God Moment

I was sitting on my couch with my parents above me engaging in yet another argument 1. You have to go to a church camp this summer Dan, they said to me. I rolled my eyes in disgust2. It’s not that I didn’t believe in God, well actually it was. I hadn’t felt God’s presence in my life for almost the entirety of high school. It didn’t help that I had engaged in various acts with my ex-girlfriend which only drew me farther away from Him. Long story short, she was a witch[3] who I had found extremely attractive both emotionally, and physically. We had started dating the fall of my junior year, close to my birthday, and it was great. I felt as though I had found someone who had finally seen me for who I was. I felt cared about in a way my parents could have never given me, not that it was entirely their fault, but that they didn’t know what I needed, she did. So I fell for her, and I fell hard.

         I had been in a state of ignorance and bliss for a few months now, it was mid-March and I had just finished my junior year of the swim team a month earlier. I had killed it[4], and now I realized that I had so much more free time on my hands, I no longer had to spend my days slaving away in the pool, instead I could spend them with her. So I did.

         She was all I could think about, the only person I wanted to be with, the only person who I thought made me feel worthy. I was wrong. I hadn’t noticed it, not until Jonny said something to me. He cornered me in one of the halls of our high school as I was walking to my engineering class, Bro*smacks the fuck out of me* I haven’t seen you since swim ended, its been like three weeks, did you fucking die? Jonny is a year younger than me, he’s my best friend. He was right, I hadn’t seen him, I had barely even talked to him when I finally thought about it. I had been consumed with her, I had lost one of my best friends, and that was just the start. His literal smack in the face opened my eyes, I started to notice why I felt as though I always had to be with her, because if I wasn’t everything would go to shit. At least that was what she made it feel like, but thankfully, with Johnny's help he opened my eyes and pulled me from her clutches back to reality. I can remember staring at myself in the mirror one morning, my eyes were sunken in from my insomnia, my hair was disheveled, and my body looked like shit. I had become the person middle school me swore to never become. I was staring at the failure of myself, and I knew I had to make a change. It took me a month to successfully break up with her, but when I did, I was free. But I was still broken. I still didn’t like the person I saw in the mirror, and I had lost the person who I thought made me real. To top it all off, my uncle had died. He had pancreatic cancer and had beaten it. He went to the hospital for a routine checkup, there he contracted Covid, and with his immune system compromised, he died. His funeral was held on Zoom, I never got to say bye, but still, I couldn’t cry[5]. All of these factors drew me further and further away from God. I blamed him for everything and thus did everything I could to be rid of him. So there I was on my couch arguing with my parents when the idea came to me. I could apply to these different camps, and if I applied that meant there was a chance I wouldn’t get in, and if I didn’t get in, I could tell my parents I tried and then move on with my summer. God had other plans, I got in to LTLC[6].

         There I was with fifteen people who I didn’t know who had apparently attended the same church I do. We were stuffed in a bus and sent down to Kansas for this conference. The first four hours were weird, but then the ice started to melt and it actually became a lot of fun. I had forgotten what it was like to be around intentional people, to be around people who cared about you, even if they didn’t know you. I had started to feel worthy.

         This conference was one of the most difficult things I have ever done spiritually, it killed me, and it made me think about the person I had been and the person I wanted to be. In the middle of the week we had confession and then Adoration with the Blessed Sacrament. This was my first time going to confession in over a year, I had sinned so much, I could feel it weighing me down in my daily life. I felt unworthy and like a failure. I remember one thing that ran through my mind as I entered the confessional, no matter what, we are telling him everything, everything dan. So I did, I left nothing out, I told him every sin I could remember and I felt the weight come off my shoulders. My priest looked at me, I could see the sorrow in his eyes, I had probably been in there for no less than twenty minutes confessing. He said God loves you, love yourself, you are forgiven my son …[7], for your penance I want you to do five hail marys. Now, I had a horrible relationship with Mary, my mom loved her and since me and my mom were constantly at odds, it made me despise Her. However, that wasn’t the thought that ran through my head, instead, I had one idea, I had been forgiven. I was forgiven, for everything, for all the shity things I had done, for the people I had hurt, for all the atrocities I allowed, I was forgiven. I was ready for adoration.

         Going into adoration I told myself one thing,  for the entirety of this adoration, we are going to kneel, and we are going to give up all our pain to God. So I kneeled, and I prayed, and I thanked Him, for the fact that I was alive, that he had put people in my life who didn’t allow me to give up. He had given me fallbacks, but I could only now see them looking back. I had been kneeling for an hour and a half, my legs were starting to shake and my knees had gone numb with pain. The priest had begun to take the Blessed Sacrament around the congregation to allow them to be close to Him, I saw Him, and then He passed us. I felt my whole body begin to shake, I didn’t know what was happening to me, I could take the pain I knew I could it wasn’t that, and then I felt it, my eyes had started to swell up, my breaths had started to become sporadic and tears had started to fall down my face. I was crying. No, I was bawling, then suddenly I felt a hand on my back. The moment this hand made contact with my shoulder the only thing I could hear inside my brain was, You're worth it. This hand made all of the pain in my body and mind disappear, I felt nothing but calmness, and in that calmness, I was still crying. It was the hand of God. After a few minutes of this, I put my own hand on His to see if it was real, and it was, I turned around and saw the face of Dan[8] his head tilted up and his other arm outstretched in prayer.

[1] It was towards the end of my junior year of highschool, we were so close to summer I could almost taste the freedom it would give me.

[2] It has come to my attention I have not written about God for almost the entirety of the semester, we are now changing that.

[3] She was. She had various spellbooks and paraphernalia from famous “Mystics” and “Gurus”, she had quite literally performed spells both in my vicinity and with me, she had a small pentagram necklace, and lastly, she had asked me for a vial of my blood. I obliged. I was young. *shrug emoji*.

[4] Obviously.

[5]I haven't been able to cry since my grandmother's death in 2013, I don’t know why

[6] Life teen leadership conference, which was for rising seniors only.

[7] Insert act of contrition, blah blah blah, all that stuff that makes the sacrament actually work.

[8] Another student, my age, I had known him since freshman year of highschool, but I had never had more than a two minute conversation with him. He changed my life.