Find Love Together – Logan Briana

I praise God for giving me pain and suffering!

I am not saying that it is easy to go through pain or suffering because it is definitely not. I am just confident that God knew I needed to go through all I did to become a true follower of Jesus.

When I was a child, I saw everything I shouldn’t have. I saw drugs, sex, nudity, etc. Instead of what most seven-year-olds probably think about, I was already thinking about doing adult things. I had planned on having a daughter with an unreliable father, and then have sex with any guy or guys I wanted. If I had gone on with that plan, I probably would have had more than one child, all with different men. Also, with that probably would have picked up an STI or two on the way.

As a child, I did not know what it meant to have a relationship with God. I did believe in Him and even talked to him. That was not enough because I still had a plan that would have wrecked my life.

I truly believe losing my mom at the age of ten saved me. Along with the other deaths that had followed. Don’t get me wrong, I love and miss each member of my family nearly every day. Then, I also don’t believe I would have a relationship with God if I hadn’t gone through all the grief and pain.

When my mom died my aunt moved me miles away from everything I knew into one of many cornfields in Indiana. The first month I was by myself since my aunt was in Baltimore packing up the house. When I say by myself, I mean with my cousin, who I barely knew. That month I was put into the most traditional Christian home I could be placed in. I was with my cousin, husband and their five kids all under the age of seven. Let alone that I was in an environment completely opposite of what I grew up in, I went from being the only child to not. In ways, no longer being an only child was more of a culture shock than the religious aspect. During that month I was exposed to God in ways that I had never been before. There are alphabet memory verses, and if you’ve been around schooling based on religion, you probably know what I mean. The month I came, my cousin was teaching her children the letter ‘I.’ It was the very first bible verse I was to memorize, and to this day I still know it (well at least the actual verse, the reference not always). It is John 14:14, “If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.” I still wouldn’t say I knew what it meant to be a Christian at this point, but it was definitely a turning point.

Throughout the years later I was kind of around religion, since I was only a block away from my cousins, but lived with my aunt who was just growing in her faith herself. I didn’t begin to know what it meant to have a relationship with God until my junior year of high school when I began going to a Christian school and church youth group.

Even though I’d hope that some of who I am, aside from my circumstances, would have surfaced and I wouldn’t have done what seven-year-old Logan was planning on doing with or without religion being a part of my life. To be honest, I don’t think that would have been the case.

God’s grace protected me from all that could have happened to me. There are many other things I could have done aside from sex, that would have messed up my life just as much if not more. Thankfully, I was strong enough to not resort to drugs or alcohol for the pain. Since I do have addiction from all sides of my family, I am more prone to becoming addicted. I have seen some of those addictive tendencies in myself, which have solidified my choice to not ever consume alcohol.

There are many times throughout life that it is really hard to live life without parents, or not having a place that will always be considered ‘home.’ All of this has in some ways forced me to depend on God. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy to do that, especially since I am not one to depend on others if I don’t have to.

I needed the pain and suffering to find God. Though, I am still healing from it all I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I would rather have my relationship with God than have my family while not knowing who Jesus is. There is one passage that I have carried with me for many years now, and feel like it applies perfectly to my life and relationship with God. It is Philippians 3: 7-11, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Walking with God is far from easy, but it is so worth it!