SURPRISED BY JOY (2)

As a teenager in England, my stress developed from having unreachable goals. I wanted to look like a fashion model, but I didn’t. I wanted to be popular, but I was shy. I had a huge inferiority complex, and I agonized over not measuring up to other people.

Still, at 18 I was full of hope and had many dreams as I started out on my own at college. Hungry for the missing something in my life, I determined to find it in the next few years. But I was naive about this search, and always looking for fun, I was soon following my roommate and her friends into a life of partying. I also started taking drugs, hoping they might help me discover spiritual powers within myself. But even as I began to set this mistaken course in my search, I had a strange experience.

Among the whirlwind of new acquaintances and experiences in those first few weeks, I met Martin. Good looking and always smiling, he spoke with shining eyes about Jesus. My roommate emphatically warned me that he was in the “God Squad,” and spoke scornfully of the campus Christians, but I was intrigued with his happy spirit.

One evening, a throbbing headache kept me home and gave me some time to reflect. Listening to music and curled up in bed, I began to wonder why Martin found Christianity so exciting. Although I had been educated in Christian schools, I never really understood the belief system and thought of the religion as only a collection of myths. “What about Martin’s Jesus?” I mused. “Was he a myth or a real historical person?”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice said, “Yes!”

The answer was as decisive as it was shocking, and in that moment I was completely certain Jesus was real. An incredible joy flooded into me! I was totally amazed.

Despite this wonderful feeling, I felt too afraid of my roommate’s ridicule to talk about it with her. Furthermore, I made a huge mistake by not going to Martin to ask him about the experience. Shyness held me back, and the knowledge of how to cope with that conviction was lost to me. Without guidance from Martin or other Christians, I began hoping that something more exciting than regular Christianity was behind my experience, even wondering if that night I had received a telepathic message from extraterrestrials.

I missed finding my heart’s desire in the first weeks of college by not following that message to thefeet of Jesus. Of course, I never realized that the path I was following was going to lead to all the stress of disappointment, emptiness, frustration, and disillusionment. I had in my grasp all the enjoyment and enlightenment that I would be seeking for years, but it slipped through the cracks. With compassion, Jesus had pointed me in a different direction in an attempt to save me from stress and regret. If I only had followed it right then, He would have helped me so much in my college years. But I didn’t—and I continued to struggle with stress without Him.