When I was nine years old, my dad passed away very unexpectedly. Twenty days later, my grandmother also passed away without any notice. As a nine year old, I believed in God, but didn’t know a lot about who He was and what wondrous things He could do. All I knew was that he took my daddy and my grandma away from me in the same month. I didn’t understand why then, but now, as an adult, I can look back on what I felt back then, and I can sort of understand what I couldn’t then.
When I was five years old, I accepted Jesus into my heart in my Sunday School class. I was always brought up in a so-called “Christian” home and my parents never gave up a chance to tie faith into everyday life. When my sister would want something of mine and I didn’t want to give it up, my mom would remind me that God gave it to me as a gift, so I should be generous with what God gave me. As much as I didn’t want to give it up, I felt like I should, so I did. I learned lessons like that all through the rest of my life, up until this very day.
Even though I was always brought up in a home like that, there were still periods when I would question God and question my faith. Last year, my aunt died of cancer after a long battle. It was really hard on my entire family, and it was the first time I was really old enough to understand what I was experiencing in the death of a loved one. I know that God does everything for a reason, but I still didn’t think it was fair. Around that time was when I had started to question my faith. There were some days when I didn’t want to go to church, or I didn’t want to pray, because I didn’t feel like it did anything. I almost felt like God only listened when He felt like it. However, since then, I have become friends with some really amazing people who have showed me that God really is this amazing being who is the one person who will always be there.
So, I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me, and for...