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Hello everybody, my name is Maria. I'm currently 23 years old (24 in a few hours, but hold the birthday wishes I don't celebrate it razz ). I'm a citizen of the US of A, though my relatives are from the Dominican Republic. My journey to faith has no fanfare, it's not dramatic, but I'll share it anyway.
I should start by saying I did not have a Christian upbringing. My childhood was agnostic, though very spiritual. The family held a hodge podge of beliefs, holding to any and every old wive's tale. Considering the diverse nature of my family tree it's no surprise. I grew up around divination, tea-leaf readings, birth charts, ascended masters, talk of seeking psychics and tarot cards. Even my earliest childhood movies were occult in nature (e.g. Ferngully, Casper the Friendly Ghost; my kindergarten class actually took a field trip to the local movie theater just to watch the latter, of which my mother was a chaperone). She even bought me a Ouija board from Toys-R-Us when I was really young.
Despite all that, every single one of my family members would identify themselves as a Roman Catholic if asked (though clearly it was just by name because they didn't even do anything Catholic). The Rosaries were on the wall (not in use), pictures of Mary and Jesus hung on my great-grandparents walls (not their own walls of their own homes), no one went to any Church (unless somebody was getting married, but weddings were few and far between), and they celebrated secular holidays just like non-believers did (wild partying, licentiousness, gluttony, vanity). Minus the last part, I think all the other aspects of their "apostate" faith worked for my benefit (keeping me away for any religious dogma whatsoever, thus avoiding the false). Actually, even their partying did benefit me: taught me to not do so. I lost any and all appeal for alcohol real early seeing the effects it had on people and my own parents.
Fast Forward 13-14 years later, and a pretty developed affection towards the paranormal, I withdrew after my first semester in college, was totally running on empty, spiritually, and after that I had all the time in the world to research spiritual truths. In retrospect, a whole lot of other events culminated which gave me this hunger to research religious beliefs and myths. Mostly, Supernatural (the TV show): that year they were promoting season 5 as the series finale (not just season finale) and I was so not satisfied with how they explained Chuck the prophet, who was possibly Jesus on the show. And that sparked a curiosity in me ("Well, what's the difference between God and Jesus?"), not to mention the apocalyptic-heaven-vs-hell-angel-vs-demon storyline they had going on.
That was also the summer my cousin came to visit and she left her twilight saga books behind which I ended up reading. Now, bear with me, this is actually relevant: Twilight was getting all this hype and, along with it, a growing animosity for the fan base amongst my peers; they hated twilight just because of the fans, not because they read the books themselves. I didn't want to be a hypocrite about why I liked or disliked the series, so I read through all four novels. Not my cup of tea to put it lightly, but at least I could say, "I don't like Twilight for its content and author, not some prejudiced hate against the fanbase". Little did I know, that was just the lesson I needed to learn to tackle the bible honestly—and it took the Twilight phenomenon to get me to see that. Witnessing so many Christians fail to explain their own holy texts, my family being one of them (merely by associating with Christ via the Catholic label), and their behavior/lack of coherency when explaining anything spiritual just led me to view Christians as a joke and by extension their holy bible too. I practically was raised on the internet where atheists reign supreme, and mocking anything Christian was the norm. So that didn't help. I developed "prejudist" attitudes against that "fanbase".
So, with this new thirst for the supernatural (though I had always been into the paranormal, no surprise if you'd look at the history of entertainment that I've watched growing up) and the lesson of "read things for yourself; ignore the fans" fresh on my mind, I started reading the bible. But not exclusively. At the same time, I had started researching other spiritual beliefs (self-realization, new age mysticism, divination, witchcraft, not that far of a leap from what I grew up with). None of that was fulfilling, it worsened my relationships because now through divination I could accurately detect lies (lies totally destroy trust), and my pursuit of out of body experiences led to spiritual attacks. I experienced sleep paralysis throughout all that time that I sought out "out of body experiences", testing out all the techniques (deep breathing, listening to theta frequency videos, emptying your mind, all that jazz). And it wasn't until I came across the verses to repent of all sin and ask for the Holy Spirit, and actually carried that out, that those attacks stopped.
Prior to that, almost every morning I would wake in nearly asphyxiated positions, and one time it got so bad, my neck was somehow squished against the wall and the bed at the weirdest angle, that the blood flow to my head was cut off and I would "faint", over and over again when I tried to straighten it back out. I put "faint" in quotation marks because, unlike the legitimate times I've fainted before, I was not blacking out. I was still conscious even though my eyes would snap shut and my body would not cooperate. That inner voice you hear when you're thinking to yourself, but not speaking outloud, was still audible (not so when I've fainted in the past; when you faint there's no recollection of time, no dreaming; you're just out). And that was the first and only time I heard this angelic voice, and it was encouraging me to get up. I say angelic, but I don't know if it was fallen or not. What I do know is that my own "inner voice" sounded so puny, and pitiful when responding back saying "I can't". I don't know how to describe it: the voice was peaceful, melodic, and so "loud" compared to my own inner voice. But, I would not pay all the money in the world to go through sleep paralysis again just to hear it, that's for sure.
So yeah, after that, I just repented of everything, even crying over certain sins that I no longer wanted and YHWH answered my prayers, some he took immediately away, others were weaned out because I resisted. But all of my idols are gone (that I'm aware of). I don't hate God, I don't hate his law, and I don't hate Christians anymore. And I don't think anyone who is actually born-again could do any of those three things.
If anyone's interested, one of the resources that really got me to see the light in the beginning, when I first started reading, was David Guzik's commentary on the Bible. Coming out of the world, it's no surprise that I tried to Spark Notes the bible LOL. I also treated it like any other book, starting from the very first chapter of the very first book (Genesis). Starting out that way has its pro's and con's. But as for Guzik's commentary, it's actually a pretty handy resource believers themselves should read. That's how I got through the whole bible in 10 months (aside from the fact that I was reading whole books at a time some days; I was THAT spiritually starved, I couldn't stop reading).
I hope this maybe helped or encouraged someone. At the very least, it was a fun experience recalling the journey I've been on and reflecting on spiritual milestones in my life. I came to faith merely by having the word logically explained to me and believing in the supernatural possibility of it all.
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