. He always convicted me of things, but I started to ignore it more and more. Eventually, as I got older and I was around ten and eleven, I found self-help books and online networking sites. I talked to people online because it was comfortable to me and I could alter myself anyway so that someone could like me. I took up writing at about the age of twelve, because I was taught it in my school work, and when I was assigned to write something myself, I discovered I was really good at poetry. I still felt very lonely having friends online, and even though I was reading self-help books and realized I needed to put myself out there, I still felt so lonely. I had a couple of friends, but they weren’t true to me, they were very shallow friends. With all this loneliness welling up inside, I would turn to poetry to vent my feelings. I wrote over fifty poems out of my depression. At first when I started writing depressing things, I didn’t realize it was because I was depressed. It took me a couple months to realize I was, because at first the depression was deeper down. It seemed I kept trying to push down those feelings by writing them out. Eventually they surfaced after I got in trouble with a boy I talked to online. We were planning to meet in person. Our plans were very off-color…for lack of a better word. My mom was suspicious. I told her I was going to buy her a Mother’s day present. She made me put my right hand on the Bible and swear I wasn’t going to meet him up there, so I did. There was no way I could break that promise. I saw him there, but we didn’t interact. To this day I’m so thankful my mom did that, because not too long after that, I heard he got a girl pregnant.
There was one day that I recall, it was the worst depression I’ve ever felt. I don’t remember what I did, but my mom wanted to take everything from me that I was using to fill that emptiness inside. I tried running away twice and failed…so when I couldn’t, I took multiple objects to my left forearm and tried drawing blood. I knew poetry wouldn’t numb this sort of pain. I felt like I needed to bleed it out. One of the things I attempted to break my skin with was a cross necklace I had that was made of nails. I remember seeing it and thinking to myself, “What am I doing?” Christ already suffered for me and drew His blood on the cross so I could bear the Holy Spirit, and that it bridged the gap between me and God. I knew that was the truth, but I was too ignorant and unwise at the time that I took my own way of dealing with that void. I had a huge gash on my forearm from that, and I told people I had just burned myself on accident whenever they would ask. Luckily it didn’t turn into an addiction.
Recently, I have been feeling the same loneliness that I did at those times because I know I am an outcast, and that I’m a foreigner, and I’m not friends with the world or anyone of the world. But whenever I do feel that loneliness, I remember a poem I wrote about that feeling:
Clusterphobia
My mind is skipping around aimless thoughts
I’m getting out of focus
Too often I rely on materials
To keep me in line
When every day I pray for You to keep me here
Because I often want to stray
To somewhere I don’t belong
When I know this is your weakness you’ve given to me
So I can grow to be strong
If this is what you want, then so be it
Although I keep looking into other lands
Help me to desire what I have here
Hundreds of acres to run free in
But I’m being deceived to think it’s a square foot
Open my mind
So I will not be deceived concerning where I stand
I believe this recent relapse with feeling alone was to refresh this memory so I could write this out. Whenever I have this feeling, I know I’m being selfish.
It took many things for me to turn from my ignorance. I went on mission trips, concerts, and a play that gave a message of salvation. I had a few relapses, so therefore a few more moments where I had to repent. I’ve always felt and have been told that I was made to do great things in this world, and that God is going to use me in a big way. I have never doubted this, because the struggle within my soul has been so hard, but God has always prevailed. Already I’ve been told by a few people that something I’ve written or said has impacted them, but I take no credit. It’s all been Christ. He has taught me more and more obedience, and has revealed some of His wisdom to me because I’ve asked for it. I know that what I say must be heard, and that I must speak out…yet my worst fear is speaking in front of people. A couple of months ago, I was asked to give a personal account of my experience on my most recent mission trip. The funny thing is that I knew it was coming a week before it did. God was telling me He needed me to speak out..and I knew some sort of public speaking was coming up. I was supposed to speak in front of the whole congregation of my church. like 300+ people. A few days before that, my mom told me she had a dream that I was speaking in front of people in like a classroom setting, and that I was speaking so low that no one could hear me. She said that her and my youth pastor’s wife were telling me I needed to speak up, and that what I had to say was important. She told me she felt like God was telling her to tell me these things. CONFIRMATION! I was blown away by this. But the night before I was hit with the reality that I was going to be facing my biggest fear the following day. I was crying so hard from my fear, and I was thinking of totally ditching it, but I didn’t, after counseling from a good friend that night. They talked me out of quitting. The next day I was up there to that podium, shaking, and my voice was cracking, and every other word was, “Um.” But I didn’t care, because I was not silenced by fear. I feel I need to use my voice, and that with it, God is going to do great things.
What I experience with Christ is worth more than anything on this earth. When I tried to satisfy that hunger in my spirit with things of this world…all it brought me was pain and less of a will to live. But now I am thankful for this life that I have in Christ. He brought me out of my sickness and my pain, and drew me into His loving arms. Since then, I’ve been slowly growing closer and closer to Him, and my writings have been improving more and more. My life is fully committed to Christ, and there’s nothing more valuable to me in this world than Him.
So here’s the raw story of my life so far.
