Back in the day, I believed we were born into this world condemned to die and there was nothing that we could do about it. That belief contributed towards my unstable relationship with God and religion. In fact, I would compare my spiritual journey to that of a roller coaster: it went up and down until I finally gave in.
The church felt so much like a prison because it was something I was forced to do, which overwhelmed me. The minister was a very loud and intense speaker, there were too many people and the service was forceful and demanding. After a while, all of these things made me lose interest, and I did not like attending church anymore.
Part of my rebelling as a young child of five to seven years old involved making noise during the service while people prayed. I would also crack jokes during the sermons to keep myself amused and awake. For instance, when the minister described Jesus nailed to the cross, I blurted out, “That must have really hurt!” When my family moved shortly afterwards, I used our new location as an excuse not to attend church anymore.
However, I didn’t completely abandon my faith until my grandmother passed away. I loved numerous things about her, especially her kindness to strangers. In hindsight, she lived like Christ. When my mother told me that my grandmother was in the late stages of cancer and was going to die, I was furious. How could an all-powerful, all-loving God take her away from me? God did this to me! How could I have any faith, trust or belief in Him? With her passing, how could I believe in or follow a higher power?
That loss of faith followed me into adulthood. There were times that I came close to rebuilding a relationship with God, but they always ended prematurely. For example, I returned to church as a prisoner during the 2012 Mayan scare. A friend invited me to attend service with him, so I accepted. Several months later, I saw our priest on the news for duct-taping an altar boy to a chair, which prevented him from entering the prison.
Miraculously, God continued to reach out to me, which, in turn, led me back to my faith. It began with a greeting card that I received in the mail. It was entitled “Footprints in the Sand” by Margaret Powers. The part that really stuck out to me was this: “The Lord replied, my precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trials and suffering, when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.” That card shook my soul and put everything into perspective for me. It showed me that I was never really alone. I then began to look back on the hardships of my life and realized that Christ was actually carrying me through them.
Once I fully committed myself to Christ, I realized that I was broken. Even though I shattered every commandment, God healed me. Isaiah 53:5 states, “By His wounds we are healed.” Through knowing this, I enrolled in the Calvin Prison Initiative program where I can better serve the Lord by being a leader among men. Leadership is about serving with love and humility. It is not defined by titles but by the impact that we have on each other.
Though we may be born into this world condemned to die, there is something we can do about it to save our souls. We will have a physical death, but due to the love and compassion of God the Father, we have a spiritual life after death.