Drugs no longer have a hold on me.

"Hi, my name is Samantha. When I was 13 years old, I started smoking weed. At the beginning it was just when socialising with friends then it became an addiction, to the point where me and friends would put our money together to buy some weed. The dependency on weed got so bad that I would steal and sell things just to feed my addiction.

 When I was 14, I started to hang around with drug dealers who sold crack cocaine and heroin. I can remember the first time I took crack. I thought I was going to die. It made me so paranoid. At this point I started to sell drugs to feed my habit. Eventually I stopped smoking crack cocaine at 15 years old, but I still continued to smoked weed. The reason I stopped smoking crack was because I left the circle of friends I was with at the time and I knew it was causing a lot of problems at home.

When I became pregnant at 16, I couldn't smoke weed a lot but now again during my pregnancy I would smoke weed. After the baby was born I went back to smoking weed heavily and continue to do so until I was 22. 

At 17 years old, I became so depressed; my doctor prescribed me with anti-depressants. I became dependant on them for 9 years until I was 26 years old. It was only when I was pregnant with my third child did I decide to stop smoking weed completely. I was determined to be a good mother and not to be controlled by drugs anymore. The will power I had drove me to stick to my decision, though it was very difficult at the beginning. 

The lifestyle I live now is completely different to the one I had as a teenager and in my early twenties. I am living a clean healthy lifestyle free from drugs. I have been able to rebuild my life and now I am at college, training to become a professional chef. For me to get to where I am now was not easy. 

As a result of my drug abuse, I left school without an education and had to start all over again as an adult so I could make something of my life. I spent more time high on drugs then I did in class and as a result, my memory became so bad. Even today, my memory is not so great and at times I find it hard to remember everything I am supposed to do that is important and it has affected my concentration skills. This is a bad side effect and consequence of taking drugs". 

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Day five in Israel

Our last moments at the Kibutz before we headed off to Galilee for the remainder of the trip was spent having a tour of the garden. Our guide Eli showed us an oil press. The oil press is used to press olive which then becomes olive oil. Those of us in the western world, have machinery that does the job for us, without lifting a finger. The way Eli showed us how oil used to be pressed, is what we would call manual labour. It’s all done with the strength of your arm. Imagine doing this daily and having to produce large quantity of oil.

The story of the 10 virgins came up again and the reason why five were wise and five were foolish became so clear to me. All the virgins looked the same, dressed in garments looking beautiful. But inside they were different. Five were prudent, vigilant and had their eyes fixed on the arrival of their groom. That is why every day they made sure they filled their lamps with oil so that there would be more than enough oil to carry them until the bridegroom arrived. Filling their lamps daily was not easy. It required sacrifice, a lot of strength and humbleness; humbleness to go down and get yourself dirty if needs be.

The other five virgins were relaxed. Probably their eyes were fixed on the present (here and now) thinking that they would have time to fill their lamps nearer the time. They were lazy, probably proud as well because they didn’t want to be seen constantly pressing oil and I believe they followed the crowd, with the attitude “others are not doing what the wise virgins are doing so I will not do as well”. . Little did they know, such an attitude would cause them to be rejected by the bridegroom and many people today will encounter the same treatment when they meet Jesus face to face. He will turn them away, not because He never loved them but because they did not do what was required of them to do, in order for them to inherit the kingdom of Heaven. It is not free but comes at a price. The price of letting go of grudges, pride, overcoming laziness and complacency, basically anything in our life that is not good and is contrary to the ways of God.

When we decide to sacrifice like the wise virgins did and fill our lamps (life) with the oil (presence of God) and daily await the return of our Lord, we too will be accepted into Heaven.

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Israel: Day four continued

More of day four in Israel

"Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him". John 9:1-3

There are problems we go through in life, that at first we may think we have sinned and caused it to happen. But this is not always the case. God allows us to go through certain situations so we can have an experience with Him and at the end of it glorify His name with our testimony. I believe God’s power is best at work in times of weakness and through difficult moments. We are also best equipped to help people when we have faced trials and overcome them. When helping people, we will not pass on knowledge to them but life and spirit, because we know what it is like to go through a hard moment and we also know how to overcome it.

I remember when I was a leader in Victory Youth Group (VYG) a few years back and I was kicked out of my mother’s house. I was homeless and placed in a youth hostel where I lived for 7 months. At that time it seemed like the worst time of my life and a great shame for me as I was at law school, living in a hostel with ex-prisoners, drug addicts, gang members and young people who were not doing anything with their lives, apart from smoking weed every day. It was not nice to begin with but within time (when I got over myself) I started to understand young people in a different way. I really saw how lost these youth were and for some of them, that was the only lifestyle they knew. Through this experience I learned a lot about myself and about other people. It even toughened me up and caused me to depend on God. I was able to even practice what Iwould teach the youths in my tribe. I remember there was a guy who seemed to be popular in the hostel. He was a show off and in front of people, he invited me to his room one night. The girls were egging me on to go but I did not go because I feared God more than him. The next morning, he was so embarrassed he suggested in front of everyone that I must be a lesbian because I rejected him. He laughed at me and so did many others but I did not care because I was not about to follow the crowd nor deny my faith for anyone or anything.

As I was different from the others and started to befriend some of them, I was able to introduce them to the youth group. I look back and I see God had placed me there for me to learn and grow and also bring people to him. He even used me to bring one of the support workers and her friend to the church. Had I not gone through this, I would still be dependent on my mother, immature as a person and narrow minded when it comes to young people and the issues they face. Since then, I have been able to help youth who are going through what I went through and I even worked as a Youth Support Worker for a while and volunteered as a Housing Advisor to give to others what I had learned and gained through my personal experience.

To be continued

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When the penny dropped.

As I was doing some housework the other day, I started to speak to God about something that had been bothering me for sometime and making me anxious. Though I had made countless prayers to be free from what was weighing me down, it seemed to still have a hold of me. Before I could even finish the first sentence “just stop it, stop entertaining the idea, stop giving ears to these thoughts” came to mind. Straight away I knew it was God answering my prayer before I even finished speaking. I saw that I had been feeding the ridiculas thoughts every time they came to my mind. I was the one allowing myself to be anxious and frustrated.

Many times we pray to God for Him to free us from insecurities or complexes we may have, the 'love' for an ex-boyfriend that does not seem to go away, disappointments and many other things, and He does. When we ask Him to free us, He does exactly what we asked for. However, when the negative thought or the remembrance of that particular thing comes back instead of rejecting it and believing that it no longer part of us, we dwell on it. We are the ones that bring back to life what God already took away from us and what we had already determined was history.

We have the power to put to an end many things and after that day, when I decided to change my mindset, I have noticed that what bothered me for so long does not even bother me anymore. In fact I laugh as I write this because it was something so silly that I made “big”.

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