This is an entry that a guy named Lucas Nolet, who went to TAM this past year, wrote on his Xanga..it is soo amazing I think you all should read it!
It seems like everyone, well mostly everyone, is trying their hardest to stay away from me. Its making me feel smaller and smaller everytime someone ignores me when I try to talk to them or even look at them. People say they are one thing and act the complete opposite. if you ask me, thats being hypocritical. I started to realize this when my "friends" really didnt pay much attention to me at all. Its not like they stopped talking to me overnight. Everytime I saw them it seemed like they looked and talked to me less and less. It really hurts when someone you care about a great deal kinda disowns you.Its the feeling of getting orphaned by your parents because they don't love you or because they would rather buy and smoke drugs then feed you or take you to a ball game. It really doesn't help when your life is crap. Breaking down cause after 18 years of having a family, it ends. I now know how that feels . I always felt sorry for the kids that grew up with either a mother or a father but not both. I wondered how they felt because they have memories with their dads, memories with their moms but never with their mom and dad. I had the joy of having both parents in the home. The odd thing is I don't recall that much "happy" times with them. I was either with my brothers, or one of my parents. The other times I was either getting yelled at by them or sitting in my room by myself cause no one would play with me. Some people think just because they havea great life that everyone else does. Thats a sterotype. When i became a teen, I started smoking weed and heavily drinking alochol. My brother got me into some gang activity and things only got worse. Mind you, when all this stuff was going on, I was putting a mask on also. I went to church at least twice a week. I claimed to be a christian but on the inside i was saying " I need drugs" or " I just need to get wasted to I'll forget about everything". Because of the choices I made, I ended up in juvenile prision for a week and a half. I thought it would be cool to throw rocks onto a highway at oncoming traffic. When I say rocks, I don't mean little ones. I'm talking about ones that barely fit in your hand. When I got out, I went back to my two lives. Going to church and smoking/drinking. When my church "friends" asked me where I was, I lied and told them I was sick. They had no idea that i was in jail because I was this perfect little christian that everyone can get along with. As time passed to did I. I started drinking a lot that sometimes I passed out. Something with the weed. I smoked so much that I couldn't walk in a straight line. Some christian, uh? By this time a few teens from the teen group knew something was up with me. Sometimes I went to church high or half tipsy. But of course I had to play it off some how. It worked everytime. I even fooled my youth pastor. I was supposed to be able to say anything to him. One time I almost got caught in one of my lies. Me and my uth group went to the detention center I was at just a few years back. This one girl was in there thay knew me really well. She told my uth pastor the "true" run down about my life. She told him how I drank and smoked. The only pure thing about me at that time was that I wasnt having sex. I was rebelling badly, but I wanted to save myself for marriage. I don' t care how rotten you are, you can decide no to hace sex so that it'll be more special for your future husband/wife. Anyway. That next Wensday, my uth pastor called me into his office. He talked to me about what the girl had said. I denied it of course. He didn't believe my lies at first but I made him believe me. I keep telling him that it was all a lie. After that I went to church there maybe 4 times. As time went by , I was sitting at my friends house getting high mostly everyday. I had quit drinking before then. When that was dropped my smoking increased by 100%. All I was worried about was going to his house, sitting back, and smoking. I heard that "my" uth pastor was leaving so that wensday I went to church to wish him luck to where ever he goes.For about 2 or 3 months the uth group didnt have a uth pastor. I went maybe once during that time frame. I often thought about what it was like having a Christian family who does everything for you. My only “real friend” from church called me one day and told me that they had a new uth pastor. He wanted me to come back and check it out. He informed me that they changed the uth room. So I decided not to smoke for the rest of the day so I wasn’t high going to church the next morning. This new guy wasn’t that bad. I gave him a chance. I started going back to the uth group 2 times a month. As time progressed, his health shot down. At the same time, I started to drink. This is around the same time I stopped going to that church. I was introduced to a new church. It was THE SALVATION ARMY. Just because I switched church, doesn’t mean I switched my life. I kept smoking until I found out that the uth pastor at my old church died. I really didn’t feel much of anything but I did. It may sound weird and it should. I liked him, what I knew of him anyways. I put on this Christian face and went to his funeral. The first thing that I noticed there was his 4 or 5 year old child. All I could think about was that he didn’t realize what was going on. All he knows is that it could be a church service. I felt so bad but all I could think of, most of the time was going back to my sin. The funeral ended and I said my final good-byes. I told myself I can’t smoke anymore because I didn’t want to have to lie to my uth pastor’s grave, if that makes any sense. After that, I felt more and more drawn to THE SALVATION ARMY. I got involved with the teens and started going places with them. Next thing I knew, my pastors/friends, all in one, were no longer going to be “my” pastors. We received new officers. I didn’t even give them a chance at first. I stopped going to the corp for about a month or two. The new uth pastor told me that he needed me to come to church. I started to come again. At first I was cool with and we could talk about a lot of stuff. As I went more and more I started to hate him. I sometimes felt that he was there for him and not for us. I went to this one retreat thing and David Crowder was the Band at the end. For a hour all I did was stand there because I really didn’t like that band. I thought the drummer was cool, but that was about it. When we were going back to the van, me and my uth pastor got into a big argument about the band. He was telling me how good they was and hot they are one of the greatest. I almost cussed him out. I held back but it was so hard. It’s the feeling or wanting to scream but you can’t because your throat is so dry that the only thing that comes out is a little air bubble. We finally calmed down but we were still arguing. His brother came up to me and started to talk. It wasn’t easy to keep things. What ever was on my mind I spoke it. I think I even told him to screw THE SALVATION ARMY but in a much more vulgar way. Of course he told me that the friendship was over because of how I not only disrespected his brother but his church. The ride home seemed like it took forever. My uth pastor tried to talk to me but I was blaring my music. I was listening to Relient K’s Pressing On. Go figure: talking and acting the way I was and afterwards listening to Christian music. After all the disrespect and discouragement I felt the same way I did before it happened- not a care in the world. The next day was church. I told myself that it was my last Sunday. It wasn’t at all strange going. I felt that I shouldn’t be there. I got pulled aside by my Major and he told me I need to show some respect of his family and church. I just blew him off and went to Sunday school. My teacher was the uth pastor. I really didn’t want to be in there but where else could I go besides home. That place really wasn’t that great so I decided to stay at church. Three hours to boredom-YA go me. It seemed like the sermon was directed towards me. Some of the stuff that was brought up stuck in my head like it was supposed to be there. I tried everything to get it out of my mind but it didn’t work. After a few days had past the memory of that sermon left my head. I was so happy. Now my mind was mostly focused on one thing: pornography. I looked at it like I ate food: a lot. I’m not proud of it now, but then I was. I couldn’t get enough of it. I waited up till my dad would go to bed to pop in the video or to get the magazine out of my hiding spot. I did that instead of doing my college work. Mind you I was going to a Christian college. I was putting on a “mask” at school but while I was at home.. Oh boy did I have people fooled again. I pretended that I was this well balanced Christian that never slips up. In one of my classes we surrounded most of our conversations on our faith. I always claimed that I was serving God with everything, but in reality I was living a life of sin. As time went on, I grew fond of this one girl in one of my classes. She loved the Lord with all her heart. She believed that I was a Christian my self. I always put on my mask in front of her. I liked her and I felt that if I acted like a Christian then maybe she would also like me. After my first semester of college I got kicked out/withdrew. My grades were low because I was worried about doing worldly things. Maybe I should have just focused on my studies and I would still be enrolled at the college. A few weeks after the whole college thing, I died down on the pornography a little bit. I still looked at it a little. Something always made me want to look at those images. On to other things. This past March was tough for me. It was the one year anniversary of my brother getting locked up. It was really complicated because I was always with him and the last time that I saw him I sorta disowned him. It was in last March ( 2004). I was judging him for what he did while I was was doing the same thing before. The next thing I heard was that my brother tried to run over a cop with a car that wasn’t his. He was also drunk. He took off but he realized what he was doing and stopped the car. He has been in prison for about 1 ½ years now. I have only written him probably 5 or 6 times. Some brother: to busy to pick up a pen to write his own brother in prison. He wrote me about 2 or 3 times a month. I wrote him 2 or 3 times in 6 months. I miss him so much and I want to talk to him but I get caught up in my fun, my life. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem like I’m interested in him half the time. But I think about him all the time I know it’s not enough and I keep telling myself I must write him but never do. In April of 2005 as I was preparing to do an audition of a drama to perform at a thing called Tam. I was trying to finally write my brother at the same time. All I could think about was what our lives would be like if we were “real” Christians when we were younger. I kept thinking about it until I went to Youth Councils at the end of April. Going into it I was thinking to myself , “This is just another salvation army event. Let’s just get it over with so I can go home.” The theme was “Be Free” and it felt like it pulled me toward it, if that makes sense. I was in a drama about a girl debating on good or evil. Was it another sign or was it just me. On the second day, which was my birthday, I had my drama audition. I was doing a skit about Saul’s conversion. Right then and there it hit me. God was trying to tell me something- to give up my life to him. I really wasn’t quite sure what to do so I just laid back until the church service the next day. Yet another sign. The sermon was directed toward what I was going through. I knew then it was time to change my life. When it was time, I got on my knees and recommitted my life to God. That was May 1st, 2005 and I’ve lived a happy life since then. Sure there are still struggles and temptations but I can get through them better with God on my side.
