Hi everyone, my name is Spencer Freer. I'm 25 years old and I was born in Los Angeles, California. I've had an interesting journey in life that I want to share with you. In my early years I was overcome by a deep depression that was brought on by a lot of different elements. Bullying, moving schools, and believe it or not what some people know today as "Catfishing", just to name a few. For anyone who isn't aware of what "Catfishing" means, it's when someone uses the internet to pose as someone else, often for the means of emotional manipulation. On the surface it sounds silly. How could I be easily tricked like that? Well that's what I'm here to share.
I was exposed to the internet at an early age. Remember AIM? I'm sure many of you do but those who don't, that stands for AOL Instant Messenger. It was an incredibly popular thing that came out when people still had dial-up in their houses (Me being one of them). It was an awesome thing, you could spend the day with your friends at school and then go home and spend the rest of the day sending those same friends messages back and forth in different colors, sizes and all sorts of things. It was a lot of fun. Well what was once a novelty thing and source of fun quickly became the source of what I thought was a darkness that I would never escape. It led to a lot of bad choices, drugs, self mutilation, a complete abandonment of myself and everything that I cared about. I did a lot of damage not only to myself but my family, my friends and even people who didn't know me well. It was an extremely powerful darkness. Honestly even to this day, all of that damage has not completely healed. But, in the midst of this darkness, I became utterly desperate and needed answers. No one around me would speak to me, no one knew how to help me, they were completely overwhelmed by what I was going through and so was I. I can remember one day, very vividly, screaming at my father "WHY DOES GOD HATE ME? WHY DOES HE KEEP DOING THESE THINGS TO ME?" I just didn't understand why I was hurting so bad, so I started seeking.
My dad, one of the best friends I ever had in my life, was a very intelligent man. A man of patience and understanding, also of faith. But he never talked to me much about God, never actually. He never imposed anything he believed on me, in fact the environment in my house was very non-religious. My mother, whose parents were Mormon and my father whose parents were Mormon and Baptist, were not church going people. What I'm getting at is, I never went to church. The only exposure I ever had to God or church was in grade school when I was transferred over to a Catholic school. Believe me I had no idea what was going on. In fact, an early experience in the Catholic church triggered a distrust in religion all together, but that's a story for another time. Really, the only reason I was put in Catholic school was because the public school I had been attending before was experiencing and utter lack of supervision. It led to one student stabbing another with pair of scissors while the teacher was sleeping at his desk.. I know right? Well my mom had enough and quickly put me into private school, with no motivation of religion, purely my safety.
So where am I going with this? Well I want to do two things: I want to share my life story to explain how I came to searching for answers about my sorrow and how that search lead me to the Bible and then to God and I also want to share the specific scriptures I started to read that gave me those answers. Essentially I want to create a Bible study. I want to share how these scriptures not only taught me about God, but of the pain and suffering that I was experiencing. I'm doing this because we live in a very different world now, different even from when I was a child. Violence is at an all time high, racial tensions are on the point of breaking, almost everything has a sense of demise and hopelessness. So in hopes that I can share with you the same light I found, I created this Steemit account to hopefully shine light on this darkness that seems to be encroaching our societies all over the world. Maybe even you are going through a personal darkness that you're unsure how to deal with, afraid to share, or are losing hope to ever resolve. I want to show you that at least me and God, understand.
I plan to post as often as possible, if I can get enough of your following, I will make it a daily thing. It's up to you guys, that's the principle of Steemit, putting the power in your hands. If you're interested to listen, I will share. If not, no problem. I'm going to do the same thing my father did for me, give you the opportunity to find out for yourselves through passive sharing, no imposition. I'm not here to condemn your beliefs, I'm not here to say anyone here is worse than the other. My motivation is simply to provide an unbiased perspective on my search for answers and how those answers led me to God. If you find yourself intrigued, please like this post so that I know there are people out there willing to hear my story, I'm looking forward to it.