The real talks with Tina and later Clarissa and Bryan made me finally put what I've been feeling these past months into words.

What I'm trying to do is rebuild my relationship with Christ.

When I first came to Him, it was with an innocent and fully trusting faith in Him as He tore away hurts and scars from my childhood with promises of a new life. I truly felt like a new creation and life felt like a bit of heaven. But as I went through the phases of growing up (and I am still now of course), I got hurt, betrayed and pushed around by a lot of people that I trusted the most and I fell into an extremely low time in my spiritual life and faith. My mistake was blaming God for my wrongs and their wrongs when in reality it was all just OUR wrongs.

Now, I've built up walls and denied my own shortcomings. My pride has become subtler, but even more dangerous and it would be correctly defined as fake humility. In dealing with a lot of my friends now, there is a lot of insecurity and distrust, and all of it is rooted in fear because of past hurts. Closing my heart off has only let it harden and now my faith, service and myself suffer from that. It's ironic because the past me claimed to have the answers to what I'm going through now, but I see now that it is only through the grace of Christ that anyone can be lifted up.

I'm tired of what I'm doing to myself and how it has made me treat others. I can't trust my closest friends, I'm extremely insecure with who I am, I gossip behind my closest brothers' backs, I hate others, I compare myself to others which is unfair to myself and them, I've developed a prideful wall that is easily insulted and lashes out, and all in all I've become exactly the things I swore to stand against.

But despite all the negative things I've experienced these past couple of years, I know that I've experienced so many wonderful things and met so many awesome, humbling and inspiring people through it all. All the positive things truly serve to show that God never left me. Never did He abandon me. Never did He stop loving me.

I know even now it's still so hard to get that.. and I'd say to myself a lot: "being human sucks sometimes, we're very confusing." But I need to lay it all down instead of searching for an explanation because I know that in time that will come. I miss the old me. I miss my faith from before. I miss a lot of things from the past.

But God didn't put me through what I went through if He didn't want me to become a better person. Sure, things may have seemed picture perfect to me before, but if God put me through what I've been through, then I should trust His providence in knowing that truly then, things can be so much better and He is leading me to that now.

The way I see it now, what I felt in my heart before in terms of faith was pure and good. And so now, aiming for that purity and goodness through Christ, God is now leading me to that again, but this time with a stronger foundation, a newer and better me, and an overall better understanding of the world and people around me.

In the end God wants me to bear more fruit for Him. And to do so is to love and to forgive. In a way I feel like He is tearing me open so that my heart has more room for all different kinds of people, not just a select few that I feel comfortable with.

Who knows though, He could be taking me down an entirely different path.

But before all that...

I need to rebuild my relationship with Christ.

Amen.

God bless