15. Lesson Learned

Senior Year of High School is supposed to be the best year of high school. It is time to take it easy and relax from the schoolwork because you already have it all figured out. You have it in the bag so there is nothing to worry about, right? That's how it is for almost everyone. For me, it seemed to be the opposite, but for unexpected reasons.

The first half of my senior year, I wasn't making the greatest choices. I was spending too much time with the wrong people, making some pretty unintelligent things. It went against everything that I knew, everything that I was taught. I was too scared to ever admit it to anyone. Yeah I wanted to be a little bit of a rebel, but I never imagined that it would go as far as it did. I finally admitted all of my mistakes to my parents at the end of the year. As a result, they isolated me from the thing that I cared about most for a month. They took the one thing that I knew would help me most through my trial.

I had to survive the whole month of January all by myself. It was emotionally agonizing. I didn't think I could survive it, but I endured. February, things got much better. I began to have fun again and I was allowed the thing that I wanted most again. I began to treasure it, because living without it was so hard. But then the worst luck happened and I blew out my knee. I was doomed to crutches for the next 88 days. Exercising was my life, more specifically, basketball. I would not be able to live without it for that long.

Every night, I would go to bed angry at God for doing this to me. I remembered a time when I would be dumbfounded when I saw others angry at God, wondering how they could blame and even hate the very being that created them. I was now caught in my own question. I understood it now. Every day, I would have to walk into the school with my two crutches, slipping on almost every step of the way due to the ice and slush that encompassed the winter ground. I could hear the snickers come from the mouths of my classmates as they saw their star basketball player struggle to get to his next class. It was amusing for them! I couldn't believe it! I was furious!

As time went on, I became more and more grateful for my leg that still functioned properly. I began to appreciate everything that had always worked perfectly fine for me. I then realized that I had been so prideful! I was so selfish, demanding answers from my Creator as to why these things happened to me! How could I be so evil? How could I give in to the powerful deceits of the devil? But what I did realize was that I did give in. I told myself then and there that I would never succumb to the devil's temptations again. Never again would I question God because that was one lesson learned that I would never want to learn again.