Summer vacations. It is filled with resting, summer jobs, catching up on your Netflix watching and so many fun things. The thing is though, you would never expect your summer to change the trajectory of your life.

But that is what happened to me.

Let's start back in May, the beginning of my summer. The girl I was talking to, (emphasis on "was") Allie, hasn't talked to me since April. Here I was filled with negative emotions associated with my depression and I legit felt like I was going crazy. My mamaw just died not too long before summer and I was still feeling grief from her death.

If that wasn't enough to deal with, my fraternity brothers sat me down and rebuked me for my actions against the fraternity. I was to the point where I was watching porn constantly, cussing, drinking, fighting with my fraternity brothers and not spending any time in God's word. I was so far away from God at that point.

Driven into a deep depression due to all the things that were happening, I seriously thought about taking my own life. I had it planned out and everything. All I had to do was to go through with it.

I was so down in my emotional rock bottom that I would have given anything to ease the pain. A fellow fraternity brother suggested that I pray a lot to God and spend time in the Word regularly. Initially ignoring his advice, I gave it the "old college try"

This initial moment is what changed my life. With no one else to turn to, I turned to God for my problems. I didn't want to commit to Him at first, but God broke my heart, again and again, to get me to turn to Him.

The whole Allie situation resulted in her not responding to me for three more months. She has still not responded. At the advice of my fraternity brothers, I decided to cut things off with Allie for my sanity. She was breaking my heart over and over again by not responding to me. I also started to attend therapy for my problems and my therapist worked with me to help me cut things with her.

To help myself, I started praying more and reading the Bible more. I prayed to God for Him to help me with my loneliness. One day, when I was on my lunch break at my summer job, a dude named Manny walked up to me and started talking to me. He and I ended up talking about a lot, especially God. He offered to get together with me to do Bible studies, which I accepted. Through the course of the Bible studies, Manny asked me if I wanted to go to a bonfire with him with a few of his friends. I went to the bonfire with him and there I met some of the greatest friends I have now. Manny and his friends make me feel like I'm family to them. I can never thank God enough for them.

Manny and I became so close this summer. He has given me spiritual advice on how to look at my relationship with the Lord. He told me that our relationship with the Lord is a lot like a relationship with a boyfriend/girlfriend. If we truly desire to have a relationship with a woman/man, we should try to make every attempt to talk to them. If we don't, it isn't that great of a relationship. Only with frequent communication can a relationship flourish.

The same applies to our walk with the Lord. If we talk to Him (through praying), but we never open up His Word, we are cutting off His contact with us. Yes, you read that right. God's Word is God's way of speaking to us. In essence, for a relationship with the Lord to thrive, we must pray wholeheartedly and trustingly to Him, then let His Spirit guide us in His Word to comprehend what He is telling us.

So after hearing and heeding this advice, I applied it to my daily life. Continuous praying, Scripture reading and God changed my life. I am not the same man now that I was at the beginning of the summer. And I owe it all to God, because He saved me, changed me and claimed me as His own. I am forever humbled that He loves me so much to save me.