G
Godislove94
Guest
This is going to be kind of long because I'm a very detail-oriented person.
Where to start??
I never had a very good relationship with one of my parents growing up, and this parent basically made me feel like garbage from the time I was old enough to go to school. It got to the point where I wanted to run away from home at 16 because I couldn't take the chaos that was going on at home between my parents marriage and my parent and I.
The lack of relationship between my parent and I left a void in my life that I tried to fill with things. I did and still do struggle with anxiety and depression issues and obsessive tendencies. I guess somewhere in my life I couldn't trust a man to take care of me, and one of the ways I looked for that missing affection was in older women, mainly teachers. Hoping I would make friends, my mom signed me up for band in fifth grade where I found my God-given talent for playing clarinet. People began to compliment me on it, so clarinet became another obsession to the point where it caused me to be jealous, covetous, competitive, prideful, self-hating, judgmental, selfish, and idolatrous up until my first year of college music school.
Well, that's when God decided things needed to change. I unfortunately am one who has to pay for school alone, and the first job I had out of high school was in a discount store that paid only minimum wage and my hours were continually getting cut. My bank account ran dry before the school year was over. One job interview almost lead to employment, but by the hand of God the interviewer wrote down the wrong day for the interview, counted me as a no-show, and wrote me off the list. I was lead to apply to a job at a hospital and my current manager had mercy on me and gave me the job even though I really screwed up the interview
.
A friend and I had casually discussed starting a Bible study group on campus in the spring, but by the time fall rolled around and I wasn't in school I decided that God didn't want me to be happy because He let this happen, so I became an atheist for a short while, then eventually agnostic. Another friend mentioned the study group again and I agreed to go so I could "disprove" the Bible to justify myself. Then my surroundings started to jump out at me: death is a regular part of life in a hospital, many of the doctors and coworkers in my department were very Christian people, and the Bible was everywhere...God was calling me and I accepted Jesus.
Then came the shock that happens to all new Christians: scrupulosity, facing the reality that I may have to give up my dream forever, the realization that everything I had enjoyed before becoming saved was sin in some way, the weeding and pruning started. Still I couldn't understand why God was basically allowing me to be miserable and I saw Him as a God of punishment and hate, a carryover from how I saw my parent all through my childhood. It wasn't until very recently that He revealed to me that the reason everything happened the way it did was because He saw all of the behaviors I had that were ruining my life without me even knowing it, and He loved me enough to remove me from the environment and what I loved because I needed time to heal and work things out.
To this day it is unknown to me whether or not He will release me to go back into music school, but only time, patience, and His word will reveal that to me.
Though I'm still very new in my walk and continue to be weeded and pruned and have fear about judgment and sin (which is a good thing!), God has done so many things in my life that continue to amaze me and make me fall to my knees in tears and in thankful prayer. He recently has lead me to minister and testify to someone in my workplace using the gift of Mercy that He gave me and has sanctified my attachment issues so that they may be used as a way of leading me to people who have yet to accept Christ. With this there are still many precautions I have to take with guarding my heart against idolatry with the people I am lead to and the desire to obsess over them. Even now God has lead me to read and study Joshua which is about learning from past mistakes, and 1 and 2 Corinthians (but I'm not sure what they mean if someone can clarify). This is my story.
Where to start??
I never had a very good relationship with one of my parents growing up, and this parent basically made me feel like garbage from the time I was old enough to go to school. It got to the point where I wanted to run away from home at 16 because I couldn't take the chaos that was going on at home between my parents marriage and my parent and I.
The lack of relationship between my parent and I left a void in my life that I tried to fill with things. I did and still do struggle with anxiety and depression issues and obsessive tendencies. I guess somewhere in my life I couldn't trust a man to take care of me, and one of the ways I looked for that missing affection was in older women, mainly teachers. Hoping I would make friends, my mom signed me up for band in fifth grade where I found my God-given talent for playing clarinet. People began to compliment me on it, so clarinet became another obsession to the point where it caused me to be jealous, covetous, competitive, prideful, self-hating, judgmental, selfish, and idolatrous up until my first year of college music school.
Well, that's when God decided things needed to change. I unfortunately am one who has to pay for school alone, and the first job I had out of high school was in a discount store that paid only minimum wage and my hours were continually getting cut. My bank account ran dry before the school year was over. One job interview almost lead to employment, but by the hand of God the interviewer wrote down the wrong day for the interview, counted me as a no-show, and wrote me off the list. I was lead to apply to a job at a hospital and my current manager had mercy on me and gave me the job even though I really screwed up the interview
. A friend and I had casually discussed starting a Bible study group on campus in the spring, but by the time fall rolled around and I wasn't in school I decided that God didn't want me to be happy because He let this happen, so I became an atheist for a short while, then eventually agnostic. Another friend mentioned the study group again and I agreed to go so I could "disprove" the Bible to justify myself. Then my surroundings started to jump out at me: death is a regular part of life in a hospital, many of the doctors and coworkers in my department were very Christian people, and the Bible was everywhere...God was calling me and I accepted Jesus.
Then came the shock that happens to all new Christians: scrupulosity, facing the reality that I may have to give up my dream forever, the realization that everything I had enjoyed before becoming saved was sin in some way, the weeding and pruning started. Still I couldn't understand why God was basically allowing me to be miserable and I saw Him as a God of punishment and hate, a carryover from how I saw my parent all through my childhood. It wasn't until very recently that He revealed to me that the reason everything happened the way it did was because He saw all of the behaviors I had that were ruining my life without me even knowing it, and He loved me enough to remove me from the environment and what I loved because I needed time to heal and work things out.
To this day it is unknown to me whether or not He will release me to go back into music school, but only time, patience, and His word will reveal that to me.Though I'm still very new in my walk and continue to be weeded and pruned and have fear about judgment and sin (which is a good thing!), God has done so many things in my life that continue to amaze me and make me fall to my knees in tears and in thankful prayer. He recently has lead me to minister and testify to someone in my workplace using the gift of Mercy that He gave me and has sanctified my attachment issues so that they may be used as a way of leading me to people who have yet to accept Christ. With this there are still many precautions I have to take with guarding my heart against idolatry with the people I am lead to and the desire to obsess over them. Even now God has lead me to read and study Joshua which is about learning from past mistakes, and 1 and 2 Corinthians (but I'm not sure what they mean if someone can clarify). This is my story.
