Here’s a confession: I’ve had one night stands. I’ve smoked a lot of weed. Oh, and I’ve been BLACK-OUT drunk on more than one occasion. These are not things I’m necessarily proud to share but my story doesn’t end there…
Why do we sin? It’s not until after we mess up that we truly feel the consequences and effects of its darkness. If sin makes us feel so bad, then why do we do it?! The conclusion that I’ve come to is this: the Devil romanticizes sin. Think about the first sin ever committed. The Devil lured Adam and Eve into taking a bite from THE ONLY FRUIT IN THE WHOLE FREAKING GARDEN THAT WAS OFF LIMITS! He did this not by saying, “Once you take a bite of this you will be banished from the garden of Eden, curse every generation after you, oh, and child-bearing is gonna suck!” No, he made sin sound appealing, fulfilling, satisfying. He convinced Adam and Eve that God wasn’t enough, and that they didn’t have everything they already needed in the Lord. Although the sin of our first parents occurred thousands of years ago, the Devil still uses the same lies and manipulation to trap us into sin, shame, and self-hatred.
The summer of 2014, I went from holy hours and rosaries to smoking weed in my car and drinking until I couldn’t remember the night before. How did I go from one extreme to the other? Well, it was a slow fade; I was the frog in the boiling pot of water. The Devil acted subtly, pulling me away from devout time with the Lord, and replacing it with the cheap thrills of this world. Fast-forward to the spring of 2015, I was fully invested in living the typical ‘college life’ of sleeping around and partying. I was so miserable and so haunted by my actions but I felt trapped. Even if I wanted the douche-bag target off my back and the lonely drunken nights by myself to come to an end, there was no way I could pull myself out alone. My parents were absolutely terrified for my life. They were at a loss of what to do or say to me to redirect me back to Jesus. One day, my Dad made a passing comment to me in the kitchen and said,
“Bry, watching you live your life this way is like watching a car accident about to happen, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
On March 13, 2015, the guy I was seeing at the time took me on a hike. We drank beer after beer, and then shot after shot until we were pretty hammered… and you can take a guess at what happened next. He drove off the side of the road going 70 mph and flipped three times. He was ejected and by the grace of God, the only airbag that went off was on my side. My car was totaled and I could barely move for a week. To say I shouldn’t be alive is an understatement! God’s hands of mercy cradled me safely out of that car all the while preserving my life and giving me a second chance.
I met with a good friend of mine a few weeks later and she gave me very wise words to live by after the accident. She told me that there is a huge difference in losing your physical life and losing your spiritual life. I almost lost my life here on this earth but the worst part was, I was compromising the life Christ purchased for me on the cross as well. This massive roadblock redirected me back into the arms of my sweet Jesus and I could not be more grateful. Oddly enough, the accident was exactly what I needed. I was pulled out from my car AND from the life I was living by the hands of our gracious Father.
This is just how the Devil romanticizes sin. He makes it look like sex before marriage is capable of producing true love, that drugs are adventurous, and that having fun without alcohol is borderline impossible in college. He defiles what is good, true, and beautiful and manipulates them into shame, loneliness, and emptiness. Let me expose the truth to all these lies- the only way you will find true love, adventure, romance, and fulfillment is through the one who created them: Jesus Christ.