The start

It's taken me a while to get round to this, but I guess now as good a time as any to get started. All I'm going to start by doing is telling the start of my story, with the aid of a poem I wrote a couple of years ago. So here goes:

I was brought up in a Christian home, and went to church pretty much every week. In the kids' groups we would hear lots of Bible stories and get told how much God loves us. Because I never knew anything else, it was incredibly easy just to take God for granted, and to believe it all without really giving it much though, but by the time I was about 11, I had to begun to really consider my faith in a deeper and more personal way. I also had my first actual experience of God: I simply felt his love, and for the first time, realised that it really did apply to me.

So everything was going pretty well, until I began to get really lonely in school. I had started to slip away from some of my friends, but by the time I realised, it was already to late for me to do anything. It was a bit ridiculous, because I had a (small) number of other friends, both in and out of school, but for whatever reason, I still felt absolutely terrible. As things kept getting worse through Year 8 & 9, my faith really suffered. I went through periods of doubt and anger, intercepted with times when I was really fired up for God. Strangely, all I wanted to do was the right thing, but I was just so confused.

Moving into Year 10, I hit rock bottom. I sometimes wasn't even sure about God any more, and in those moments I truly didn't know who I was. I couldn't see any hope, and I really didn't know what to do. Nothing made sense. This is what I wrote at the time (March 2010):

?
It's the ever-changing constant,
the certain uncertainty,
the fire that falls as rain.

It's the everlasting moment,
the bottomless height,
a twisted eternity of darkness.

It's the darkness in the light,
the pain of emptiness,
and the emptiness of pain.

It leaves me watching,
waiting,
as my hope slowly drains away.

Less than a moth later though, God transformed my life in a way bigger and better than I could have imagined. But I'll share that next time.

So, this is my first post and I thought I'd use it to explain what this blog is going to be about: it's going to be about me and my story, include some of my more interesting or useful thoughts, and possibly a few of my writings. It's probably nothing particularly special, but I want to share it anyway; hopefully you will enjoy it.