9-11-12
Personal Essay: A Turning Point in My Life

I felt something catch in my throat as the salty tears streamed down my face and my heart pounded in my chest. My knees wobbled with exhaustion from kneeling on the ground for so long and I began to sway. Something transformed within me, like this greater being was taking over and swarming inside my body. Some people might describe the knot in my stomach as butterflies, but it was much more powerful than that, more like a humming bird. Goosebumps trailed up my arms and legs, causing me to shiver. I knew that from that moment on, I would never be the same. That moment at Luke 18 was when I first felt my connection with God.

Luke 18 was a retreat where my entire eighth grade class at PSR went up to our church and participated in fun religious activities during the day. At night, the kids would go sleep in ‘sleep houses’ which were parent’s houses that had been offered to let Luke 18 kids stay there. When the retreat first started, I didn’t have many friends there. I saw three people I knew faintly from school, but most of the other kids went to richer private schools. Throughout the first day of activities, I felt very insecure about myself. I didn’t wear as much make-up and I wasn’t dressed as nice as the other girls. I felt like they looked down upon me and I was just this small bug on the bottom of their designer shoes. The girls were intimidating to me and it seemed too scary to even imagine trying to make friends. At the end of the day, I had had some fun but I felt myself watching too closely to see if the other girls approved of me. When it was time to go to our sleep houses, it didn’t help to be in a house with some of the richest and most popular girls from school. Before we went to bed we all stayed up talking for a bit and I tried to only say things they approved of. Recently, I had been very depressed. People at school felt more judgmental than usual and nothing seemed to make me feel better. It only made things worse that I was such an outcast at Luke 18. Later that night I had trouble going to sleep. I found myself in a very dark place, feeling cold and alone. I had fallen off a cliff and was lying broken at the bottom, waiting for someone to lift me back up. It felt as if I didn’t belong in the world at all. It was the loneliest blackest night I had ever felt.
After my long sleepless night, the next day I decided that this weekend would just be miserable if I didn’t have any friends to share it with. I knew there had to be nice people here somewhere and I was determined to look for them. I decided to start being my natural friendly self to people I might not normally talk to. I talked with the three girls I knew from school and bonded with them through the team building activities we did. I also made tons of new friends who didn’t hate me just because I wasn’t as rich or stylish as they were. Luke 18 was turning out to be a lot more fun than I had originally expected. My only problem was that I still wasn’t feeling connected to God.

On the last night of Luke 18, I was still waiting for that special connection with God that I had heard so many people talk about. I thought that maybe there was just something wrong with me or maybe God didn’t love me like he loved everybody else. Or maybe he just didn’t exist at all and here I was waiting for something that wasn’t even real. After a deep reconciliation activity, we were guided down to the gym where black velvet curtains covered the walls making it feel like night. Candles basked a warm orange glow on the floors, creating a path for us to walk. We followed the path until we reached a large clearing in the middle of the floor. There were lots of delicate old crosses set up in a circle that shone in different shades of gold and silver. The stage that was located at the front of the gym had a band that played soft music. My mood immediately changed from energetic to calm. The priest instructed us to kneel in a circle around the crosses and simply pray. He said to talk to God like he was a friend and just ask him anything we wanted to. I asked this God (that I was starting to question even existed) about what I was feeling. I asked him how come I couldn’t listen to him like everyone else could. I asked him why I couldn’t hear his responses. Was it something I did wrong? Was I a bad person who didn’t deserve his guidance and attention? To my frustration, I heard no response. I kept waiting for something to just whisper in my ear and answer me. I wanted him to talk to me and explain to me why I couldn’t hear him. I kept asking him in my head, over and over, what is it that I’ve done wrong? Why don’t I feel the connection that everyone else feels? Tears began to flood my eyes and my lower lip began to quiver. Drops of sadness began to stream down my face, stinging my cheeks. It felt like my heart was falling in my chest, falling down a dark empty hole into the coldest loneliest place I had ever felt. It was worse than the first night because instead not having friends, I didn’t have God who was supposed to be my best friend. After a while I dried my tears and I just kneeled there and listened. I listened for a very long time.
As I listened, I began to feel something in my chest. It was something powerful and great, like a gigantic sunflower blooming in my chest. That’s when I heard God. There was no whisper in my ear or voice I heard coming from the sky. There was this greater being that flooded inside of me and my body was swamped with millions of different emotions. God was talking to me and he was telling me not to be sad anymore because he was there and he always had been. He had always been there to guide me and help me make the right decisions. I never knew he was there because I had been waiting for something entirely different. I thought someone would call clearly to me down from heaven and speak to me. But I was very wrong. God was speaking to me through all of my actions and all of my emotions. Two nights before, God has taught me to be myself and open up to new people by showing me loneliness. My heart grew wings and flew away to sunny skies. The tears weaved through the crevices on my face, leaving wet trails behind. I felt laughter in my stomach, and I almost burst out giggling.

That Luke 18 experience changed my life more than anything else ever had. It was a turning point because throughout the experience I had learned to be myself and had developed a sense of confidence. I no longer felt like I had to impress everyone and prove myself to them. I realized if I was myself then I would meet people who didn’t judge me for being different. When I found God on the last night of Luke 18, I felt like my “Luke 18 experience” had been completed. I finally knew what everyone at church and PSR class was talking about; God could be my best friend and he loved me more than anything. He was watching out for me every step of the way through the staircase of my life. Before, all I had ever done was talk to God but never stop to listen. Now I have learned to listen and I’ve never felt more satisfied in my entire life.