My Struggle With Partying

I've shared a bit about this but haven't felt fully confident to share my whole testimony of this time in my life. I've been told that if I shared about this that people would look at me different and I wouldn't get the same support as I have. I think that there is power in sharing how God has moved in these times and in this time at YWAM I've learned the power of testimony. I've done a post in the past about trying to find my identity and one of the things I've fallen into while struggling with my identity was partying and drinking. It's really easy to fall into this kind of stuff when the people you are surrounding yourself with are doing similar things. I was starting senior year of high school and it was my last year at the high school and the first year since freshman year that I was back on campus even though it was just for one class. I was in a class with mainly juniors because I had failed a math class in the past years, so I felt a bit like an outsider. I was excited to live this year up and just fit all my high school experience into this year since I hadn't been on campus and really felt like I was getting that. I was having a hard time finding where I fit in the senior class and was filled with feeling like I had no place and not sure where I belonged. I grew this urge to just feel like I belonged and ended up associating that with maybe if I went out and went to parties like everyone else, I would feel like I had friends and belonged. I mean even in movies and society it is shown that the "cool kids" would be the ones drinking and going out and partying. After a football game I went to my first party and started drinking for the first time. The thrill and feeling it gave me sparked something in me and I felt like I had somehow cracked the code and that was what I was missing. I finally found something that made me feel like I had something and gave me some sense of belonging. I had people coming up to me and saying how it was unexpected behavior from me and it gave me some sense of oh I'm not expectable anymore and I'm no longer this person that everyone can just look at and make all these assumptions about anymore. I started to build my identity on this and crave this feeling more and more, so I started drinking and going out pretty much every weekend sometimes multiple times a week. There was some sense of freedom and belonging feeling like I had plans and friends surrounding me, and I got to fill some need to feel some sort of thrill with drinking and seeing how far I could push those limits. There came a point where it just wasn't the same as when I first started partying and the thrill wasn't there, and I felt like I wasn't filling a void anymore. I got into a pretty rough place where I just felt lonely and like nothing I did was making me known and feel like I was truly included in some way that I expected. Eventually I ended up having a really scary experience with a friend and I ended up stopping drinking and partying but that then turned into a big time of loneliness for me. Since I had started to build my identity on this person I was pretending to be, and I surrounded myself with these people I lost most of my friends and felt so lost. Even when I was in the midst of this time, I still considered myself a Christian and was going to church and I made up all these excuses for myself to dismiss myself from why I went through this and was trying to make myself into this person I really wasn't. I may have been religious, but I wasn't someone who valued the relationship with Christ that I was missing. I had people come up to me even while I was drinking, and they would say "I thought you were Christian" and that comment would really get to me. I would always respond with something of the sort of "I am a Christian Jesus didn't die for my sins for me to not sin at all". I was trying to dismiss the true values that I held and make myself feel less condemned by that statement. I would always get so frustrated with people making assumptions about me because I didn't want to be someone everyone just looked to in a certain way. After I stopped partying, I still tried to build onto that identity for some reason because I was still craving to fill my void I felt somehow and that still seemed like the solution for me. In the midst of this time God placed one of my friends from my public speaking class into my life right when I needed her, and she invited me to her church's senior group. I started to lean on my faith a little bit in this time of loneliness but still was pretty lukewarm and not all in. When I started going to this group and digging more into my Bible God showed up in big ways in this time of my life. He revealed himself in undeniable ways and I finally went all in and found the solution to the void I had been trying to fill with worldly solutions. We are all born with a desire for more because we knew we were made for eternity with Christ and not just a short life on this earth. When I laid my life down for him and stopped chasing after some way to fill this desire, he revealed that true joy is found in him and building a relationship with Christ is more fulfilling than anything else. All that God wants is a relationship with us and he is always there waiting he is just waiting for us to meet him and let him speak to us and reveal himself to us. There are still times that I look back and wish I could just go back to the simplicity of going out every weekend and losing myself in temptation and partying and some feeling but when you get in Jesus' presence you crave nothing more than to be able to sit in that and get consumed in that. Following Christ isn't easy and that's why a lot of people fall into temptation because it's a temporary filler to some yearning we have in our hearts. I even fell into that temptation a few times after I quit parting again because it seemed easier in those times. Although it may not always be easy it is always so worth it to know that I have someone with me always that has unconditional love for me and wants the best for me and will never forsake me even when I choose to sin over and over. Something I had to learn was that there is nothing that I could do that would make God love me less. I fell into temptation over and over and every time I had a gracious God waiting for me to fall into him arms and ask for something more than what I was settling for. It's not always going to be easy following what God has planned for us, but we always know that we are loved and not alone and there is always something good out of it when we decide to follow our worldly desires, we don't have the comfort knowing that good is going to come from it and a joy that is promised eternally. Am I proud of these decisions I made over and over? No. But I have a testimony in the fact that God pulled me out of that time and made good out of one of the hardest seasons of my life. I am now fully consumed by the love and joy of God, and I know that I'm going to keep running towards him and not turn back to the person that I used to be. I am living proof that God fulfills the desires of our hearts and is forgiving and loving despite anything we think is too big to separate us from his love. I encourage you that if you feel like you have this desire on your heart for more and you're trying to fill that in some way to just take a minute to surrender to God and meet him where you're at. Even if you feel silly and have never had any kind of encounter with Christ and maybe don't even know what to do just sit and let him speak to you because he wants nothing more than to bring you the desires of your heart and show you the true joy that is found in him. Again, I want to say that there is nothing that you do that makes you less than and separates you from Gods love. You are so loved and that yearning in your heart is a relationship with Christ. If anyone ever needs any kind of support, I do also want to say that I am very open to talking through things and sharing more of my testimony and things that helped me through this time in my life. You are not alone.