Note:New stuff starts page 50. 

Middle school brought my first fights with the spiritual realm that I can remember. Now, at the time, I didn’t know that my struggles were associated with the spiritual realm just as much as they were with the physical realm. The way my bullies treated me made me severely question the existence of God, and in turn, allowed much darker thoughts to enter my head. I was suicidal, but I was too afraid of pain, death, and the slim possibility of there being an afterlife to do anything to myself. As much as I wanted to die, or at the very least, cease to exist, I was always stopped by the question, what if? What if there is an afterlife? What if there is a God? What if there is a hell?

I was pretty convinced that if I followed through with suicide, hell was waiting for me. I didn’t consider myself a Christian by then. I didn’t want to be around God, and to be honest, I didn’t even think He existed. I knew from bible study that hell was reserved for those who didn’t want to be with God. It wasn’t reserved for life-long unbelievers or criminals or mean-spirited people. Hell was for those who died but still rejected God’s free gift. And I knew that if I were to die then, I would be too upset and angry to accept God’s free gift of grace and salvation. In other words, I wanted to go to hell. I was just too afraid of death and pain to send myself there for eternity.

I was already in hell, however. I separated myself from God, and as a consequence, I suffered completely alone. My mom had me in therapy in an attempt to heal me from my Post Traumatic Stress, but the treatment did nothing but further disturb my inner demons and make me even more stressed and anxious. So, she told me to form a close relationship with God. But, I didn’t believe in God. I thought prayer was just talking to a wall. God didn’t answer my prayers throughout middle school. He left me to suffer alone, so I gave up on Him and wrapped myself in my own misery like a security blanket.

Over time, I got comfortable being miserable. I decided that’s just how life was supposed to be. Deep down inside, I knew it wasn’t supposed to be that way. I wasn’t healthy at all. In fact, my misery was literally killing me. My physical health was slowly getting worse and harder to cope with. My anxiety made my stomach hurt so badly that I’d have to go home from school early. I had to get a backpack on wheels because I was too weak to carry the weight of several thick binders and books at once. I was cold almost all of the time, even in the summer, and spent my days at home and at school wrapped up in hoodies and blankets. And, for the first time in my life, I had a productive cough even though I didn’t test positive for any lung infections. Clearly, something was very wrong, but I didn't know how to fix it, or if I could fix it.

All of this terrified my mom. She knew I didn’t have faith in God anymore, and therapy wasn’t working either, so she turned to her Christian friends for help. One of her friends envisioned a dark, demonic energy surrounding me. It concentrated around my lungs, and slowly but surely, it was constricting around them, squeezing the air out of them. At that moment, my mom knew something needed to happen to save me from that darkness.

She decided to go home and lay her hands on me to pray, but I refused to let her near me. And when she suggested we go to church for a prayer session, I told her I’d never go to church again. I hated church, and prayer was completely useless! God was dead, and I killed Him! With that, I stormed upstairs and slammed my bedroom door, leaving my mom standing in the kitchen speechless.

Something did happen that night. I wouldn’t call it a prayer, but I did express my anger towards God in an epic, tearful rant as I paced around my bedroom. I asked God why He allowed me to suffer so much. I was well aware that my own suffering was impacting others in my life, and I hated that. But the pain I was in was too much to hide from my family. My body couldn’t take the stress either, and was visibly failing. My whole life was falling apart, and I didn’t have the ability to fix anything. I urgently needed support that no one I knew of could offer me.

However, I still rejected God. While I did plead for help, I still reaffirmed that I did not believe in Him. I was just wasting my time, ranting to my bedroom walls. However, something deep down inside me seemed to recognize the reality of God’s existence. God was real, and He was listening to my desperate, angry, painful call for help. He wasn’t upset that I was angry with Him. In fact, He was probably overjoyed that I even asked Him for something, even though I repeatedly cursed Him and pushed Him away, saying over and over again, “I’m probably just talking to a wall.” throughout my tearful prayer. I didn’t say Amen. Instead, I just collapsed on by bed and sobbed into my pillow, eventually falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Nothing seemed to have changed after that prayer. I still went to school the following Monday, where I was still bullied just as severely as I had been before. I still came home late with a stack of homework I didn't even bother to look through. I still went to bed and woke up the next morning to repeat the same routine on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That pretty much confirmed to me that God was not there. He was not real. I was alone in this battle, and I didn't expect to survive it. I'd eventually lose my fear of death, and if illness didn't kill me first, I'd gain the courage to do it myself. 

Two weeks later, I found myself walking through the doors of a new school. I was accepted there with open arms. But, I was still very nervous and pushed the friendly students away for the most part. After what I had just gone through, I didn’t want much to do with anyone. I just wanted to be left alone so I could finally relax and heal. I was too exhausted to befriend anyone at that point, and didn't think they were trustworthy anyway. After all, the kids at my previous middle school were nice to me for the first week I was there. Surely, the kids at this new place would eventually turn on me too.

I was still skeptical of God, though much more open to Him, and hoped He’d show Himself again so I could confirm His existence. I prayed again for God to reveal Himself to me, letting Him know my heart was open to the idea of His existence. But I also warned that it would take quite a lot to convince me He existed, but I was willing to believe if He could just prove Himself to me. 

God had a lot more in store for me than I honestly bargained for. When I prayed for a sign, I was asking God to show Himself in a much more minor way. Instead, my life was whacked into a downward spiral once again. My lung function dipped down into record-low numbers, and I found myself being led down a hospital corridor into a small hospital room; room number 665, directly across from a storage room labeled 666.

My grandpa was the one who pointed that out to me. At the time, I brushed it off. I was far too worried about the needles and IV medications I’d have to deal with for the next two weeks, to even consider what the number 666 symbolized.

My doctors were surprised that my condition had deteriorated so quickly. They determined that I had MRSA, and that was causing my illness. However, I’d been growing MRSA for years and it never bothered me until then. I suspect that stress and anxiety, coupled with depression and my loss of faith, made me weak enough for MRSA to take over and make me incredibly sick.

For two weeks, I struggled to get better in the hospital. I was allergic to an IV antibiotic called Vancomycin, which we only figured that out after it gave Red Man’s Syndrome, which basically set my skin on fire for two days before it finally subsided. The other antibiotics wrecked me in other ways. I was usually too tired to leave my hospital bed, and needed help doing some of the most basic tasks, including showering and getting dressed. I hardly digested anything, and eating just made my stomach cramp up, which would put me in a fetal position on my bed.

As I physically suffered, I suffered mentally and spiritually as well. I could barely sleep at night in the hospital, even though my parents and grandparents slept on a pull-out couch just a few feet away from me, because I’d be tormented by nightmares in my sleep. And during the day, I was so anxious that nothing could stop me from shivering with fear or chewing my nails until they bled. I was truly in hell, and as time wore on, I realized that I needed to give God another chance if I wanted to survive my ordeal.

When I got out of the hospital and returned to normality, I realized that believing in God wasn’t as easy as saying, “I believe!”. I had a lot of questions, doubts, and fears. I hid my unbelief from my family for the most part, though at times I’d approach my grandpa with questions, hoping he could answer them for me. While he provided satisfying answers to some of my questions, he couldn’t answer every question for me.

These unanswered questions built up over time, and I got very frustrated.

I was still very sick, and my suffering further fed my doubts and anger towards God. My mom and I temporarily moved in with my grandparents so she didn't have to take care of me without help. I struggled a lot with severe, unpredictable coughing fits that lasted an average of 15 to 20 minutes. If I had a particularly excruciating coughing fit, my grandpa would have me lay face-down on his massage table, and he’d pound my back and chest until I could finally catch my breath again. Then, he’d have me roll over so he could massage my back and sinuses until I stopped shivering and relaxed.

On top of that, I was going to the doctor's every few weeks to get checked on. My health was still pretty bad, and while it didn't look like it was improving, it wasn't getting any worse either. So, doctors decided that unless I got worse, I could continue to do treatments at home. Those treatments involved a handful of different oral antibiotics, as well as exercise, extra supplements and vitamins, plenty of healthy whole food, and lots of rest.

While my diet helped with my digestion, I wasn't sure the antibiotics were doing anything to get rid of my lung infection. MRSA is antibiotic-resistant Staph, and it felt pointless to continue fighting something that was immune to most antibiotics with antibiotics. But my doctors didn't let me get off any antibiotics, telling me I'd be a lot sicker if I got off them. I had to show that my lung function was improving by more than just a few points at a time, in order to even have a chance at getting off the antibiotics. 

This motivated me to get on with life as usual, hoping that I could somehow fight the infection by ignoring it the best I could. I still went to school, and while I was at school, I participated in PE the best I could. I was still too sick to attend Tae Kwon Do, but I was determined to get back to my old self again and stay out of the hospital. 

I knew I couldn't do it alone. My health was not really in my control. I could do everything right, and my condition could still get worse. But I wasn't quite ready to put my faith and trust in God. I still had a lot of unanswered questions, worries, and fears about God. I struggled with the problem of evil often. Either God was all-good, but not all-powerful, or God was all-powerful, but not all-good. But He couldn't possibly be both, even though the bible claimed God was both all-good and all-powerful. I wondered if God hurt people on purpose, just to perform miracles and trick them into believing He was all-good and all-loving, like some sick joke. But, I also wondered if God truly meant well, but He just wasn't powerful enough to stop all evil and suffering in the world. Either way, Christianity didn't seem right to me, but at the same time, neither did atheism. 

In the meantime, I continued going to school. I hid my illness pretty well, despite the coughing fits. I was well enough to participate in PE, even though I struggled to keep up with everyone else. At least I could play. This gave me the little hope I needed to rise above my depression and anxiety, and I could finally learn how to trust people better and heal. I had a long road ahead of me, but I was excited to finally be on that road to recovery, and didn't care how long it took me to reach the end. 

My fear, on the other hand, was much harder for me to hide. I knew my peers sensed my nervousness, and they did their best to reassure me that everything would be ok. My family did this too, because I was much more open to them about my fears. But no one could convince me everything would be ok. I was still sick and running from the very real possibility of ending up in the hospital. My doctors tried to make me relax by promising me I could get a PICC line, spend only two days in the hospital to learn how to use it, and then complete the rest of my IV antibiotics at home through the PICC line. But there was no way I was going back into that hospital room, even for just a day, without putting up an intense fight.