For a second there I wondered why I would ever want to go back to my old life. It really isn’t a place I want to go often, but with the grace of God — with Jesus in my life, I’m not afraid to look back. I believe God uses this reflecting time to show me His perspective and to help me see where He’s brought me from.

Now I can see Your light was always right in front of my eyes, but I kept looking at my feet, distracted by dark corners and shadows and lost in digging deeper into what could feed my flesh. My life was centered around myself, what I wanted and what would make me feel better and improved. Relying purely on what I was feeling and nothing more.

In Proverbs 3 it says,

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct your paths.”

Before Jesus, when I was trusting only on my own heart and understanding I fell short. I felt like I was constantly walking with a set of hands over my eyes and straight off of a plank into roaring waters.

Everything was all performance based — not grace based. I was paralyzed by anxiety and never being good enough. I thought I had found my place as a social outcast. Identifying as misunderstood, lost in a big world with no hope in ever finding real acceptance. I cloaked myself with an attitude of, “I don’t give two craps,”, “everything sucks,” and “what’s the point,” to cover the hopeless and isolated feelings and also constantly smoking weed and partying to not feel those feelings.

Everyone was numb — it felt safer than the real world and like the perfect place to be myself since no one gave a crap about anything unless it was being argued over. We would talk about loving everyone and treating everyone equal, we would talk peace and friendship and cooperation — but then we would hand our friends drugs or another drink after they had too much, we would encourage sleeping around so casually . I look back and cringe at all the heartache, carelessness and destruction I let myself live in for so long.

One seed was all I needed for my eyes to begin to peek open from behind those hands covering it. That seed was from my sister who shared with me the joy of the Lord. This joy was something I had experienced as a young child who had accepted Jesus into their heart. I allowed that joy to be choked by the world and all of its lies of who God is and His love for me. When my sister let that love shine through her I wanted it back. Slowly my eyes began to open and the deceptive scales fell off and my heart softened.

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:17–19, 21–22, 24‬ ‭NKJV‬‬