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Description
For once, here is another more serious, personal picture. I'm too often drawing just cheese and not enough normal stuff.

This is a little memento of experiences I had with faith and Christianity when I was a teen. I believe in God, but my views were dramatically different from my fellow youth group. For one I believed in evolution. I also did NOT believe in active proselytizing. Instead I believed that the best way to lead people to God was by example and by being a open and sympathetic person and not forcing it upon them. Incidentally, I myself was often victims of accusations of lack of faith and even inflicted actual conversion sessions by other fellow Christians who felt I was still unfaithful. Also due to my beliefs, I had a lot of non-Christian friends who were amazed at my willingness to accept them without strings attached and they very much respected me for it. I heartily believe that these are the true ways to reach out to others.

But the influence of more critical members of the Church on me when I was an unsure teen really had an affect on me. Then there was my discovery of my sexual orientation on top of that.

The result was pretty severe for a while. I had these periods of 'night terrors' or panic attacks. At first it was just insomnia, but it eventually became an overwhelming explosion of panic. I would lay up at night nad beacome fearful I was not faithful enough... eventually becoming a fear that God may not exist at all and there is nothing after life. This was bad, but became eclipsed by the sudden realization that the idea of 'life everlasting' (eternity) was utterly terrifying to me. To live forever with no rest and memories endless as space itself. With these fears, it became "I cannot live, and I cannot die'.

The physical manifestation of this became a massive feeling that I was about to vomit that very moment and I would run to the bathroom. However, the vomit never came, and that intense nausea would not stop and continue throughout the night. My whole body would become racked with shivers and quaking that I could not stop and were constant. It nearly pushed me into a massive chronic depression and I endured it for many nights and many years.

Eventually, I slowly began to crawl away from the brink that had claimed other troubled souls... a brink of a lifetime of depression or suicide. I barely escaped from it, by trying to just tell myself, what will be will be, and the best I can do is to do what I know is right with the knowledge that God will forgive all the doubt. It was something like that. To be honest, I can't be really too sure how I grew out of it.

Anyways, this drawing it just a bit of the memory of those past struggles. What I learned from it is this, doubt is natural. Fear of what we can't explain is natural. Just don't let it destroy your life. Fight it, whether through God or through something else that keeps you going, persevere through it. Life will get better, even when it looks like it will never. It did for me.

Description
For once, here is another more serious, personal picture. I'm too often drawing just cheese and not enough normal stuff.

This is a little memento of experiences I had with faith and Christianity when I was a teen. I believe in God, but my views were dramatically different from my fellow youth group. For one I believed in evolution. I also did NOT believe in active proselytizing. Instead I believed that the best way to lead people to God was by example and by being a open and sympathetic person and not forcing it upon them. Incidentally, I myself was often victims of accusations of lack of faith and even inflicted actual conversion sessions by other fellow Christians who felt I was still unfaithful. Also due to my beliefs, I had a lot of non-Christian friends who were amazed at my willingness to accept them without strings attached and they very much respected me for it. I heartily believe that these are the true ways to reach out to others.

But the influence of more critical members of the Church on me when I was an unsure teen really had an affect on me. Then there was my discovery of my sexual orientation on top of that.

The result was pretty severe for a while. I had these periods of 'night terrors' or panic attacks. At first it was just insomnia, but it eventually became an overwhelming explosion of panic. I would lay up at night nad beacome fearful I was not faithful enough... eventually becoming a fear that God may not exist at all and there is nothing after life. This was bad, but became eclipsed by the sudden realization that the idea of 'life everlasting' (eternity) was utterly terrifying to me. To live forever with no rest and memories endless as space itself. With these fears, it became "I cannot live, and I cannot die'.

The physical manifestation of this became a massive feeling that I was about to vomit that very moment and I would run to the bathroom. However, the vomit never came, and that intense nausea would not stop and continue throughout the night. My whole body would become racked with shivers and quaking that I could not stop and were constant. It nearly pushed me into a massive chronic depression and I endured it for many nights and many years.

Eventually, I slowly began to crawl away from the brink that had claimed other troubled souls... a brink of a lifetime of depression or suicide. I barely escaped from it, by trying to just tell myself, what will be will be, and the best I can do is to do what I know is right with the knowledge that God will forgive all the doubt. It was something like that. To be honest, I can't be really too sure how I grew out of it.

Anyways, this drawing it just a bit of the memory of those past struggles. What I learned from it is this, doubt is natural. Fear of what we can't explain is natural. Just don't let it destroy your life. Fight it, whether through God or through something else that keeps you going, persevere through it. Life will get better, even when it looks like it will never. It did for me.