Mostly throughout high school people knew me as a goodie goodie and I took pride in that. I hung out with the right crowd, went to church, had a few youth group friends.
The summer after my senior was when everything changed forever. I became resentful to my family and friends for always being referred to “the good kid” and in my anger I pulled away from every friendship I had ever known and started hanging out with the “bad kids.”
I became a completely different person. I lived to satisfy my needs and started drinking several times a week. I went to parties almost every night, and eventually started having sex – something I vowed to wait until marriage to do. I was the worst possible version of myself.
After the summer was almost over I decided to move to Arizona with two friends. As you can probably imagine I started to drink more and more. After that came smoking, not long after that I entered a lifestyle of being sexually active.
I still thought about God once in a while, but it was easier not to think about Him. Because thinking about Him meant dealing with my life and the guilt and furthermore meant possibly stopping this new “fun” life I had created for myself. I ran from even the thought of God. I pushed Him out of my life in every way and when He tried to pull me back, I ran some more.
Then one night…God met me on the bathroom floor.
Alone…drunk…depressed…sick…crying…and laying on the bathroom floor. Completely empty in every sense of the word. Broken beyond repair…
I can remember feeling Him there listening to me cry and listening to me talk to Him even though I hadn’t in so long.
I picked up my Bible and cried myself to sleep.
The next day I decided to move back to New Mexico to live with my mom for about 3 months and then move out to California together. I wish I could tell you that I was all better and everything was great after that. Not true…. It was hard…
My old habits came in and out of the picture but little by little God peeled away each layer. After I stepped out of that world and got my soul back…then came the heartbreak of it all. The world will be the first to tell you, “take another shot, have sex, get drunk get high have FUN”…but no one tells you the heartbreak that comes after…
It took a lot of praying for that guilt to go away…and once in a while it creeps up on me. But God has revealed His love to me in a way that I had never experienced before. He has forgiven me for that life and has forgotten the horrible things I said and did. He rescued me from myself and set me free from all that pain I had been clinging to. My sins are forgiven and forgotten and I am a soul made new by His mercy and grace.