I BELIEVE
Shower of Grace Luis Orellana
My family came from Cuba and Guatemala. I felt intense pressure to become someone in life since childhood, I was in search of meaning and purpose. Yet, sadly, my home was broken. My parents separated many times. I often felt neglected. As I started middle school, my life began to really shift toward my becoming a young man who could not find his identity. I didn’t know who I was and instead focused on immediate pleasures. My immediate escape was romantic pursuits with women. I often sought to help fix broken girlfriends who were insecure and felt they never amounted to anything in life, and I would come in and restore them. I wanted to rescue them. This gave me a sense of meaning and purpose. I remember dating my first girlfriend whose mom was always doing drugs and neglecting her daughter. I made my girlfriend feel valuable and provide an escape from the drama of her home life. Yet, the relationship only lasted about a year. My next girlfriend had a noticeable birthmark on her face. Imagine the great insecurities she carried because of that! I made her feel beautiful . . . for all of six months. Then came the 16-year-old mom. She came from a Jehovah Witness background and was excommunicated from the Kingdom Hall. So, I made her feel valued. This lasted three years. I suppose playing the father figure gave me the most meaning and the most work which held me in that relationship the longest. Yet, at the end, I really felt the void. At that point, I realized I needed repairing. I realized I was empty and falling apart. How could I rescue anyone, let alone myself? I tried volunteering with immigration attorneys, working as a CNA, flying to New York for acting school, working for Toyota in New Jersey, working as a painter in Pennsylvania, volunteering at hospitals as a transporter, working as a salesman for countless T-Mobile locations, working with my father in a steel company, and, yet, I would leave them all. It was not what I wanted. I was feeling like my life was meaningless.
some friends from my past—drinking, marijuana, cocaine and Adderall were all part of my story on weekends. Yet, when the loud thrill was gone and the weekday came and all had gone to work, there came that nostalgic hopelessness. I wasn’t paying my rent anymore, my mother was. My parents begged me to get my act together. I had labored with all my might to do what they wanted. I even tried college but all you would find are pure dropouts on my transcripts. What would have become of me if my life continued like this? I have no idea. All I know is that I felt like I tried everything there was to try to rid myself of such void and hopelessness. Yet, God in his mercy sent a Christian who invited me to a youth group. I was 22 years old. I walked into that service mocking Christians and viewing the event a laughingstock. When I walked out, I was born again. I didn’t experience anything drastic, but as I drove home, I found myself speaking to God in a way I had never before. By the time I arrived home and was in the shower, I found myself sitting in prayer for hours begging God to forgive me and save me. I had this sense of God’s presence that I had never felt. It was a sense of God listening to my cries. When I walked out of that shower, I knew God was with me. I was certainly clean outside, and now inside as well. My life has changed entirely. Today, I am a graduate of Moody Bible Institute (and seeking to pay off my debt), married to my beautiful wife, Rebecca, and have just applied to seminary—talk about meaning and purpose. May God get all the glory!
Many times, suicidal thoughts roamed my mind, but the screaming whisper of the conscience shouting, “Hell is certain for you,” kept me away from such an act. I was enclosed in a room after quitting my job. I had been renting a townhouse with
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