Start Where You AreExemplo

Where I Started—Part One 

I’m in Los Angeles, the City of Angels, when an actual angel on Facebook saves my life. I’m vacillating between rage and despair, considering a walk down the hall to grab a gun and end my life. It wouldn’t be hard. Just one pull of the trigger. 

No one else is home. No one will stop me.

My life looks fabulous from the outside. I’m living in a house my management team pays for, riding the rocket of internet fame in Hollywood, and working as a hype man for Soulja Boy. The money is great, the parties are incredible, and the women are incomparable. What more could a young, narcissistic twenty-something want out of life? Apparently a lot. 

Despite my worldly success, my spirit is miserable. There has to be more to life, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve spiraled all the way into deep depression.

I put the gun barrel in my mouth and my entire body starts to shake. My mind races back to the night I was shot twice in the leg. I think of the twenty minutes I spent lying in an empty parking lot, weaving in and out of consciousness, before a stranger found me and took me to the ER. I worry this bullet won’t kill me. I cannot handle that kind of pain again. I pull the gun out of my mouth and lay it down on the bed.

I put it back in my mouth.

I take it out again.

I reach for my phone.

Facebook is the first app I see. Absentmindedly, I click on the familiar icon and there it is: the post—written by a woman named Genessis I had met only once before—that saves my life.

God’s love is fully available to anyone who calls upon Him. Anyone? Really? I read it again and again and again. I fall onto my face before God. I pour my heart out to God and weep as I unload my heavy soul to the Lord. He receives me with a love I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to explain, and how I feel makes me think of this quote attributed to St. Augustine: “In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.”

I forget all about the gun.

Lord, You heard my cry! I thank You for allowing my pride to lead me into some deep and dirty places. Without them I wouldn’t have felt Your mercy nor found my purpose. You saved my life and gave me life. Help me to trust in the sufficiency of Christ’s power, not mine. Amen!