When God Speaks To Me

Life Before It All

The very beginning of my life was pretty average. I was actually blessed with a wonderful family, wonderful friends and an overall wonderful life! I was born on a military base in Rota, Spain. Being half Spanish and also having my family living there from my mother's side, I got to explore the riches of Spain with ease. By the time I was 12, we had to leave our enchanting life behind, since my father received orders to move to the States. It was culture shock to say the least, when we arrived at our new home in Virginia Beach, Virginia. But, we were able to get the hang of things rather quickly. My brother and I made several new friends and we had a lot of fun the 3 short years that we spent there. When my father retired from the military, we moved to Jacksonville, Florida (Where I currently reside), so that we could be close to our family from my father's side. Now, don't get me wrong. I was ecstatic to be able to see my relatives as often as we wanted to. However, I was really starting to miss my friends back in Virginia and was having a rather difficult time making new ones. I suppose you could say in a way that this was when I was first officially introduced to solitude. I found some solace being able to chat with them on the internet (This was before texting was a thing since we still used flip phones at the time). And, this is where my story begins. As far as God goes, I had no religion or belief at this point. Sure, I was baptized Roman Catholic. But my family rarely ever went to Mass, except for the completion of the rituals such as, "First Communion." I was not told to believe in anything in particular by my parents growing up; I was only instructed to be kind and to live by one simple rule, "The Golden Rule:" "Treat others the way that you would like to be treated." Other than that, I was like any other kid. One day, when I was 14, while chatting with my best friend on the computer, something prompted me to ask a very strange question. Strange in my case because I was neither spiritual nor religious. But perhaps curiosity was getting the better of me. I asked her, "Do you believe in God?" In which she replied along the lines that she didn't. Now, this may have just been the most shocking thing that I've ever heard because that response had forever changed my life. I may not have been religious but I was always surrounded by people that were. And I had never heard of Atheism before. And for the very first time, I began to have an existential crisis. I was beyond frightened; I never contemplated reality or ever really assumed that I might not exist anymore after I die. I was just blissfully living in my own little world, until then. So many thoughts began to flash through my mind. So, in my desperation to find peace on the matter of rather or not God existed, I did what any reasonable person would do with such questions. I turned, to the Internet. I wasn't much of a reader so I began to spend a lot of time on YouTube. I started watching spiritual videos, but they were not very informational. They were mostly supposed footages of ghosts and hauntings. My line of reasoning at the time was that if I could simply see something supernatural with my own eyes, then I would believe. So, after about a month of ghost hunting on the Internet, I began to run out of words to type in the search engine. One day, I typed, "Shocking," and up came a sermon called, "The Shocking Youth Message," by Paul Washer. Now, I didn't even know what a sermon was, let alone watched one. But after having watched it, that was the day that I became a Christian. I gave up my life's pursuits to follow Jesus and thus began my first real spiritual journey. (And a very long one at that).