Chloe's story
A life falling apart
Everything was going well for me – friends, university, family and swimming
at a national level. Then things started to fall apart. I struggled with my
studies in the final year. My swimming was suffering as I spent more time studying,
and my friends were getting fed up with me moaning! I became more and more
depressed, to the point that I planned to take my own life. I felt hopeless
and my outlook seemed bleak. Friends and family didn’t understand.
If there was a God, why was I feeling this way? Why did people I care about die? Why was life filled with suffering and fear?
One friend suggested it was ‘the devil’ who was behind all this. This confused me. I’d heard about God and Jesus but not about the devil. If this was true, why didn’t God do something about it? I was determined to find out, and decided to go to a church to see if they could give me the answers.
Who is really in control?
What I heard surprised me. The people I met at this church seemed to think that God had done something about the problem – that he cared about what was going on. But there was more. He also knew and cared about me! This seemed too good to be true.
I started to hear about Jesus, and after a while I began to see the significance of the story I’d heard before about ‘Jesus dying on a cross’. I realised that this wasn’t just a made-up story, but knew somehow that it was true and was part of God’s plan. He was in control after all!
Taking the plunge
One day I read something that Jesus had said to some of his friends:
‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one can get to God except through me’.
That clinched it. I wanted to know I was on the way to God. I needed to know what was true and I was desperate for a new start to my life. I decided that I needed to follow Jesus. I know it’s a bit corny but it really did seem like light at the end of the tunnel.
Hope at last!
Following Jesus has changed my life. In fact, God has helped me realise that, once you’re with Jesus, there is no tunnel at all anymore! I’ve emerged into an open space where I feel free and able to live to the full. What a mind-blowing thought!
I’m not saying that things have been all smiles – in fact I’ve had some desperately awful times as well as fantastic ones. I have had to experience the emotional pain of a miscarriage, I’ve had to clear my name in a negligence case at work, and I’ve struggled with some of my closest relationships. Sometimes when I talk to God, he answers straight away – other times I only hear silence. But I’ve never gone back to the state I was in without Jesus. My life doesn’t make any sense without him.