Draft #2 of Literacy Narrative

   MY SKILL OF SPREADING THE GOSPEL

            If there's anything that my mom taught me, it was to have a good relationship with God. I was raised a Christian. I grew up in the ghetto parts of the Bronx and my family used to go to church every Sunday. I never knew the importance of church. I would sit on the red old long benches and tried not to fall asleep as soon as I heard the pastor speak. I didn’t understand why people got so excited about church, I didn’t understand that people were speaking in tongues and not gibberish. When you're a 10-year-old child going to church, the only thing you want to do is wait for it to be over. In elementary and middle school nobody in my class talked about God. It was more of a family thing than a public thing. The only time I mainly talked about God was when I had fights with my sister. When you and your sister have to share a room together it gets crazy. I remember one time we ended up choking each other and I said to her “I rebuke the devil, inside of you.” and she took that as me calling her the devil. I was just repeating stuff that I heard from my mom and my pastor, I didn’t understand the true meaning of it. Fast Forward to the year 2020 when I moved from the Bronx to Staten Island. This was the beginning of covid, and all the students were out of school in quarantine. Because I had a lot of free time I was in my bed scrolling on TikTok and I came across a bible video. Up to this point I forgot about God and my relationship with him. So, seeing this person on TikTok spreading the gospel really changed something in my mind. I felt my heart and my spirit shift. It was like I was in a cloud for all these years and in this moment, I felt like clouds went away. I've been seeing bible videos more and more after that moment and it motivated me to develop my own relationship with God. It's one thing to worship God because your family does it and you feel like you have to, but it's another thing to develop your own relationship with God and see God for yourself. I wanted to make a change in my life, and I decided to start bettering myself. 

            A few weeks later, I was home, and it was noon and I decided to go pray. Prayer is so much more important than people think it is. Talking to God about your issues just allows him to help you and it allows you to be in his presence. God says to “cast all your worries unto him, for me cares for you.” There's been a lot of things I've been bottling in because speaking out my feelings is foreign to me. I feel like people don’t understand my situations so that’s why I like talking about it to God. After I prayed, I felt like heavy weights had been lifted off my shoulders. I then decided to read my bible. I decided to read psalms because it's a very motivational bible chapter. I take notes from the bible chapters that I read because it's very important to make sure that you actually understand the bible and know the message that God is trying to tell you. I kept up this routine for a couple weeks until the devil tried to keep me away from God. For some context, one thing that the devil does to try and keep you away from God is to remind you of your past. We all have done things in the past that we were not very proud of and that we regret. The bible says that your mistakes do not define you. So, one moment I was relaxing in my room and the devil reminded me of my past. I have done some messed up things that I kept under wraps, and I just started crying. I was scared that my secret would get out. I went into a deep depression state where I would cry for hours and hide my tears from my family. I remember just praying to God to make the thoughts go away and that the past would stay in the past. I felt all alone, and it really affected my mental wellbeing. I eventually got over the moment and I actually got closer to God.

              There was another incident years later where on August 20th, 2022, my mom passed away. That messed up my viewpoint on God for a few hours. The day after my mom died, I was thinking about why God did what he did. I wasn’t mad at God for what happened to my mom, I just wanted answers. My mom passed away in the night and she was fine the day prior. It caught me and everybody in my family off guard. I had to get my head in the right place. I ended up having a long talk with God about my mom and my lifestyle because I was still young, I was 16. After talking with God, I started to read the bible and actually started to spread the gospel on TikTok, snapchat, and YouTube. I wanted to share my testimony and the struggles that I go through because everybody goes through similar situations. I wanted to help people know how God and merciful God is. I wanted to help beginner Christians get to know God more and what their journey following God might look like.