In my late teenage years, I suffered really bad from depression. I felt worthless, lost, and confused, and found happiness in experimenting with marijuana, ecstasy, and underage drinking among other things. I often suffered from really bad social anxiety in high school, and these things made me feel like the life of the party and I loved it. I could only self-medicate so much, though, before I'd feel empty again. When I was 19, I bought a rope I had planned to hang myself with and even wrote a suicide note. I called a suicide hotline, which didn't make me feel any better, and then I walked outside to an old barn behind my parents house. This is where I had planned to kill myself. I still had my phone in my pocket, and I felt the buzz from an incoming phone call. My friend wanted to know if I wanted to go to the mall to see a movie, and not really having a good excuse at the time (I wasn't going to tell him that I was gonna hang myself) I decided to go to the mall with him. As crazy as it is, this distraction literally changed my life, and through my battles with depression, this day was the closest I had ever come to committing suicide. This friend of mine was Christian, and we would often get together and play music with some other friends, which is what we did after going to the movies. Many of the songs we played were Christian songs, and I would think about the lyrics and on that particular night, I sort of began giving my life to Christ. I don't really have an exact date for when this happened. I was invited to a youth group and started going every week. Soon after that, I started going to church regularly and playing music at the youth group. Eventually, I focused my energy into being in a Christian band, and I never felt more overjoyed than when we were playing and you could see people in the audience with their hands in the air and really praising God. I was constantly socializing and building relationships with different people, and I didn't need alcohol or drugs to do it. I felt free, and this was all thanks to Jesus Christ. Soon after that I joined the Air Force. I'm still in now, have been through a couple deployments, and God has always been there for me, even in the times that I selfishly ignore him. I feel like I've come a long way, but I know God isn't done using me yet, and my prayer is that He uses me as a light and take away the selfish desires of my heart. Amen.
Thanks for reading
Joel
Thanks for reading
Joel
