And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony - Rev. 12:11

Reverence over relationship.

That is how I would describe how God was presented to me as I was coming up. This type of teaching made me feel as if God was unapproachable. I was raised in a Christian home, and I received much of my primary education from a Christian school. The knowledge of Christ was in me, but not knowing how to apply that knowledge to my daily life created gaps in my spiritual foundation.

I received my salvation when I was 10 years old. But, when I would ask questions about God or the Bible, I would rarely receive answers or even instruction. Instead, it usually led to accusations of me lacking faith in God which led to the legitimacy of my salvation. These insecurities enlarged the foundational gaps in my spiritual life and over time began to harden my heart. And if my questions irritated my parents, preachers and teachers, I wouldn’t dare annoy God with my curiosity.

As a teenager, like most, I began developing my own identity. The problem here was that, unknowingly, I was allowing the enemy to develop this identity for me. I started becoming someone that I knew that my parents wouldn’t like or support, yet I continued to weave these distorted qualities into the person I was becoming. Saying things I shouldn’t say, looking at things I shouldn’t look at, thinking things that I shouldn’t and being physically attracted to people I shouldn’t be attracted to.

When I was 17, I met a painfully shy girl in Spanish class whose name is Nikki. There was just something about her that I gravitated towards. Our relationship grew quickly, and it was not long before she was the person that I loved most in the entire world. But, on the inside, I was ridden with insecurities, anxiety, guilt, hurt, doubt, a lot of unresolved anger and pain from years gone by. I have suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts for over half my life. These feelings are heavy, but she is the only one I ever trusted with that part of me. When my mind would try to convince me that I should just end it, Nikki would somehow know what to say and when to say it to get me to back up from the edge. We have stayed up countless nights as she would try to get into my head and help me make sense of these overwhelming emotions and where they were coming from, but I had been suppressing my emotions for so many years I did not know how to get to the root of my issues.

In October of 2020, I had a 15-year-old cousin that took his own life for reasons that we will probably never know. My heart was ripped open. This difficult season of grief in my life, God was about to use as my season of transformation. Over the course of the next couple months, things started coming into my mind from many years ago that started shedding light on painful moments from my past that I had suppressed. Not only did they pop into my mind, but it felt as if God was also showing me how to process them and file them away.

Change isn’t always easy, but it is easier when you know it’s necessary. We've been attending Focus Church for a couple years, and it wasn’t long before Nikki and I felt as if our relationship with each other was separating us from the relationships that we desired to have with God and keeping us from forming relationships within the church. So, we knew we had to end it, and we did. We are still best friends with active roles in each other’s lives and unless God tells us otherwise, that is how it will remain.