For most of my life now, I have been going to churches for as long as I can remember now, but there has been one thing that has been bothering me for the longest time now. Is God even real? 

The church that I have been going to was called “The Chapel,” and I was a Christian when I was going there. I have been listening to the preachers in the church talk about the word of God and all of the amazing things that He has done to people’s lives. They have said He was able to turn one loaf of bread into a whole meal to feed hundreds of thousands of people and that He has split the entire ocean in half to let people including himself to walk through it. The most important story my parents told me about God was that He will forgive you when you ask for his forgiveness after you’ve done something bad, no matter what happens. But that is the main issue here. 

Around 2019, I had been going through a very hard time in my life that a lot of other teens also go through like lots of stress and anxiety. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was with a friend at the time, and he introduced me to a website. He talked about it like it was a fact, and it got me curious. And as soon as I looked at it, I instantly regretted doing it because I became addicted to it. It started to consume me, and I didn’t know what to think. I felt like a bad person, and I started to ask God for forgiveness and to help me with this. But, then I started to question if God actually forgives? This spiraled and made me start questioning God in general. I asked myself, “Is He real? How was He able to do all of these things to his people as well as other people? How is this even possible?” I had believed in Him and all of the amazing things that he has done to people like how they have survived a deadly car crash or lived for months all alone without any supplies to help them. I believed Him with all of my heart when I was younger, but now, they all sounded mind-boggling to me and left me with my mouth open. I had time to think about it by myself. All of this started to sound very surreal and like fake news to me. The fact that someone survived a deadly car crash, insane. This one moment in time made me question what I should and shouldn’t believe in.

 After a while, I started to miss going to church and hearing all of the stories about Him and I wanted to go back and rethink my ideas about God and get a start fresh. I wanted to change my habits. I now want to change my habits of questioning my belief in God and his forgiveness. I want to go back to believing him again. Just like what my younger self did when I was growing up. I want to believe in God and his never-ending power with all of my heart. And I want to stay that way for the rest of my life.