God Repaired in 2 Days What Took Me 22 Years to Destroy

This might be a long post; I love to ramble around the point I am trying to get through. My head is being overrun with thoughts, so I wanted to share this.

Trying to keep a long story short, I have been struggling with depression, addiction, emptiness, and a complete lack of self-love and identity for the past eight years. Throw into the mix the fact that I have a strongly religious mother and a strongly atheist father, and it’s a perfect recipe for disaster. When I was young, I was part of a Catholic church; my mom gave me no choice essentially. However, going to church and having faith are obviously two very different things.

Now, I won’t lie, there were short periods in my life where my belief in God was pretty strong. However, it never lasted. Just like about everything in my life: I obsess over something new for a few weeks and then throw it away like it never even mattered to begin with.

I am 22 years old now, and a few days ago I was at the lowest I have ever been in my life. My life consisted of going to a job I didn’t enjoy, studying a course that didn’t interest me in the slightest, and probably worst of all: after coming home from work, the only hobby I had left was to “uninstall” myself with copious amounts of weed and alcohol. It was my little “safe haven”, tripping and barely conscious under my blanket, letting my life amount to nothing. The worst part of it all is that my conscience was slowly fading away, week after week, month after month. It got to the point where I had nothing left in me to give and was living the “nothing matters, I don’t care if I die anymore” type of life.

I never understood why I was this way, and to be honest, to this day I don’t. My doctor and therapist said it was something in the line of BPD or bipolar depression, but due to the immense waiting lists for therapy in my country, I still haven’t started treatment even though my diagnosis was made months ago. I had been working myself into a deeper and deeper ditch ever since that moment. The wait, combined with just a generally bad winter, made me feel worse with every passing day. My hobbies started fading away slowly, to the point where I had absolutely none left other than drugs, porn, and sleep.

Last Friday was just one of those days. I came home from work, and before even entering my house, I cracked open a beer in the driveway and rolled a joint. I went inside and just went straight to bed to put on my headphones and numb myself with loud music, tripping away into the emptiness inside of me.

However, this time something changed. Something felt off. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore—well, to be fair, I never TRULY enjoyed doing this, but at the very least it gave me pleasure and dopamine.

I honestly don’t even remember most of what happened afterward, but the only thing I do remember is falling to my knees, crying out loud to God to “save me from myself.” And the peace that came over my entire body in that moment was absolutely unexplainable. It wasn’t some full-blown vision of God or an angel or anything like that, but it felt as if all my fears, worries, and anxieties just flew away with the wind.

The day after, I put on a podcast from Steven Furtick preaching about God. And even though it was clearly a regular human talking to me, I couldn’t help but shake the thought that this was God speaking through him to me. Because, oh boy, it wasn’t just one podcast I listened to—I spent multiple hours that day listening to him speak. And I swear, every word he spoke applied directly to me and my life over the past years.

I won’t go on about what was said exactly (because my keyboard would probably give up on life), but the thing that struck me the most was the fact that God never left my side. Even though I turned my back on Him countless times, He never did the same to me. And even though some days I cursed God for the place I was in, it feels like now the pieces of the puzzle are finally coming together.

I think the hell I have been going through the past few years was actually nothing more than a gift from God. He took away everything from me so that I could focus on the one thing that mattered: Him. He destroyed everything I thought I “loved” to show me that TRUE love is with Him—not drugs, not games, and especially not porn.

It has only been two days. I am currently withdrawing from so many substances that I know for certain I would never be able to quit without Him. I should be a mess. I should feel dreadful. But I don’t, i feel hope.
I wont deny that the road ahead of me will be tough, but what would life be without struggle. If i wouldn’t struggle my pride would take over and i would think that it was me who fixed me, and if that were the case than i wouldn’t need his grace, which is something neither of us wants.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28
Amen to that.