Why I Broke Up With My Friends And Found Family Instead #PersonalTestimony

For the first time in my life I don't need C.

Every since I was a small child I always needed someone.Growing up as an only child meant that my interactions with other children my own age was a rare luxury I could only afford during the weekend visits to my grandmother's house so that I could meet up with some of my childhood friends.

I spent my Saturdays running from dance class to my junior choir practice and then followed by dance ministry at my church where even in the midst of large crowds I always seemed to slip into the background...or worse yet be compared to my 'perfect' cousin.

Still, there was no option but to be involved in church. I grew up with a bible-thumping grandmother who made sure I knew attending church was not a negotiation I was allowed to make in her house or I'd still be coughing up pages from the bible to this day. Despite her seemingly dictatorship rules, I enjoyed church and took part wherever and whenever I could trying to be the best Christian I could be.

That changed when I hit high school (secondary school in the Caribbean). Suddenly I was around people from different backgrounds whose language wasn't always the cleanest or even the nicest. I remember being awkwardly quiet for a few months until I found myself slipping into bad habits using language I was never proud of.

It may have been the only child syndrome speaking but I soon found myself losing bits and pieces of my personality trying to be accepted by my friends and the people around me. (Don't get me wrong some of them were good people). I found a group of people I genuinely called friends (including C who I met on my first day of school) and together we navigated the intense and quite frightening new school environment we had been placed in.

Finding friends should've helped but I didn't like the me that I had become. I soon found myself adopting traits that even to this day I am not proud of.This lasted throughout my five years of high school and even after then, when I couldn't shake the personality I had become.

Looking back now, I realize I was looking for the wrong things in the wrong people. I didn't need to find my happiness in the approval of other people whose sole motive was to lead me further down the path of unrighteousness.

I needed to be ME!!

I needed to free myself from the filth  (and bad influences)
I had covered myself in and find the person who I truly was underneath the moss I had used to bury the girl I once was.

She was so far hidden that it wasn't until a few weeks after my baptism when a random friend on the street saw me and asked me why I seemed so upbeat and happy when my life seemed to be on such a standstill while I tried to deal with various health issues.

Until then I didn't see any difference. I was still the same person going thorough the same trials but now without even knowing it, I started to radiate the love I had for Heavenly Father on the outside. I smiled more, I tried to be nicer to people and I genuinely wanted to be a walking testament of what the joy of having the Holy Spirit could do for other people.

Choosing the gospel meant giving up the wild parties; the alcohol (that I never liked to consume), friends who loved to smoke cigarettes and illegal drugs, the fast paced club lifestyle (that was never quite me).
 I should miss it.
 Instead, my weekends are filled with service, lessons with missionaries, preparing for sacrament and spending family home evening with my mom.

Since then, I've met amazing people who have changed my life for the better. These people saw me at my worst spiritually and brought me out of a world of darkness and brought me back to Heavenly Father's loving arms. I got a brand new batch of siblings from around the world (my missionaries) who have filled the gaps these former friends had left and whose friendships run deeper that the ones I clung unto for years.

It's been almost a year since I stopped hanging out with C. I tried giving her advice, fasting and praying even harder for her to make changes in her own life. I now see myself as a stranger outside of a bubble of sin and promiscuity as I watched from afar how removed I had become from my group of friends and how little my presence truly meant to them unless I was living their truth.

Their truth wasn't cutting it for me anymore.

My truth is so much better.

Love The Sassy Mormon