Raw and Uncut: Part 5

This will be the last part in the series Raw and Uncut. Even though I was saved, life still continued to be difficult for me and the trials began to become severe at times the more I learned about the gospels and Jesus Christ. My tics and anxiety still frustrate me, but I have gotten to the point where I am at most times able to control them, especially when I am in public. Through the these trials, I am learning daily to put my trust in Christ and to lean on him for my strength.

After being saved and having my mom pass was very difficult for me, but as I mentioned in my last post, continuing to serve in the church and growing relationships helped me lead me to being healed. In July of 2009, I went on a camping trip with some friends from church for the weekend. I came back home to find my apartment broken into with many of my valuables stolen. These included a my laptop, a cd box collection, state quarter map, all my CDs and DVDs and a guitar plus amp. The only item that I have since replaced was my laptop, which I still have to this day. At the time, I was completely devastated and wondering why this happened, but I soon came to the realization that things in this life do not happen by chance, but are orchestrated by God. I now look at this situation as one of cleansing, since many of those items were detestable in the site of God and would keep me in the past life that I would now slowly be moving away from.

Months and months went by and many of the activities that I enjoyed doing while I was in college seemed to become unattractive to me, like getting drunk every weekend or going out to bars. I also slowly seemed to move away from hanging out with many of the friends that I had made while in college and turned my attention to the friends and activities that surround the church.

During my early years of being a Christian, I also became deeply interested in prophecies, conspiracy theories and topics about the New World Order. I listened pretty much daily to these to the point where I was pretty much at times living paranoid. This paranoid time also caused my tics to go crazy as I would also be nervous about what might happen and if I truly was prepared if this New World Order would succeed in coming about. I felt at times as if I was studying and focusing all my attention on this topics and news articles rather than studying scripture and praying. My pornography abuse would become strong during these times as well and this also caused many hardships in relationships that I tried to have. I did eventually leave the church that I was attending based on many different factors that at that time I felt strongly about, which included that there were Freemasons attending the church and witchcraft going on. I never really found out if these were in fact true.

One day I was searching the internet and ended up finding out about Reformed doctrine on the internet and came to the realization that this was what I truly believed and wanted to find somewhere to attend that preached it. I did some research and found a church called Grace Church near where I lived. From the first time that I stepped foot in this church, I have felt that I have finally found a home that I could belong to and grow in God's word. I ended up going through a discipleship program with the Pastor of this church within the first couple of months of attending and got baptized towards the last couple of weeks of my discipleship. This time was also when I ended up breaking free from being caught up in studying conspiracies and starting to put my faith in the fact that God is sovereign and he is in control of all of the events that take place in this world. I ended up becoming a member of the church later that year and know that this is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Through my times at this church, I have continued to grow in God's grace as well as his word and developing many friendships with the members of the church. I have had a couple of relationships while attending this church, but they have both ended pretty roughly as God was not at the center of the relationship. My struggle with pornography has still been ongoing, but I will say that currently as of this moment that I am a month strong in victory and have no desire to go back to viewing it. This has been the longest that I have ever been in victory over this particular sin in 20 years. With all this said, we all have our trials and disabilities that we struggle with, it is truly how we deal with them that matter and where our trust is. As long as we fully trust in God and what he has done for us, then all things will be possible. I have no clue where the rest of my life will lead me, but I do know that it is in God's hands and that I fully trust him more than ever. If you are ever struggling, remember, God is only a prayer away and will never leave your side if you put your trust in him. God Bless and until next time, Take care.

Raw and Uncut: Part 4

Once I started working, I still continued the life of partying and drinking and leading my life down a dangerous path. I felt like I was searching for something, but had no clue what it was or how to even find it. The suicidal thoughts just kept coming and it seemed at time like the best option since I was seeming to be going nowhere in life and the tics just continued to drive me crazy. I ended up at one point moving into a house near the college campus, about 10 minutes, with three other friends that smoked weed. I pretty much drank and smoked after I got off work in what seemed like every day that I lived there, which ended up being 4 months. I also ended up driving drunk twice while I lived there. One time I ended up busting my tire and had to fix it the next day, which happened to be 4/20. This got me very upset because I would have rather had been smoking than fixing the tire. The other time was after a party and I ended up blacking out and coming to right in front of my bathroom mirror. I was a little freaked out, but it wasn't enough at that time to change my habits. Partying all night and then going to work the next day was even something I did around this time, not something I recommend.

Although, I had driven home drunk a couple of times before, it didn't phase me because I was still close to the place I was drinking. I ended up moving out of the house that June and into an apartment about 30 min from the campus. On a night after a Halloween party on the college campus, I ended up getting really drunk to the point of blacking out again and drove home. I woke up on my couch the next morning having no clue of this because the last thing I remembered was talking to a friend at the party. This freaked me out even more than the last time because of all the possibilities that could have happened while I was blacked out. I remembered back to my days in church and then I proceeded to get on my knees and cry out to God wondering why I was still alive and what his purpose was for my life. 

After this, I got up and got in contact with a friend and started to attend a church, which was around Christmas time of 2008. Also, during this time I started to look up bible prophecy stuff online and came across the New World Order and conspiracies and how they tied together. After two weeks of going to church, the most devastating thing happened and that was the death of my mother. This was hard to take in and I was frustrated and angry and asked why God would lead me back to the church and then take my mom away from me. All I got back was keep going and you will see the full picture in due time. I felt the thoughts of suicide start to come back, but I decided to go back to church and went to a class that I was able to ask questions and understand the bible more. I then got more involved in the church through serving and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior for all that was going on in my life and the changes that were happening. 

It is amazing to look back at this time and see all that the Lord was doing in my life to bring me back into a relationship with him. The reason for this sudden change of thoughts from suicidal and hopelessness to a one of hope and faith is still a mystery to me, but is a true show of the power of God. It also shows that He is the only one that can change our thoughts and that without him we are totally depraved and heading for destruction. How do my tics and life go after my now devoted relationship with Christ has started to begin? I will continue this in my last part. Until then, take care and God Bless.
 

Raw and Uncut: Part 3

This is the third part of my story. If you have not, please read the first two parts of this series before reading this one. Thanks and I am now going continue with where the last one left off. After high school, I started to adjust to life after not taking drugs for my TS. I found a love for alcohol (hard liquor that is) on my 19th birthday when I tried it for the first time. I ended up attending college in the fall of 2002 and lived at home for the first year and a half. This situation frustrated me the most because all I wanted to do was move out and escape from all the bad situations that occurred to me living at home. I thought that if I were to move out, then I would not have to worry about focusing on my tics much anymore, since I had stopped taking the drugs. This was the wrong idea because the tics would always be there whether I chose to ignore them or not. I also started to feel a heightened state of anxiety start to come in during this part of my life. I continued to participate in cross country and track in college to help with the anxiety and tics. 

I was finally able to move on to campus at the college during the second semester of my sophomore year. This led to me finding out all the social activities that really went on during the night time hours at the campus, especially at fraternity row. Fraternity row basically consisted of 4 fraternity houses and 2 sorority houses grouped together in a cul-de-sac. From this, I ended up pledging a fraternity during the same semester. The night that I turned in my fraternity bid ended up being the second night of my life that I got completely drunk to the point of blacking out. I was told that I ended up spending the whole night, even during a party going on, at at toilet throwing up. The pledging during this semester had to be put on hold, though, after the only other pledge ended up getting arrested for drinking and driving on Easter weekend. It was hard having to wait over the summer to find out who the new pledges would be. I continued during that semester to get completely drunk to help tone out the horrible academic performance that I was doing.

Once joining the fraternity, things seemed to go well for me socially. I felt that I had finally found what I was looking for and was constantly surrounded by partying and many activities that were going on during that time. I pretty much got drunk to the point of blacking out on average about once a week and seemed to not really care that this was going on. I felt like no one was understanding the inner struggle I always seemed to have, which makes me feel at times like I am bipolar. My tics continued to increase at this time, although I don't really remember any of the ones I was doing. I usually just played everything off and laughed with everyone as they joked about it.

Also during this time, I was continuing my downward spiral of looking at pornography. I will not go into it, but I have definitely gone down depths during this time that I am too ashamed to even mention in this blog. Thankfully, with the blood of Christ, I have been able to overcome many of these addictions in the realm of pornography. This was hard to deal with because I felt like I could not bring anything up to the brothers for fear of being laughed or looked at weird. I felt that they could not fully understand my addiction to the pornography and this caused me to start getting a distorted view of the opposite sex. At this time of struggle, all I could see around me were people talking about SEX, SEX, SEX and at times I felt completely hopeless and alone.

Stealing for projects around the fraternity house and also just for fun or the thrill happened during my time in college. I even ended up smoking weed for the first time a couple months after my 21st birthday after one night once the cross country season had ended, I decided to hang out with my old pledge brother, who got arrested, while he was rolling on acid. This was a bad idea because along with another friend, we ended up driving for two hours to get this kid home and then after we got back to campus, I ended up smoking my first bowl. I continued to smoke weed pretty regularly for the next 4 years. I never recieved an A in college and had a semester of a couple of Fs and Ds because I seemed to not really care much about studying and only hanging out with friends and having fun. During all this time, I never even thought once of going to church as I did during my time in high school. I felt that during this time that God had deserted me and that I was completely alone without anyone to really care about me. I pretty much wanted to kill myself like I thought about doing after the one incident in high school. I felt that if I drank too much, I would be able to succeed that way, but it always ended up with me blacking out and then waking up the next day with a hangover and many bad memories to hear about the next morning. I ended up graduating college barely with a 2.0 and no job in site to start after my college years were over. I was about to head out into the real world with no experience and a hell of a college experience. How will I handle trying to getting a job? Once I finally am able to, how does that affect my life? I will continue this in my next part. 

If you have any questions or comments about this blog, please feel free to leave them. Thanks and until next time, take care and God Bless!

Proclaiming the Gospel through Missions

The Great Commission

I would like to say that along with bringing awareness of my Tourette Syndrome and the glory that God has shown me through my trials that some of my posts will also deal with topics that are of interest to me and that I support. One of these is of missions and the Great Commission that Jesus left the disciples as he was departing the world to head home to sit at the right hand of God. Missions is very important because it is helping in God's plan to bring about new churches and call new believers to Him. Until everyone in the world has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, there will still be a need for missions. Here is the Great Commission verse out of Matthew 28:16-20,

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

From this verse, we can see that proclaiming the gospel to others and making them disciples is one of main duties that followers of Christ have. There are many people in the world that have never heard the gospel and by following this command by Jesus, we help to bring them into the awareness of it and the glory of God. Here is a verse from Romans 10:13-15 stating that there needs to be those that are sent so that people who have not heard the gospel are able to hear it.

"For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!""

If no one is sent to the places where the gospel is not heard, then how will they be able to know about Christ and the salvation that he has brought to this dying world? In order for a person to believe and call on the name of the Lord, they will need a missionary to come to them with the gospel so that they are able to hear it and have God open up their heart to receive the gift that he has freely given them. 

Quotes on Missions

Here are some quotes on Global Missions.

Charles Spurgeon

"If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world."

John Piper

"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t."

Hudson Taylor 

"The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed"

David Livingstone

"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?" 

John Stott 

"We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God."

K.P. Yohannan

"Believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story."

My Part in Global Missions

Along with many people needing to hear the gospel overseas, there are others here in the United States that truly need to hear and believe the gospel. Currently, the only missions work that I am involved in is in my daily life with those around me. I believe that this area is just as important as anywhere else in the world. I have thought of serving overseas, but have not yet decided on where to go. This would be a big decision for me as I have yet to even travel outside of the United States. I do, though, currently support many ministries that go overseas to spread the gospel and fulfill the Great Commission that way. There are three ways that are seen to help in missions work; to go and serve, to support those that do serve and to pray for those that serve. I hope that this has opened your eyes to the need of missions work in the church and the call that Christ has given to bring the gospel to the whole world. Take care and God bless.

Raw and Uncut: Part 2

This part of my story is the most hardest for me to reveal, as the most pain that I have been through was during this time. Despite it all, I am thankful for what I have gone through as now I am so grateful that God has saved me from my wretchedness. Before continue with my story, I would like to rewind and cover something I forgot to mention in my last post that happened before my diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome. After my mom got divorced, she ended up dating someone new, who is now my stepfather. At first I was unsure how I should react to this situation since it was within a couple of years after my parents divorce. The one thing that I will say is that I am thankful that they did not get married until I was much older, as I am not certain how I would have handled it, especially once things started to go crazy in my teen years.

After finding out about the TS, things seemed to be all about medication and seeing a doctor for suppressing the tics and calm me down. I am not certain how many types of medications that I was on or even what they were, all I know is that when it comes to many of the memories during that time it seems all a blur, except for some of the summer camps that I attended. There were definite instances of rage attacks, or storms, that I had in which I attacked my family members, including my grandmother and my mom. This tore me up inside because I felt like I had no control and could not stop once they had started. The best thing that I knew is that once they did start, the best thing would be to let me have my space and then once I was ready to then confront me. During this time, I would also try on several occasions to run away from home because of the pain and just not wanting to deal with things anymore. Along with having these rage attacks, I would also have cases where I would just blackout. I am not sure why this was happening, but it was very frustrating and made me have to have someone come pick me up from school numerous times. One of my best outlets during this time was being involved in playing baseball and basketball in a church league.

In high school, I started to date and I also ended up losing my virginity to my first girlfriend a couple of months after my 15th birthday. A few months later I found out that she cheated on me and I was devastated but did not have the strength to break anything off. This activity continued on for a little while longer, which destroyed my spirit even more, even though I had no idea that I was doing this to myself. The relationship ended because I could not maintain a real relationship because of my addiction to pornography. My next girlfriend ended up feeling the effects of this relationship as well as my medication from doctors try to suppress the Tourettes that I had. I ended up getting my first job at a health food store near my house as a stock clerk at the age of 16. It was during this time that I also became depressed because of all the different types of medication that I was on and the fear of having to constantly be on it for the rest of my life. Having this depression eventually led to me being prescribed an antidepressant called Zoloft. One day after not taking the Zoloft for about a week while I was viewing pornography on my computer, my girlfriend at the time walked in and we got into an argument. During the argument, I proceeded to hit her because of the rage that was caused by the withdrawals and being caught viewing the pornography. She ran out of the room and I went into my bathroom and found a box-cutter, that I had from work, and proceeded to cut my arm. I still have the scar from the cut on my left arm. I basically wanted to kill myself, but ultimately could not go through with carrying out the task. Not killing myself made me more depressed because I felt like I even failed at that after showing myself that I failed at being a good boyfriend. I ended up staying with the girl for a year and a half, but had to break it off because I could not bear the person I was becoming because of the pornography and drug that I was on. After this breakup, I ended up trying alcohol for the first time on my 19^th birthday. Little did I know how this would affect my life in my college years. How will my Tourettes go in my college years? How much of a part will alcohol play? I will go in to these in my next part. Until then, God Bless!!

Confidence in Christ

As someone who is a Christian, my ultimate purpose is to show other's the love of Christ and the gospel. As someone who has Tourette Syndrome, I have tics and anxiety that are with me every second of every day while I am in this fleshly body, but once I am dead and gone where will I go? That was a big question that I asked myself once I was saved. The answer lies in if I have put my faith and confidence in God and the sacrifice that he made through Christ on the cross. This action actually happened for me once I was saved and put my confidence in Christ. This confidence can help when the anxieties and tics seem to be at the worst and causes the most harm to emotionally and physically. I can not just walk away from myself when I get frustrated with my tics, other people can, and this is really difficult. This difficulty has led me sometimes to feel utterly alone without anyone to truly understand what I am going through. My faith and confidence in Christ, though, has shown me that God loves me to the point of dying for me and that I am not alone as long as my focus is on him, since he has already experienced life's hardship when he came to earth in the flesh and died. It is through this faith that I was shown that no matter how alone I do feel, that God is always there and never moving away. He is always a prayer away from me discussing the problems that I am going through and help me see the situation and life through his eyes and not mine. I would like to now share two videos that I have just recently found that are very inspiring (at the end of the post). One is of a girl named, Lena, who has TS and uses flash cards to help bring about the awareness and show her story about the acceptance of it. The other video is of a well known singer named, Jamie Grace, who also has TS and talks about her diagnosis as well as struggles living with TS. Besides these two both having TS, they are also both Christian and passionate about their faith and telling others about it. I hope you enjoy these and remember that even though TS or disabilities can be clearly seen in these fleshly bodies, we are eternal, and our faith should be in Christ if we are to have any hope for a life after death. Until next time, Take Care and God Bless!!

Lena's note card video round two.

Jamie Grace - Dealing with Tourettes