Life is good.
I grew up in Anniston, Alabama, a small city known for being between larger, more popular cities. I spent kindergarten through senior year in the Saks school system and loved it. I experienced everything that most students experience at some point: I got more involved on campus than I could reasonably manage, I made and lost close friends, I met incredible and awful teachers alike, and I developed a deep resentment for Christianity.
Wait, what?
Yeah. I didn't attend church much growing up, so I was pretty ignorant about anything relating to God, Christianity, or any of that. Everything I knew--or thought I knew--about the Christian faith, I gathered by observing the believers at my school. As I transitioned from middle to high school, I began to observe some pretty disconcerting things. Having developed the conception that Christians were supposed to live "better" lives than their nonbelieving counterparts, I was nothing short of taken aback at the striking similarities between followers of Jesus and myself. In fact, I deemed most of their behaviors worse than mine. Instead of considering the possibility that the students I knew may have been struggling to keep the faith and run the race, I made a fairly immediate assumption that the God they were worshiping on Sundays was totally make-believe. So, as a freshman in high school, I became an ill-informed, self-declared atheist.
Have you ever been in a situation in which you secretly want something to be true, but you force yourself to be content with the possibility that it's not? For instance, you develop an attraction to someone you've known for a while, but your friend doesn't seem too interested in you. Your friendship has been steady so far, though, so there doesn't seem to be any logical reason to try to change it up now. Therefore, you're perfectly okay with the way things are. Right?
That's about where I was. I couldn't stand the thought of church, and I was perfectly content with Christians keeping their get-into-Heaven-free card to themselves. I had survived without God for a while, and I was okay with things staying that way. But I wasn't. On a much deeper, much more introspective level, I was not okay with things staying that way. I still felt the drive to find some sort of purpose, and simply rejecting the existence of true purpose didn't do it for me. Luckily, when man searches for meaning, God provides.
Not too long after my resolution of unbelief, I met a Christian friend whom we'll call JD. This guy had something that I had yet to see in any other believer at my school. It wasn't just a care for humanity--it was agape*. It wasn't simply an inkling to try to live a cleaner life in order to ensure passage into Heaven--JD was sprinting after Jesus, and he was taking as many people with him as possible. And for some reason or another, he grew dead-set on taking me as well.
I wasn't terribly fond of JD. He was extremely nice, but he was equally annoying. He invited me to church constantly, and I really hated to disappoint him, so I ended up joining him a couple times during the first semester of sophomore year. Initially, his efforts seemed to have a negative effect; the more church services I went to, the worse I felt as a person. I just became a more resentful nonbeliever. Nothing was clicking for me that seemed to click for JD. Somehow or another, I was failing to account for something that he clearly knew about. And that pesky inner drive to find purpose wouldn't let me give up on finding it.
A few months into sophomore year, I turned sixteen. Like many teenagers, I went and got my driver's license that very day. Unlike many teenagers, I did not use my newfound road privileges to pursue long-held dreams of leaving the nest and doing whatever my adolescent heart desired. Instead, I drove to the one place I despised the most. I drove to church.
My 2009 Corolla had a change of ownership that night.
The kid who left the car to check out another youth service was not the same kid who got back in ninety minutes later. He was a new creation. He was a child of the King. He was drenched in grace, completely and totally forgiven for his former hatred and ignorance. He was, in retrospect, unrecognizable.
Something clicked during that service. I realized that the "God" I had pictured in my mind was not the God that Christians worshiped. It became apparent to me that Christianity was not just a way out--it was a beautiful relationship between a Father and His children built entirely with love and mercy in the form of Jesus Christ. I still had plenty of questions. I didn't fully understand the significance of what was going on. But, I knew that the purpose I had secretly wished to be true was waiting right in front of me. And, I got saved.
My life has been nothing short of a mental, emotional, and spiritual rollercoaster since that day. I've gone on faith-rocket trips, I've stumbled and fallen, I've discipled close friends, and I've been discipled by Godly mentors. I met an incredible girl who has decided to chase Jesus with me in an incredible relationship. I graduated valedictorian from the school that comprised the largest portion of my life for thirteen years. I decided to attend UAB to study neuroscience for who-knows-why, and I love it. After only a few months, I've formed friendships that I know will last quite a while. So, yeah. Life is good.
*Agape: the highest form of love, especially brotherly love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God
