I believe with my whole heart that being a Christian is all about love and sharing love and compassion to everyone you come in contact with. No, we aren't perfect and yes we do have off days where we are so caught up in doing whatever we want to do that we lose sight of sharing love but we are called to love.

This story is for those who have been bashed for being different, for not having the same beliefs as others, for living a different lifestyle. I want you to know that you are loved more than you'll ever be able to comprehend and despite what this world says, you are beautiful and you are special.In 2012 I was in a metal band called To Move An Ocean, a group of five guys including myself who just really enjoyed playing music and making new friends while sharing a message of love and hope on stage. The band and I were setting up to play a show in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I walked outside with our drummer, Jessie to clear my mind before walking on stage that evening, I just needed a little bit of air to clear my lungs and get me in the right mindset to play.

As we walked outside we heard a lot of shouting, we were on the boardwalk so we didn't think much about it. The shouting got even louder and for some reason we decided to walk down the strip to see where the noise was coming from. As we got to the source of the noise there were men and women holding signs, spilling hate messages, screaming "God Hates Gays" and "Hell Awaits Sinners." I stood frozen in my tracks, I couldn't believe that someone would hold a sign that had so much hate towards another life on it. I am a Christian and yes, I believe in sin. But what gives another person the right to spill hate messages about another life and then to call themselves a believer in Christ? All this was doing was pushing people away from the love of Christ.

I just couldn't imagine not knowing God and having someone spill all this hate onto me--what would I do? I'd probably run away from it all, but the problem I saw was that those people with those signs didn't truly know God. They were the ones who were blind.

Jessie and I walked back to the venue, I had this horrible taste in my mouth from what I had just saw. I was so angry at what I had just seen that I had to get these thoughts out, twenty minutes before we would take the stage I was sitting behind our merch table and I started writing a song; "I hope you're proud of the person you've become, in your final days you'll see you saved none."

This song is called "Void" and it's about those people that I witnessed that day and cringe every time I think about it. That song would stay in the notes on my phone for three years before the band would record our final E.P "Dying To Live // Living To Die" in 2015. I was able to put those words "With eyes like yours, I'd rather be blind" from my notes, to the record.As we walked onto the stage that night and shared a message of love and hope I couldn't help but think about all the people that just saw those signs outside of the venue, what if that is the only thing they ever hear about Christ? What if they never truly know how much they are loved? I wanted to make it my responsibility to share love and hope with as many people as I could whether on stage or off.

That night when I was on stage I learned something about myself that I don't think I would have ever learned if it wasn't for those people I had seen outside with the picket signs, I learned that I will never be that type of "Christian."The people who claim to know Christ while bashing others for the color of their skin, their gender, or their lifestyle.

Those people don't represent my God.

You are loved beyond anything you could ever understand, and nothing in this world or what anyone says about you will ever change that.