Monday, June 2, 2014

Who Am I

Who am I? This question has been a question  that I have asked multiple times in the twenty years that I have been living. Yet, each time I have asked myself that same question it seems as if I can never really fully answer it the way I think it should be answered. Today I find myself relying more on God than I ever have before in my short life. Each and everyday God seems to help me answer more and more of that question as time progresses. Even though I am a child of God, I continue to doubt the purpose and abilities that He has blessed me with.

My parents call me their miracle, and rightly so simply for how I came to be in this world. I was born four months premature on November 24th, 1993 in Charlotte at one and a half pounds. I suffered from a minor brain hemorrhage on the left side of my brain, my parents had been told stents would have to be put in if it didn’t reabsorb. But by the grace of God it did absorb and I was left with a very mild case of Cerebral Palsy on the right side of my body. The times I have seen others with more severe cases of Cerebral Palsy are the times that God shows me that I am truly blessed, as I can do most things normally. I also had a condition called Retinopathy of Prematurity or ROP in both of my eyes due to the fact that I was born early and of a low birth weight. ROP has a total of five stages meaning the first stage is the least severe and the fifth stage is total retinal detachment that would mean total blindness. I was diagnosed with stage four of ROP. Doctors today usually look for signs of ROP in premature babies, so that if a baby has ROP they can correct the problem. I am so blessed once again that I was not diagnosed with stage five full retinal detachment. I spent three months in the NICU, and in those three months and the years since then I have parents that have never left my side. Through it all I have never heard my parents give credit to anyone else but God Almighty for my health and the person I am today.

I have a story or a testimony rather as every Christian does as to how they came to know Christ. For a long time I knew who Christ was yet the relationship simply wasn’t there. I felt dead inside when I first started attending church regularly, I was struggling with the fact that my grandfather was sick and after he died in 2008 from colon cancer. I began to have doubts about what God could do and what control he had but I have never doubted His existence. Then after my grandmother died four months later right behind my grandfather. At that point I really felt like an empty shell taking up another persons pew space, a hollow feeling with no permanent way of filling it. Then my family had decided to move to another church, this was the turning point that has changed my life forever. The experience that really had an effect on my heart was when i went on my first mission trip to Bryson City North Carolina. I gave my testimony to the members of my new church that my family and I had recently joined a few months prior to the trip. I began to see how God could use me and many others to accomplish many different things for His glory. From that night in that little mountain hotel I began my walk and relationship with Christ. I began to really start reading and studying Gods Word each and everyday, which has become a daily routine to start my day off in the Word of God and also in Prayer.
Now for those of you who are reading this today, you now have some sense of who I am, or at least who I say that I am. The answer to the question that i have been seeking for most of my short life has now been answered, I am whoever God desires for me to be. God has made me in his image, and I owe all that I am and all that i will ever be to the Lord. We are all created in the image of God, and although we are all sinners we all have the free gift of salvation through Christ who died on Calvary for our sins. He took our place, and the punishment that we all deserve. I love all of you reading this regardless of what you think of me, because whether you love me or hate me I still love you as Christ loved.

-The Christian

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