I Believe

I believe in humbling experiences. A moment where the things I value are taken from me, or I question their relevance to my life. A moment when nothing else matters, and in that moment a life changes. Habits are broken, addictions eradicated and grudges forgotten. These are the moments we remember. I believe in humbling experiences.

The most defining, humbling experience in my life was just recently, and it was a long process to get to that very moment. Just last year, I had a girlfriend, and the longer I was with her, the more I realized that I shouldn’t be with her. She was a bad influence on me at the time, and I separated myself from my family and friends and became a very hard to approach person. I was angry about a lot of things in my life but I didn’t grasp what exactly they were. Then it happened; the process began. My sister got in a fight with my mom and decided that she was going to move out of the house. When I refused to drag her belongings from her room to school, my sister started rumors about me. Very nasty rumors that led to the breakup of my girlfriend and I. That was hard for me, but what was even harder came next. The rumors spread and people believed them. I no longer felt accepted at my church, I felt like everyone was judging me, and it hurt. Church was always my safe haven, but that was taken from me. All kinds of people were mad at me for things that I didn’t do, and I didn’t have many close friends at the time so I was a little lost. I struggled with my faith for a couple months after that as things got worse and I wasn’t sure where I was going with life. After a couple months of struggling, an old friend from church, Chris , invited me to go to this thing called prayer group. I was a little weary of it and I questioned going. I wasn’t sure where my relationship with God was and how much I wanted Him in my life, but after several weeks of Chris persisting that I go, I finally went. That’s when it happened. I walked into the doors, saw some old friends of mine, we all talked for a while, and in that room, all of those teenagers and I gathered in a circle and prayed. The kids poured out their hearts and all of their problems and laid them at the feet of God. It was a truly humbling experience to see a group of teenagers get together like that and pray for things in their lives and in the lives of their friends. That moment changed my life. I realized that God loved me, and that I need him in my life. Since then, I have really grown spiritually with God and I have been open about my faith and willing to share it with others. It’s a truly amazing feeling to have God in my life. Without that one moment, when I realized that everything I was worried about or the things that I was pouring my time into were irrelevant to the things I could be doing with my life, I would never be the guy I am now. And all it took was one humbling experience. I believe in humbling experiences.