Before I accepted Christ as my Savior, I was basically a jerk and a bully. After I accepted Christ, I tried to become nicer, but I realized that it had actually become harder to do so. Decisions just seemed to get more and more difficult. So my testimony goes beyond just acceptance of Christ; it also encompasses my life and struggles after my decision of faith.

I’m going to start my story with my life at Scofield Christian School. Like I said, my choices before Christ made me a jerk. But when I decided to change my ways to become more kind, I lost [those] who I thought were my friends. As a matter of fact, by the time I graduated Sixth grade, I had nobody from school to call friend. Throughout that year I was rejected and hated by my class of 13 students for making what I thought to be the right choice. So I always told myself that I wasn’t smart, cool or funny enough to have those friendships.

I always told myself that I wasn’t smart, cool, or funny enough to have friends, because that’s how I lived for a year. I never realized it, but that was my mindset for all of middle school, and that attitude seeped into high school. During my Sophomore year at PCA, I realized that I was beginning to develop new friendships, but I became scared that I would turn back into that jerk I was. So I pushed them away, eating lunch alone, not willing to work with anyone. During the Haiti Minimester last year, however, I realized that pushing people away was wrong. I was meant to live life with others. So, I tried to “fix” myself, trying to become more social and personable. However, I had adapted into an anti-social mess and found myself incapable of doing so.

I snapped and lashed out at people who had made the best effort to become my friend. Throughout the summer I prayed and begged for God to help me become the person He wanted me to be, because I had put on a charade for so long that I no longer knew who I was–I had lost touch with my identity. This may sound super cheesy, but while at a Scout camp, I looked at a mountain range, and I suddenly realized that I shouldn’t be the antisocial machine that I had made myself into, but I also shouldn’t try to be the person I once was, the person who had friends, but wasn’t living the right way.

Christ made me a new person and I’ve learned that I should develop this new self into a righteous and Godly man. Since then, I’ve been working hard to become a better person in Christ, and a better friend to those around me, and I have never felt more appreciated for who I am and who I’m becoming. By living out my story, I have learned that once we accept Christ, we are supposed to be changed, striving to be who Christ made me to be.