My Story
A few posts on Steemit have inspired me to share my story and how I got to where I am today and how God has led me throughout my journey.
My Story
I grew up in the church. Every Sunday, we had that dull routine of going to church every Sunday, only to go back to our daily routine throughout the week. This routine became boring and meaningless as I went through life, but I was still forced to go to church.
I was born in Denver, and when I was 9, I moved to Colorado Springs. Until the 5th grade I was homeschooled. I will admit 99% of my childhood was based around my school. I was almost overworking myself in school. I finally enrolled in high-school at Colorado Springs Early Colleges where I graduated at the young age of 16 with just under 100 college credits.
My hard work was finally paying off! Or so I thought. I started going to school at UCCS, where I found that all of my highschool college credits were not accredited, meaning that I couldn't transfer them to UCCS. So I picked myself up and started working from the very beginning again. Around this time, I started dating somebody from my church. For the sake of privacy I will refer to her as Michaela.
Michaela
Michaela was not the sort that I saw myself dating. But I did. For about 7 months we dated. She was more into the whole emo/scene trend. She dealt very heavily with depression, self harm, lustful thoughts, and other influences. However, the problem was, I was approaching it like I had to fix her issues for her. That somehow I could influence her to change, even if she didn't want to change. I made it my goal to fix her. I was putting just about 75% of my attention to only her for 7 month straight. Helping her, talking to throughout the day every single day.
One thing I would like to note with this relationship is that we developed something together, that I had never even understood or heard of before. It got to the point where I could be halfway across the state, and I would feel a stabbing pain in my left hip whenever she would cut herself. I would feel it, and text her right away and ask if she cut herself and she would say yes. At the time I had no idea what that was. And I didn't do any research on what that might have been.
A couple months after I discovered that I broke up with her. Mentally, emotionally, and physically it was draining me. And I was starting to fear of my own health failing because I worried about her so much. The breakup affected me horribly. Yes I was finally free from this toxic relationship, but it left me utterly alone. I put all of my attention into her, and therefore left all of my other friends. This is when I started developing my own depression.
My Own Journey
This is when I started developing a lot of my own problems. Because of the depression I didn't care about school anymore. I had previously realized that I was doing all of my school, not for myself, but so that my father would be proud of me. And it got to the point where I started not caring about that anymore.
I eventually dropped out of classes, I started failing more and more classes and I started not caring that I did which was not helping my reputation as a student with the college. During my college career, I did reconnect with somebody from my middle school, we'll call her Katie in this instance.
Katie was a little bit of a different sort. When I knew her in middle school she was the quietest person there. In college, she was the complete opposite. She was outgoing, funny, lively, and completely extroverted. We became extremely close friends extremely fast, and we really started developing a good friendship. Unfortunately for me, I considered her attractive, and because we were so close, I started falling in love with her. Being somebody who can read individuals extremely well, I knew that she didn't have the same feelings for me. And so I kept feelings for her in check for over a year.
Then Katie got her own boyfriend, and it wasn't me. My heart was torn. I spent so much investing my time into her, and she didn't choose me, in fact she had chosen somebody she had just barely met. It became awkward between us, even tense. We started fighting back and forth of small stupid things, I tried fixing our friendship but to no avail... quickly, I saw mine and her friendship tear apart painfully until one moment when we decided to break off our friendship.
I was broken. This happened in October of 2015. During that month, I related to Job so closely. My best friend was taken from me, and through her all of my friends because we shared common friends. I lost my job in that month, and I lost my car in an accident that could have been fatal. But God didn't let one bit of physical harm come to me.
The Darkest part of my life.
The next two weeks was the hardest, and darkest part of my life. My depression was worse than ever. Previously I had insomnia since I could ever remember, but that was also at its worst. I also developed anxiety and panic attacks.
I would always know when a panic attack would start setting in. My nerves would start building up, and I would start shaking. The fast irregular breathing, my mind would start racing from topic to topic but not focusing on any one thing, not able to really think about any specific thing ever. It would just run rampant, completely unbridled.
During these two weeks I stayed in bed. Literally the whole time. I refused to get out of bed only except when my parents were home, to give the illusion nothing was wrong. They knew I wasn't okay though. A couple nights during this time period, I got a panic attack in the middle of the night. Then I would pass out from exhaustion. Only to wake up at 3 in the morning.... but I wasn't completely awake. I was experiencing something called sleep paralysis.
Its amazing how little people know about sleep paralysis. Scientifically... its when you are literally walking on the edge between being asleep, and being awake. You feel this weight on your chest, and you cant move a muscle. I was completely immobilized... I couldn't move my lips, or anything. I was able to breathe and blink. That was it. About 15 to 30 seconds into this episode, God opened my eyes.
Sitting on top of me was a demon. It was darker than the pitch blackness of the night, and had fiery yellow eyes. It had somewhat of a triangular shaped face, and it was staring at me inches from my face. Not saying a word, not moving, not blinking. Nothing. Across the room from me were two other demons that held shackles that were connected to my wrists. Hence my immobilization.
This experience happened twice... both times I would pass out from fear and exhaustion as tears were streaming down my face. Waking up the next morning feeling at my absolute lowest. I still didn't have a relationship with God at this time, so I wasn't calling out to him. Eventually I got a job which would keep me distracted from my depression. Get me on my feet again and keep me busy.
My depression and anxiety still didn't go away for a long time. 2016, I would say was the most rebellious time of my life. I indulged in drinking, some sexual acts, and even dabbled in drugs a couple times. Nothing serious, and definitely not enough to develop an addiction. But I did experiment a little bit.
Turning My Life Around
In about November of 2016 I told God that I knew as Christians we weren't supposed to have the easiest of lives, but I also knew that there wasn't one time in my life that I was truly happy. So I told God that I would give Christianity one more chance and I would give it all I got. So I did! I started reading my Bible more, I joined a college group called Kairos, joined an accountability group because I was addicted to pornography, and I really started trying to fix up my life.
All of the sudden God started blessing me. He gave me a car, a place to move out of my parents house to, and an amazing job at an airport refueling aircraft. He really started blessing me, but I still had issues in my life, I was still dealing with depression and anxiety. I was still dealing with my pornography addiction (Was going on about a 9 year addiction), and I still had on occasion thoughts that this demon would come back eventually.
Moment of Glory
About February of this year I started really seeking after God, but I also started becoming more and more paranoid that this demon would come back. To the point where one Thursday morning I woke up and I was paralyzed from fear that this demon was going to haunt me again (little did I know all of that fear was him haunting me still. I just couldn't see it). That night, I had some prayer with some friends of mine and God did something amazing. That night, God completely healed me of my depression, anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, and my addiction to pornography. It all fell away and the only thing that was left in my life was God.
That night, God also gave me a spiritual gift of discernment. He gave me the ability to sense when evil spirits are around and through that I've been able to reach out and affect other people's lives. From there I asked God, what do you want me to do now. And God gave me this vision of me speaking on a stage. And I felt God telling me, you have a story. Tell others your story and inspire them to develop a real relationship with you. I want to work through you to reach teenagers in this society.
So here I am today. Starting my own company as a public speaker. My goal is to:
Introduce today's youth to a Biblical
method of building and maintaining a REAL relationship with God.
While finding His purpose for their life.
Thank you all for reading this huge article. Let me know what you think and if you liked it, please UPVOTE or RESTEEM!