Chris’ Story
Leaving the coach’s office, I couldn’t help but worry about what my coaches would think of me, what my team would think of me, even how my parents would feel. After a near suicide attempt by a close friend a week earlier, I had just decided to quit the basketball team to try to figure out my life and get things together. I had finally admitted to myself that basketball was just the final straw, and here in my senior year, things were now completely out of control. As I left the high school, I had an eerie feeling that everything I had once put my hope, trust, and fulfillment in, and all the things that I used to earn love and respect from those around me, were now completely gone.
I had always been the “good kid” that didn’t drink, got a 4.0, and followed all the rules. Even the good things that I did by getting good grades, not getting into trouble, and being a decent athlete, were all ploys to earn my parents’ love, or my peers’ respect. I called myself a “Christian” because I believed in a god, and my attempts at living a moral life were in some way, a pitiful attempt at pleasing that god or getting him to do the things I wanted him to do, but it clearly wasn’t working. Friendships had become strained, health issues prevented me from doing many of the things I was good at, and every monotonous day seemed to blur into the next.
I left for college excited about the opportunity to “redefine” myself, to become someone completely new and separate from who I was in high school. No one would know who I was in this new place and I could be anyone I wanted to be. Ironically, I at first continued in my attempts to please people and earn their love, which meant drinking on the weekends and pretending to be fulfilled by that. But several weeks later, my life began to change in ways I could have never expected or imagined.
In October of 2004, I hesitantly went on a Christian retreat somewhere in the middle of nowhere. What I heard that weekend continues to change my life every single day. I was told that Jesus was God, and that through His death and resurrection on the Cross, He came to rescue me from the pain I was experiencing, the emptiness I had been feeling, and most of all, from trying endlessly to earn my place in this world. The only thing I had to “do” was put my faith in Jesus and give up control of my life to Him and I could actually have a relationship with Him!
I had known previously that Jesus had come to “forgive my sins,” but what I hadn’t heard before was that I am also loved and accepted by the God that created the universe. If I didn’t have to “do” anything to please the God who created me, my attempts at earning my standing with others and finding my significance in unreliable things could finally cease. I came back to my dorm at the end of the weekend, and for a month or more, what everyone told me was, “Chris, you’re different since that retreat. You’re always happy.”
The Gospel that I heard clearly for the first time that weekend is something that I continue to learn more about, come to a better understanding of, and experience more and more. Though there is definitely joy and happiness that comes from a relationship with God, some aspects of my life have actually been more difficult since that weekend as I am finding out more and more each day just how deep my sin and weaknesses actually go. Earning peoples’ respect and finding my significance in things other than God are things that are rooted deep within my heart, but the Gospel daily continues in me the painful process of weeding those things out. In the meantime, I get to experience His love and mercy toward me as I wait in hope for Him to change me.
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