The past few days, better yet weeks haven’t been the greatest. Some of you know what’s been going on in my personal life recently, some don’t at all. Before I begin I want to give a heads up on what I’m going to be talking about. There’s a positive ending to this though!
Note/Warning: This may seem like a bashing post on individuals, place, etc. But it isn’t, it’s actually a some what continuation off of the Baptism entry I wrote a few months back. Plus this is just something I need to do, to start that new chapter or to start new to put it to a close. Plus it also connects to today. It’s also pretty much a crash course of what took place in a year.
As I’m sure many of you know I went to Alliance Bible Church aka ABC (now StoneCrest) during highschool. I loved it there like you had no idea. I guess it was because of the friendship I had with Mark Barnish. I had done the website for the youth group for 4 – 5 years straight and it became a great service to everyone and helped the parents out a lot from what I’ve heard. Well towards the end of my Junior year Mark had announced that after the Missions Trip in England he would be leaving the church to go start a daughter/sister church in Swedesborough, NJ. This was heart breaking news for me as well as many others, but had faith everything was going to be ok. The Missions Trip came and I had a great time over there, plus it would be one of my last greatest memories with Mark. The time came for Mark to leave and the new Youth Pastor took over.
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I’m leaving names out for the current youth pastor and others out of respect and for privacy. If you know who it is, then I hope you understand. If you don’t but would like to know, I’ll make an exception if you email me, or contact me on Facebook
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Things seemed like they were going to be ok and that nothing would change. But little did I know what would happen in a year. My Senior year became really busy, and I got behind on updating the website. But I eventually did it in a timely manner and that soon stopped.
Around the end of my Senior year I had told the new youth pastor some thing in confidence. It was nothing bad just something I figured he should know about. From that day on things changed. I started getting emails asking for the login information for the website server, etc. I was slowly starting to be shunned, and I was taken off the website with out being told they were giving it some one else to do it. In October of 2006 our web host found out and he was quite upset about it considering they were getting free website hosting because I helped run the company but also because I was working on the site. So I typed up a formal letter and handed in explaining their options. While typing this up, being quite upset, the youth pastor came outside the sanctuary asking what I was doing. I tried explaining while I was rather upset but I couldn’t find the words. He walked away but then turned around and in a loud tone, basically yelling at me explaining is frustrations and then claiming that this was the wrath of God and coming out of him. That was when things really also started to go down hill.
As I said before I handed it in and the person who currently runs the new website flipped out on me and told me this was BS. I was sat down with a week later and told that I will no longer be working on the site (Ironic cause I was pulled off the site without any notification before this meeting) and that they will be going to a new webhost. Things remained rocky for about 2 more months. I had decided I wasn’t going to go to the new years celebration and spend it with friends. After new years I hadn’t heard anything about the youth group so I asked my bassist and he told me they had been meeting for two weeks already. What else was I to do but respectfully ask him to explain to the youth pastor I didn’t know and that I will be coming next Sunday. I found out later that week from my bassist that apparently that night the youth pastor said “That’s BS he knew”. Now whether that is true or not I’m not sure. But I decided from that point on I’m not going back to the youth group or that church for that matter.
I left only to return one Sunday cause I was invited by the lead pastor to check out something they were doing for college students. Ironically I was never called after meeting up about it. It was after I left I really started to depend on my friends. And it was these event’s that took place, that really caused me to stray away from God, better yet my faith I should say. Still I kept pressing on and stayed away from the church for months and stayed close to my friends. It wasn’t till Spring 07 when I got involved in Liquid Church. And since that day I’ve really struggled with going every Sunday or going at all. I mean who could blame me after what I went through in the past year?
Fast forward to now and I still am. I’ve been off and on because of school, but still ever since what happened it’s been like this even when I don’t have school during the summer. I never really struggled with it in the past as much as I do now as it’s so hard for me to trust people after going through something like that. So my faith and everything has just been at an all time low for a while now but hitting high peaks every now and then.
But what’s making it harder now to trust people is the fact that basically all my friends are gone now. My best friend is up at UConn in Connecticut, my one friend won’t even really speak to me and they aren’t going back to school at all, and another friend isn’t going back to school till next spring. What about my other friends? They are all out of state so I only have about 3 friends in state that I went to HS and College with. So where do I turn to now? Well after today’s message, I decided that it’s just time to move on. I figured I might as well start at school, and make new friends there.
As for the whole relationship with God thing and church. While I’ll be starting new, it’s really going to take some time. No one has any clue of how much of wreck my life has been till now. Well except maybe one person which would be Jeff. I know that this was only a crash course of what happened in my life. But if any of you want to know the full details, I can tell you. Just ask and I’ll send ya a message on facebook or via email.
But with all the bad things that have occurred in the past year or two. I wouldn’t trade anything for the people I have met during them. A perfect example would be my band members, we’ve been through so many ups and downs with line up changes were still together and really good friends. Plus meeting people like Michelle, Jeff, and Mike Leahy are other great examples.
With that said I’d like to leave you guys with some footage from the most recent small gig my band played. The audio quality is decent. I blame it on the camera being to close but that’s ok. Enjoy!
Original Song: Procrastination
Check Out the rest here!
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=BriggsMullen
