TRIGGER WARNING
also if youre under the age of 15 please get your parents to read this before you do.

17th of june 2013

to understand this date first you need to vaguely understand what happened before this date. 2013, otherwise known to me as year 10 aka the year from hell …

now don’t get me wrong i have nothing against school in terms of learning but aside from the learning i hated school.

growing up throughout primary and intermediate i had no friends and i mean that.. i was that kid during primary that people would run away from and by intermediate i just sat by myself as i had given up trying to make friends because of constant mocking and bulling. it wasn’t until i moved to a new school in year 9, away from everyone i previously knew that i finally made my first friend. the first few weeks at high school were amazing up and i finally thought things were going to change. unfortunately i was wrong; after the 2 weeks the february earthquake struck and my friend was no longer able to attend my school. at the same time as my only friend leaving rumours from my old school started spreading around my new school and after this high school just became another place where i was mocked bullied or teased.

 having no friends and being bullied on a constant basis was hard and it’s something i would never wish on another soul. it created all sorts of problems in my life, changing the way i viewed myself and even the way i viewed life. i felt i was unworthy of anything good. i felt as though no one would ever like me let alone love me. i felt like i was a waste of space and oxygen. i felt like me being on earth was some sort of mistake.

there were all these negative thoughts i had about myself and about the world and although being bullied doesn’t necessarily cause mental health issues it does create an environment for them to grow.

little to my knowledge i struggled with mental health issues throughout primary, intermediate and high school as my environment had created this space for them to grow. it wasn’t until year 9 when i was diagnosed with numerous disorders that i realised I was struggling with mental health for many years. to show the severity of what was going on in my head, professionals in private told my mum that my self-esteem was the lowest they had seen in the canterbury region in over 30 years. i struggled with depression, severe social anxiety, general anxiety and anorexia to name some and this led me to harm myself and even attempt to take my life on multiple occasions.

to be brutally honestly, i should not be alive today but by the grace of god i am and for that i am thankful…

…………

the way i came to church was a ‘divine intervention’ kind of story;

my friend mackenzie invited me to church one weekend after finding out i was in hospital for a suicide attempt. the problem with her invite was that at this time in my life i was under 24/7 surveillance by my parents due to my suicide attempt and being an outpatient at princess margaret hospital for anorexia. although mackenzie was a friend that my parents trusted and i swore to eat food that one afternoon that i would be away; my parents were still reluctant to let me go anywhere without them and they were definitely not coming with me to church. so church was initially a no until my  school decided to assign me an assessment for religious education in which i was to go to church and do a report on it. so in the end my parents let me go to church with mackenzie as “school was too important”. 

so that’s where the 17th of june comes in as this was the first day i walked into a church and unknowingly experienced the presence of god. 

i remember walking into church for the first time and while i was walking down the stairs i thought what is this, this isn’t a church, why’d mackenzie being me to a concert. i was pretty confused as my perception of a church was ‘boring school chapel’ which meant i had never seen flashing lights or a drum kit in a church in my life. as i got to where mackezie decided we were sitting i felt what i now know to be the presence of god and i turned to mackenzie and asked “can i come back with you”.  

Mackenzie said yes and since that day, i’ve been in church practically every week for 7 years.

if im completely honest, i didn’t come to church for god i came for the people. to me anyone loving and accepting me was a weird and foreign concept but that’s exactly what everyone did. for the first time in my life i felt loved and accepted by people and this was the reason i stuck around. i had gone so many years not experiencing any of this that at first i didn’t even know how to accept. i had convincided over the years that i didn’t deserve love, that i would never be excepted but here i was, confronted with unconditional love and acceptance from people who just met me and what did they expect back – nothing; a strange yet the most beautiful concept. what i realise now is that this was gods love though others. these people at church had experienced and knew this love and through them god was showing himself to me despite me not believing in him

now coming to church this day 7 years ago didn’t change me instantly. the problems i had never disappeared because i came to church but what it did do was provide a safe and healthy environment for my recovery.

over these first few months of being at church i changed immensely. this environment helped me change how i saw myself, other people and the world. after two months of coming to church for the people and the environment i decided on the 26^th of august to say yes to jesus for the first time in my life.

coming to church in general helped with my recovery as i said earlier but after responding to jesus this just sped it up 10-fold. for the first time in years i stated becoming happy and for the most part life was bearable. my anxiety had decreased meaning i could hold a conversation without hiding behind mackenzie or having a panic attack, i wasn’t experiencing depression to the extent that I had for 3+ years and I started recovering from my eating disorder.

now that’s not where the story ends but for now this is where it pauses.