Jesus saved me, He could save you.
I am here to tell you how God brought me closer to His heart, His most beautiful most Compassionate heart. Some of you may not know how beautiful God is, how He welcomes us to His heart. I have gone through so many trials in my life, so many. So many nights where I was crying, so many lonely nights, so many times where I was seized by fear and anxiety. What was the solution for all of this? It was Jesus and it is Jesus. God is real. My heart hurts for a world that doesn’t seem to recognize God and love anymore. The media, the songs, the false teachings, the sin, the hurt.
Friends I would not be here today if it were not for God drawing me closer and closer to Him, calling me out of deep depression and fear, and seeking after His divine heart.
The way of sin is death and the way of sin will lead only to more and more death in this world. In the world you will have trial, but God has overcome the world.
I grew up in Texas with two beautiful Catholic parents. We had our struggles financially, with my mom’s health, and in their marriage. But there was never a time in my home that I did not feel loved and know how fully God loved me and how my parents loved me. My sister was my best friend. I grew up going to Catholic schools, learning about God.
Yet, I struggled when I was bullying, received peer pressure to bully another girl, and liked a boy very deeply in middle school for him only to eventually reject me.
I grew up listening to pop songs and watching movies and media, all along unaware that I could just reach out to God with my struggles, with my deep hurt and loneliness that the root of rejections left. Ever since I could remember, I was singing. God put a deep love for music in my heart at an early age yet I couldn’t express my gifts, for fear of being rejected.
Right before I started high school, we moved to California. My sister went through one of the most horrible moments in her life as she started college and my family struggled to help her. I didn’t understand her depression on that deep of a level. I didn’t understand why she was so unhappy. I myself made friends and grew to love the arts and creativity during high school. Then my sophomore year of high school I grew up liking another boy and started having trouble with a friend of mine. I would obsess about this boy and agonize for months about what to do.
Why couldn’t I just be myself around him?
That is when the root of despair began to take place and I understood. I grew depressed after falling behind with all of the schoolwork I had became too much. I had visited a non-Catholic church for the first time after we moved to California and I felt for the first time warmth within myself during prayer. They taught about dispelling demons — it was very charismatic where you could feel the Holy Spirit and be slain in the spirit. All’s this to say, when I started feeling depressed, I thought I needed deliverance and thought that a demon was oppressing me.
My parents took me to get prayed over time and time again and I kind of began to be in shock. I started losing hope that I would be healed and it was at this point that I shut down. I was very much scared of whatever I felt the demon was attacking me.
It was a very strange season of my life that I never thought I would recover from.
I basically had a mental breakdown, catatonia, etc., where I didn’t talk and was so fearful of even moving for the rest of the summer and I was seeing things. Eventually I healed enough to where I could get back to normal and function and we moved to Florida at the end of December. I only attribute God’s grace for getting me through that previous season of my life because it was with Him that I held onto hope.
I wasn’t out of the woods yet because I had a normal high school experience mostly for the next semester, yet fell into the same pattern yet again of liking a boy and not knowing how to be myself over the course of several months. I had friends and I wasn’t extremely shy, just had this root of insecurity where I was uncomfortable being myself sometimes. I would obsess about this for months and then it just go to be too much to handle. A variation of the same thing happened. I had a mental breakdown of sorts, seeing things, feeling attacked spiritually, lonely, and hallucinating. I would go through periods of this up until 2015 when I was finally put on the proper medication in a mental hospital. Over the years after that, I would still have anxiety at times and depression. I feel like all this was from not working through some roots of rejection in my childhood.
So where does God play into all this?
Well, going through this, I would seek God like I had never before. I would listen to sermons, read the bible, go to Church, talk to God. I really hid that I had even gone through anything like this because of shame. Shame of what other people would think, a denial that I had even gone through this.
When you feel like you don’t have anyone, God shows up for you in a powerful way.
I was constantly leaning on Him and going to Him and we formed a deep friendship. So many times when I felt down and lost, God would reach out to me and comfort me and speak to me. I am so incredibly grateful that I survived something like this and that I am even able to return to a normal life. It was during this time that I grew very compassionate and began to love God and others with my whole heart. God was drawing me closer to Him. God is a beautiful God and so, so compassionate. There were so many songs with uplifting lyrics, so many beautiful times where I felt God’s presence like in the Eucharist and at mass. So many times I would listen to something and what they were saying would just hit me.
When you have nothing, you find out that God is all that You need.
From the bottom of my heart, I never want you to go through anything like this. But because we are human, we all know we will suffer. Guess what, God is what is most important. Love is what is most important. There is hope for anyone going through something and there is hope for whoever has strayed. I really want you to check out the Catholic Church because God founded that Church and helps us within the sacraments. I want you to be open to God, the One true God who loves you very deeply. He not only loves you, but wants you to remain in a relationship with Him. He wants you to be there for that loved one who is suffering and He wants you to feel at peace.
I was a very broken lonely soul. But who do you think God saved and is still putting back together? Me.
My heart belongs to Him because once you belong to Him, there is nothing in the world that is better. He created us and we are made to know and love Him. He was all that I had at my worst and He is all that I need at my best. I was created to create and to share the truth and the hope of the gospel. Suffering made the gospel so much more personal to me.
Am I perfect? No. Have I grown a lot? You bet. Who do I owe that to? God. It was only with God and His mercy that I am here today. It is only by the power of love that I am who I am.