Labby
05-13-2008, 02:37 AM
My name's Steven. I'm 24. Youth leader. Heavily involved in my church. But it wasn't always so.
Growing up, my parents always took me to church. I was an active kid: Royal Rangers, JBQ, TBQ (Junior and Teen Bible Quiz), Sunday School, VBS (I was in a lot of those: my mother baby-sat at many different churches), baptised at 12...
But when I got to be in middle school, I stopped caring. Possibly because my dad lost his job (he was Wasco County Sheriff, and lost the election). I decided that God wasn't important, if He even existed. So I started doing my own thing. That included surfing the web. And that's where I fell hard.
I left my seventh grade year addicted to internet pornography. I couldn't wait to get home and get my "fix", not even caring about covering my tracks. But no matter how much I got in trouble, it was impossible to part from my new "friend."
In addition to my new addiction, I had picked up cussing. Little things at first, but it quickly grew (as do all things of this nature), working its way into discussions (or arguments) with teachers and in homework. When I was a senior I had the foulest mouth in school. The funny thing was, I was proud of it. I was impressed with how I had mastered the "art" of cussing.
But I get ahead of myself.
With the porn and cussing, two more things found their way into my life. In middle school I sank into a deep depression that wasn't diagnosed until I was a sophomore in high school. Those were dark years. Painful years. So painful that I started enjoying the company of a razor blade. You can still see some of the marks our relationship produced. I never meant to cut deep enough for scarring, or even for drawing blood: too many questions. But I did, and I have reminders.
When the cutting and porn couldn't relieve the pain, I turned to another source. As I said, my dad was a cop. Since he was, he had a lot of handguns. I knew where they were, and I had easy access to them. I have no idea how many times I took a couple out, emptied them, put them to my head, and pulled the trigger. More than once I wanted to put the ammo back in. The only thing that saved my life was I didn't think the value of it was worth the price of a bullet.
So, just to make sure we're up to speed: I was depressed, addicted to porn, cutting, suicidal, and cussing up a storm.
Into this picture comes my freshman year of high school. On March 31st, 1999, my 15th birthday, I got a phone call. My church's youth group was celebrating birthdays that night, and the youth pastor wanted me to come. I had nothing better to do, so I did.
Over the course of the next three years, I went to youth group, went on missions trips, even joined the worship team. But I was still looking at porn, still cussing up a storm, and still didn't care about God. I knew He existed, but I didn't care about following Him.
Thank God for Kamiah.
The missions trip after I graduated was to Kamiah, ID. I was not going, because I was going to be a Marine. "No! I'm not going to Kamiah! I'm going to boot camp!" Well, my lack of physical fitness kept me out of the United States Marine Corps, people (and that authoritative voice in my head) kept bugging me about Kamiah, so I finally caved and applied.
It was there that I came back to Him. I'm still not sure what did it:we did a VBS, several outreaches, and even had a spontaneous four-hour prayer meeting. Whatever the cause, the boy who went to Kamiah never came back. He died there.
When I came back, I had aspirations to be a youth pastor. I'm now a youth leader, worship leader, taking Bible classes to get credentials, and was recently made our church's Pastoral Intern. People who knew me then hardly recognize me now. And people who know me now have a hard time imagining me back then.
That's my journey thus far. There have been highs and lows since Kamiah, some struggles and backsliding, but I'm still pressing forward, doing my best to follow Him.
Oh! And the theme of the VBS?
"Spiritual Boot Camp." God's got a sense of humor.
Growing up, my parents always took me to church. I was an active kid: Royal Rangers, JBQ, TBQ (Junior and Teen Bible Quiz), Sunday School, VBS (I was in a lot of those: my mother baby-sat at many different churches), baptised at 12...
But when I got to be in middle school, I stopped caring. Possibly because my dad lost his job (he was Wasco County Sheriff, and lost the election). I decided that God wasn't important, if He even existed. So I started doing my own thing. That included surfing the web. And that's where I fell hard.
I left my seventh grade year addicted to internet pornography. I couldn't wait to get home and get my "fix", not even caring about covering my tracks. But no matter how much I got in trouble, it was impossible to part from my new "friend."
In addition to my new addiction, I had picked up cussing. Little things at first, but it quickly grew (as do all things of this nature), working its way into discussions (or arguments) with teachers and in homework. When I was a senior I had the foulest mouth in school. The funny thing was, I was proud of it. I was impressed with how I had mastered the "art" of cussing.
But I get ahead of myself.
With the porn and cussing, two more things found their way into my life. In middle school I sank into a deep depression that wasn't diagnosed until I was a sophomore in high school. Those were dark years. Painful years. So painful that I started enjoying the company of a razor blade. You can still see some of the marks our relationship produced. I never meant to cut deep enough for scarring, or even for drawing blood: too many questions. But I did, and I have reminders.
When the cutting and porn couldn't relieve the pain, I turned to another source. As I said, my dad was a cop. Since he was, he had a lot of handguns. I knew where they were, and I had easy access to them. I have no idea how many times I took a couple out, emptied them, put them to my head, and pulled the trigger. More than once I wanted to put the ammo back in. The only thing that saved my life was I didn't think the value of it was worth the price of a bullet.
So, just to make sure we're up to speed: I was depressed, addicted to porn, cutting, suicidal, and cussing up a storm.
Into this picture comes my freshman year of high school. On March 31st, 1999, my 15th birthday, I got a phone call. My church's youth group was celebrating birthdays that night, and the youth pastor wanted me to come. I had nothing better to do, so I did.
Over the course of the next three years, I went to youth group, went on missions trips, even joined the worship team. But I was still looking at porn, still cussing up a storm, and still didn't care about God. I knew He existed, but I didn't care about following Him.
Thank God for Kamiah.
The missions trip after I graduated was to Kamiah, ID. I was not going, because I was going to be a Marine. "No! I'm not going to Kamiah! I'm going to boot camp!" Well, my lack of physical fitness kept me out of the United States Marine Corps, people (and that authoritative voice in my head) kept bugging me about Kamiah, so I finally caved and applied.
It was there that I came back to Him. I'm still not sure what did it:we did a VBS, several outreaches, and even had a spontaneous four-hour prayer meeting. Whatever the cause, the boy who went to Kamiah never came back. He died there.
When I came back, I had aspirations to be a youth pastor. I'm now a youth leader, worship leader, taking Bible classes to get credentials, and was recently made our church's Pastoral Intern. People who knew me then hardly recognize me now. And people who know me now have a hard time imagining me back then.
That's my journey thus far. There have been highs and lows since Kamiah, some struggles and backsliding, but I'm still pressing forward, doing my best to follow Him.
Oh! And the theme of the VBS?
"Spiritual Boot Camp." God's got a sense of humor.