My Testimony- Part Two

I left home to go to university. I graduated from grade twelve the year Ontario dropped grade thirteen, and since I have a fall birthday, I left home at the age of seventeen. This is so young to be all alone in a brand new city! My aunt knew an elder of a church in my new city, so she got in contact with him and he and his family would give me rides to church. Now, I need to backtrack a bit to link the two ideas. I’ve loved swimming since I was six years old and always found success in it. I moved through the ranks quickly, and by my last year of high school was good enough to be considered for varsity teams. I found a university that had the program I wanted, and a nationally-recognized varsity team. I was so thrilled that I could swim the practices and even beat out a few of the team vets. The day of my first practice I could hardly eat or focus on my classes because I was so nervous and excited. It may look good to be on a team who has a history of producing Olympic swimmers, but the view behind the scenes was interesting. The pressure of having to perform all week in practice and then drag your tired body through week-ends and week-ends of meets is exhausting, and people do crazy things to win. Our team initiation was brutal, and it got worse from there. I had never seen anything like this before- drug use, casual sex, gossiping, rumor-spreading, the list goes on. Somehow, this didn’t scare me away from the team, and I stuck with it and worked hard, and ended up really improving. On that team, the faster you got, the more you were hated, and the slower you got, the more people liked you. I found myself alienated very quickly, and by the end of the season I had only two friends, who both swam different events than me, so we had no real reason to view each other as the enemy. The pressure to win apparently got to some people, because there was definite use of illegal drugs, and abuse of legal ones. If an athlete tests positive for drugs, the entire team loses their accomplishments for the year, so it was a risky gamble for everyone involved.
Ok, here’s the link to my two points. Being on the team meant I was traveling on average three out of every four week-ends, which meant I could only go to the Sunday service once a month. Every Friday that I wasn’t on the road I went to the youth group as well, but I always had to leave early. Their youth group went really late, so I would leave in time to be in bed so I could go to the 5am swim practice. Fast forward to Easter of that year, where this particular elder and my grandmother found themselves at the same Easter Conference. My grandmother asked how I was doing, and this elder launched into a speech about how my attendance was erratic, my lack of enthusiasm to being a productive member of the church was shocking, and that I didn’t really seem in to going to church. He said this to my own grandmother! I definitely had a lot of explaining to do, and the story quickly spread through my whole family. I was beyond humiliated. I’m a big believer in the fact that there are two sides to every story, and it still makes me so angry that that elder didn’t once bother to ask me about my attendance or “lack of enthusiam” but just assumed that because I wasn’t there every Sunday that I didn’t care. I was young, alone, going under from the stress of school and swimming and I really needed a church, and I really felt that I was let down. I’ve never gone back to that church, and part of me felt like writing a letter, but my name is already mud there, so I don’t feel like making it worse. The Christian Fellowship on campus is strongly populated with people from that church, and they made it clear that I wasn’t welcome there either.
Once burnt, twice shy…it’s too bad they don’t have a saying about “twice burnt”. Maybe four times shy? Either way, I’d had it with church and being a Christian. My second year of university was uneventful. I went to class, swam a lot, studied a lot, and that was about it. God wasn’t a part of it at all, I don’t think I opened my Bible once and certainly never once talked about my beliefs. The one thing I never wavered on was my belief that there is a God and that he sent his Son to die for our sins. I had the beliefs, I just didn’t live the life of a believer. This is the part of many testimonies that would get really exciting, but mine doesn’t. Nothing really happened that year; I was just at a standstill. Not only was my walk as a Christian on hold, but I was still surrounded by the awful atmosphere of the team. Without my beliefs to hold me fast, and being in a "toxic environment" every day, I was well on my way to spiralling out of control.
Third year was better for me. A lot of my friends were in to clubbing and getting drunk and I wasn’t, so I ended up spending a lot of nights home alone. My two Christian friends didn’t really act the part. They were getting drunk all the time, failing classes, swearing, doing drugs. I found myself getting angry at them for being so stupid, and I had to admit to myself that I really didn’t fit in with the non-Christian crowd. The Lord was planting in my heart that I had to come back to Him, but I was reluctant. As the year went on, the feeling in my gut came harder and harder to ignore. I knew what the right thing to do was, it just took a few months to admit it freely. One night, after a particularly long day of dealing with friends, I opened my Bible and read a few passages. It took me a while, but I was finally back to where I knew I belonged.
Right now I feel as though I’ve more or less got my act together. I’ve got an amazing support group in my church, I’ve got a list of new churches to try out at school, and through my daily studies I’ve really grown in my walk with the Lord. I’m still searching for a group of Christian friends, but I trust in the Lord that that will happen. I’m still plagues though by the feeling that I’m a weak Christian. Why did I let the actions of other people affect my walk with Christ? I should have been stronger than that. As I get older, I want to feel myself wanting to have a stronger role in the church, and I’ve really been considering teaching at a Christian school. As the saying goes, God works in mysterious ways, so maybe I’m supposed to use my experiences to help others? Who knows (expect the Lord, of course!). The one thing I do know is that despite all the bad stuff that happened, I’m so glad that I ended up in the arms of our Creator!

So…that’s my testimony. It’s long, so I tried to edit as much as I could (hope I didn’t bore anyone!). My journey (at least, that’s what I consider it as) to living the life of a believer took a few detours, but only now am I realizing that it has a silver lining. It gave me a much better perspective to the life of someone who doesn’t believe in the Lord, and I’m sure the day will come when that will come in handy!

“For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life”
-John 3:16