Faithful

Most of you know my story. So, I thought it would be really cool to do something a little different for the next couple of posts. I am excited to announce that this will be the first segment of a series called: Seven Sides

Each of my siblings and even my mom will be writing a little something for me to post on here for you to read. People say there are two sides to every story, but that isn’t the case with us. There are seven sides to this story. You have already heard one, mine.

Today, you get to hear my youngest brother Jacob’s side.

Jacob if the definition of a quiet strength. Since we are the youngest, Jacob has been by my side through about everything. We walked the halls of high school together. We sat outside our rooms, in tears, listening to our mom argue with our brothers when they were in active addiction. We have watched more Duke games together than I can count. He is the definition of what it means to take your place. He stepped up at such a young age to be the man our family needed him to be. I am so proud of who he is and who he continues to be.

May you be encouraged today by his words. May you remember that everyone has a story to tell and only you can tell yours.

Side two:

Most stories, novels, epics, or whatever else it is, usually take a while for the plot to develop into something exciting or pivotal. Well for my life that is not the case what so ever. I am the youngest child of six kids. I remember hearing as a kid “gosh you have a ton of family members!” but my reality was that being one of six kids was normal and families with less than six kids were not.  As I said, my life story didn’t take long for it to get exciting. Just four years after I was born, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Pancreatic cancer has about a 29% survival rate after one year of discovery. If you don’t understand what that means it is basically saying that you have a 71% of dying within a year of finding out that you have pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, my father was not able to be a part of the surviving percentage and passed away on November 21, 2001.

You know, at the age of five you don’t really understand what it means for someone to die. You know that something has happened but your mind cannot fully grasp the concept of death and someone no longer being around. I remember very little about my dad’s death and the time he was sick. I remember having our family over very shortly before he died and taking a picture with me, my siblings, and my mom and dad on the couch. We were all smiling, but deep down inside not a single one of us was truly happy.

We were smiling for the picture but only until the flash went off. It went off and we were back to our normal, sad selves. It is funny though because that’s in a way how death works. Everything is good and great. Smiles and laughter all around and bam! Just like the flash of a camera, faster than you can even think, death moves and takes life away from the world.

Another one of the few memories I have is that one day in my pre-school class I announced to my class that my dad was going to die. Yes, I know. It is pretty crazy that a 5-year-old child just announced to his class that his dad was going to die when children of that age do not understand what death even is. But that has what my life has been like since the beginning. I have had to be realistic about everything and I have had to grow up…fast.

Since my dad died when I was so young for a while I did not think anything of it. Who can blame me though? I was still a child. Yeah, I missed my dad but I didn’t know where he was or if he was coming back. I just knew he was gone. In great stories, characters sometimes have epiphanies where they realize what they need to do or what task they must achieve to save themselves or others from their nemesis. For me, my epiphany came when I was seven. But it wasn’t what I needed to do to achieve victory and save the world from my enemy. It was that my dad was gone forever and I was powerless over my enemy, death.

With this realization my mind went insane. I slowly fell into fear. It was kind of like I just did a cannon ball off of an Olympic sized diving board into a pool of quick sand. I was sinking and having sand fill my lungs not allowing me to breathe, but it was slow and it was painful.

The bible talks about fear a TON saying to not give into. But for me I was completely consumed by it. As a 7-year-old I was dealing with anxiety and worrying similar to someone going through a midlife crisis. The cause of all of that was because I was so afraid that something was going to happen to my mom or to one of my siblings. Ultimately, I was afraid they were going to die just like my dad had and leave me behind all by myself.

This fear affected me mentally but also physically. There is this virus that is pretty serious called Shingles. Shingles comes from the aricella-zoster virus, which the chicken pox also comes from. Shingles and the chicken pox are similar in appearance but instead of itching it is like you’re constantly being stung by bees and jumping into a thorn bush all at the same time. Most of the time people 20 and older get this virus from stress and anxiety in their lives. The fear in my life wasn’t allowing my mind and body to cooperate and I actually got shingles at age 7. I don’t know if you understand but it is ABSURD for a 7-year-old to have that much stress that they get a serious virus that adults usually only have. It wasn’t normal, at all. It wasn’t normal because it was the quick sand trying to pull me away from the rope that would bring me out of that pool. It was the devil trying to pull me away from God, the one person who could save me.

Fast forward some years to freshman year of high school through my junior year. My few years of hell. The years went by after my Dad’s death and each year seemed to be as normal as the other. Although, the pain was all still there. You never truly heal after something like that. You kind of just get used to it. Entering freshman year, I was not in a good place at all. I was angry all the time, I resented God all the time, and I even went as far as denouncing God. To others, I must have looked like the most normal kid ever. But on the inside there was a constant anger and resentment that had built up because of what was going on in my life. Not only was I struggling with the anger of God taking my dad from me, I was struggling with the fact that it seemed that my brothers were going to be taken from me also.

Both of my brothers were in the middle of fighting their drug addiction and I hated it. I hated my life and I hated all the crap that I thought God was putting me and my family through. One thing I would always scream and ask God whenever my brothers would be kicked out of the house by my mom or when they’d be gone for days without knowing if they were dead or alive was a simple word “why.”

 Why us? Why me? Why is there always something going on in my life? Why do you hate me God? Why do you want to spite me all the time for something I didn’t do? Why?!

I know everyone has probably asked that question before but to me there wasn’t an answer, verse, quote, or anything that was good enough to make me feel okay. So I shut everyone out. I shut my family out, I shut my friends out, I shut God out, and I was alone. I didn’t think there was a way out and honestly I didn’t care to even find one because I knew I would just be let down.

For an extremely long time I lived in that state of mind. Even when my brothers were getting better I still hated God because I even had to be put through that in the first place. I had just lost all faith in Him and in ever being happy again, but God knew what He was doing and knew what He had planned for me.

I dealt with all that pain and suffering alone up until the summer going into my junior year. What happened that summer is nothing short of a miracle. I was at my yearly summer camp, Camp Winshape, and I was participating in this program that they offer called the Little Chief Program. The way you get into this program is through a test, but before the test there are certain requirements you must meet to be selected to participate in the test. That summer was my fourth time taking the test and it was the summer I was determined to pass.

The test consists of a mile and two-tenths run up Lavender Mountain on Berry College’s campus that is ran at an extremely fast pace, a 1500-word essay about what Winshape means to you, and a fire section where you have to build a fire using only wood. No pine straw, paper, anything. Only wood found at the camp site you’re at and you can only light it by using a match and a rock. The hardest part about all of that is that you are under a silence ban, meaning if you make any audible noise you fail. The whole test is 18 hours long and for 18 long hours I had to be silent.

Winshape was the place that I found out who I was. It molded and shaped me into the young man that I was and all the while helped me as a kid find God and to help me lean on Him. But as time progressed and my life got more chaotic I forgot about what it taught me and I only enjoyed going there because I got a break from the craziness in my family and got to be with my friends. But Winshape was my second home and writing the essay part took me no time at all because that place meant the world to me. And it was here that my life changed forever.

I finished the essay very quick and had time to kill before the next section. There just so happened to be a bible beside me and I just opened it without even thinking of where or what I wanted to read. I opened to the book of Isaiah, in particular to Isaiah 35: 3-4 which says: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”

Reading that verse changed my life. It made me realize that God has never abandoned me or my family. It made me realize that God was going to make everything that was wrong right again. I had weak hands and feeble knees, and God was coming to take the fear, anger, anxiety, and pain all away. I knew that because recompense means making amends for loss or harm suffered and God began doing that shortly after.

I would go on to pass the Little Chief Test and as soon as the silence ban was lifted I burst into tears because I knew that God got me through that. It was a symbolic moment for my life because just like God had got me through the hardest 18 hours of my life, He also got me through the hardest 18 years of my life. He would go to let both of my brothers be sober and beat their drug addiction exactly one year since I read that verse.

My faith in God had been restored in the simplest way possible, by reading a bible verse. Sometimes it takes a huge miracle or something different for that to happen to people but for me it was the simple glance of God’s word. Since then I have been faithful to God’s plan, purpose, and path for my life. Although my faith isn’t perfect I still undoubtedly follow Him and let Him guide me through life because one thing I did wrong before was trying to make things for my way and not giving everything to God and allowing him to do things HIS way.

My life hasn’t been perfect and it has been hard, but I wouldn’t change anything about it. Why? Because I am thankful for who I am today. I’m thankful for where my family is today and I’m thankful for those around me. Without the trials and storms I went through I wouldn’t have been able to have that life changing moment. I wouldn’t have been able to find God again and have my faith renewed. All of the craziness and crap in my life, I am blessed by it because it is a testimony to others that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and all you have to do is stay faithful to reach it.

So I leave you all with this…..

Through life, you may feel that you are drowning. Whether it’s in anger, depression, fear, or whatever else it is, just know that you are not alone in your struggles. The one who made you and loves you is beside you through it all and all you have to do is reach out to Him because He has and always will be reaching for you. No matter what, God will not abandon you or forsake you. He will be here with open arms awaiting your arrival like the Father of the prodigal son, because at the end of the day we are all the prodigal sons and daughters of God and all we have to do is make that decision to turn around and run to Him.