Part 2: How I became aware of my need

    Let me add upon the stage of confusion I was in while holding onto the wing of that plane.  Unbeknownst to me, I was falling in love with a friend that my mind could make no sense of.  I thought she was beautiful - one of the best-looking women I had ever met.  We were simply friends that talked for hours on end each week about life.  She was just as confused as I was - both of us desperately searching for answers to all of life's mysteries.  I talked with her as I talked with many girls in High School - both of us without huge thick shields; we were open and honest about very personal things.  As she was in a close relationship with someone, I was completely closed off to the concept of us ever being more than friends.  However, unlike the girls in High School, I was unable to turn off the emotions inside that I felt for her. I had grown close to girls in High School - again, girls that saw me as non-threatening...non-date material.  In each case, although it hurt deeply, I was able to control feelings greater than friendship for them.  With this friend at Clemson, I was unable to do that, but I did not accept my inability to do that.  I was lost in denial, refusing to accept or believe that I was falling in love with her.  With this began a huge battle within my mind and heart that I fought daily.  The situation was further complicated by the fact that when she broke up with her boyfriend, I had already begun dating another girl that quickly fell in love with me. Unfortunately, I did not love her.  I broke up with her after a few months when I realized I could not spend the rest of my life with her, and I felt absolutely horrible for the pain she felt.  I couldn't understand why she would love me, and so I questioned whether she really did.  Perhaps even more, I was questioning what exactly love was and whether or not I loved myself.  If I did not even love myself, how could I ever expect another to love me?  And how could I expect to love myself if I didn't even know who I was, what life was, or why I was here?  In any event, while I could question the degree of love she felt, it did not matter.  I could plainly see and feel the pain she felt as I tried to explain my confusion to her while breaking up - and it destroyed me inside.  I couldnn't make myself love her.

    The MCAT was coming up.  The MCAT is the entrance exam into medical school.  It is a long 8-hour exam that can make or break your chances at getting into medical school.  Although some say the MCAT is not everything, all but for a very narrow range of scores, it IS everything.  If you score below a certain value, it does not matter what your other qualifications are - you will not be able to get in.  Talk about a load of stress!  I had to take it in April of my junior year.  Meanwhile, I was taking a very heavy load during my most difficult year in chemical engineering.  The material delved deeper into concepts I found less and less interesting, more and more complicated, and I began to consider dropping out of the major.  I had a really hard time with this because I was cruising along with all A's.  Some of my friends and others that I saw who were in the top of the their high school class were struggling and even failing courses.  Sorrowfully, they spoke of the dreaded thought of changing majors and “accepting defeat”.  For me to bring up the thought of changing majors with my grades seemed to be crazy and unfair.  So, I kept this battle mostly to myself and contemplated the fact that just because you are good at something does not mean that you will be happy with it.  Beyond that, I felt I had gone too far and that it was too late to turn back.  Alas, I had given up tennis and so much other college fun for this - my God, what have I done!?!  I envied my High School friends who played college tennis at smaller schools.  I also envied people who knew what they wanted or even those that didn't know but didn't care and just lived it up in college.  How did they do it?  Why did I have to contemplate so much?  Why did I care?

    And what of happiness?  Where was it?  I looked around at the world and I saw such sorrow!  I saw people chasing things for happiness only to turn up empty.  What were they chasing?  Some seemed to be chasing fame and popularity...but I saw those that were famous and popular and they were not happy!  Their time in popularity was so fleeting, fickle fans chase the next 'thing' and 'has-beens' are left empty.  I saw some chasing money...just as I was...but the rich are not happy!  The rich seek more money...like a void or emptiness that must be filled, but can't.  It's all relative, too.  One man's rich is another man's poor...and yet both look further up the street at another who has more than them...and seek more!  They think that if they just have that much more, that then they would be satisfied.  It is like a heroine addict who never gets enough.  And it is never enough.  And another big one I saw myself chasing with others - the love of another.  What a complicated issue this is...and I would ponder it endlessly.  My parents divorced and remarried, and the divorce rate was so incredibly high!  Why should I think that I am not going to make the same mistake...why is it that everybody thinks that their relationship is different?  A divorce is a huge change that is extremely difficult to go through.  The fact that the divorce rate is so high, does that mean there are many other relationships that continue without divorce but are unhappy?  Who, then, is happy and why?!  And why, God, do I think so much?  I would think about how much I thought and wonder why I thought so much and desperately and futilely try not to think so much!  Think, think, think - "Geeze, Chad, would you just stop thinkingg!"  "Man!  You think too much!"  I heard these kinds of comments all the time...and so I kept a lot of this nonsense to myself.  It wasn't that I wanted to think so much...I wanted it all to stop!  My father once said something that sums up what I was trying to do during this time, "Chad, you can't solve all of the problems of the entire world every day!"

    It was then, also, that I started questioning religion.  Why was it that I claimed to be a Catholic anyway?  Just because I was born into the family that I was?  That makes no sense!  What makes it right?  The same goes for Christianity - why should I call myself a Christian?  If I had been born into a Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist family, would I not, of course, be of that faith?!  What makes one right and the other wrong?  I started reading about various religions and tried to make sense of everything.  I heavily considered agnosticism and atheism.  The first being a thought that God may or may not exist and that it is impossible to know for sure, and the second being a thought that God simply does not exist.  Considering the way the world was and what I had learned, these last two seemed like very distinct possibilities!  But alas, it also seemed so many of these beliefs overlapped among the jumble of words and definitions.  Even theism and atheism seemed to overlap in many ways!  I thought a lot about the God I thought was there all my life - could He be just a figment of my imagination placed there by my parents and placed into my parent’s mind by a perpetuating line of parents before them?  It was an uneasy thought, and at times I felt like I was abandoning my friend.  Other times, I felt like I had been the fool and grew very angry!  Certainly, to me, it seemed this so-called God had never spoken back to me, and the church who worshipped Him was full of contradictions and hypocrisy!  Furthermore, it seemed there was no way to prove or disprove the existence of God, anyway.  Hence - I had become an agnostic, but was still searching for the truth in religion and with God.  It weighed heavily on my mind and heart every day.

    Boiling pots and jigsaw puzzles.  These are the two analogies I use in an attempt to describe what was going on in my mind during my junior year at Clemson.  Each of the above issues - women, career, happiness, money, relationships, life, thought, religion, God, etc. - was like a boiling pot of water in my head.  The pots grew in size and boiled harder as I thought about each one and then moved on to the next.  Each one was also like a jigsaw puzzle spreading out to infinity.  I had a few pieces fit together in the middle for a nice core explanation, but then off to the sides I had crammed some pieces in, and even further off to the side were an infinite number of loose pieces I didn't understand!  Each issue was a puzzle or boiling pot...and all of it was crammed into my head and growing larger like a brain tumor.  I was bound to break down...it had to happen or else I would go crazy (or I was going crazy)...and then it did finally fall apart...the plane crashed.

    It was exactly one week before the MCAT, the make or break test to get into medical school, and I had not yet begun to study for it!  This is a test people study months in advance for, they spend hundreds of dollars on courses to prepare for; they spend the better part of their first three years in college getting ready for - and here I was totally unprepared.  Surrounded by other Chemical Engineering majors, I was lost within the material of my own major and had kept putting off studying for the MCAT.  Furthermore, I had 3 Chemical Engineering course tests the very week before the Saturday MCAT, and a fourth test the Monday after!  My apartment room was a compete and utter wreck, and you could not even walk three feet without having to step over dirty clothes, notebooks, or trash.  I had not done laundry in over three weeks, and did not have time to do laundry then.  After a bit of panicking, I got my plan together.  Starting Sunday night at midnight, I began studying for the MCAT.  I studied through the night until 8 in the morning and went to class.  After class, I studied for Chemical Engineering until midnight and then for the MCAT until morning again.  I did this three consecutive days and nights through Wednesday on absolutely no sleep.  Wednesday afternoon, I sat down on my bed for a second before hitting the Chemical Engineering books...and accidentally fell asleep.  The next waking moment of my life was surreal and seemed to last an eternity, but in actuality only lasted a few seconds.  I woke to the sound of the phone ringing, and it was for me.  I could tell because we had distinctive ring and it rang two short rings for each normal ring.  I had to answer it fast because on the normal second ring, it would ring a third and fourth time and the answering machine would pick up!  When I heard the first ring, I suddenly jumped to my feet...still not awake from my very deep sleep.  I was extremely confused!!!  A bunch of thoughts went through my head in the blink of an eye, "What's that noise?  What's going on?  Ohhhh my gosh...I fell asleep!  Did I miss my test?  Is somebody calling wondering where I am because I am missing my Thursday test?  What time is it?  Where is my clock?  It's 9:00.  Oh my gosh...I did miss my 8:00 test!  But why is it so dark outside?  Where is my phone? Why is it dark and 9:00 in the morning?  Is my clock wrong?  What happened to my clock?  Did the power go out? Did I sleep all the way through Thursday?  Is it Thursday night?  Where is my phone?  I got to get it before that stupid answering machine gets it!!!"  While these thoughts were running through my head, I was frantically looking around...looking for the phone...looking at my clock...looking outside...trying to get across my room, but tripping over all the junk...my phone was hidden under some dirty clothes...and I quickly picked it up.  As soon as I did, the stupid answering machine picked up, too!  Over my own voice on the machine, I screamed out "WHAT'S GOING ON?????!!!!  WHAT'S GOING ON???!!!"  All I heard on the other line was a good friend of mine burst out in laughter!!  As the machine stopped, I yelled, "STOP LAUGHING...WHAT'S GOING ON???"  He just kept laughing.  "WHAT TIME IS IT??? WHAT TIME IS IT??"  "Calm down, Chad...it's 9 clock!" "AM OR PM, AM OR PM??"  More laughter.  So I yelled, "NO!!! NO!!!  I AM DEAD SERIOUS!!!  AM OR PM!!?!"  He stopped laughing for a second, "p.m."  "WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY???"  "Wednesday."  "So did I miss the test?" "No, Chad...<more laughter>...the test is to-mor-row...on Thurs-day...at 8...a.-m.... in the mor-ning...are you OK?"

    Phewwww...no, I wasn't OK.  I did go on to take the test on Thursday and then got really sick - a bad cold.
Sniffling, coughing, sleepy with a fever and in dirty underwear and clothes, I took the MCAT on Saturday.  Afterwards, I was dead tired and felt absolutely horrible.  My mom heard it in my voice when I called to tell her it was over, and I burst out crying.  Thank God for moms and my mom in particular.  While I slept straight through the next 24 hours, she drove 6 hours to and from Clemson, cleaned my apartment, did all my dishes, and did all of my laundry.  I barely remember seeing her, and only did for the brief moment I was awake when she first arrived.  My plane had crashed...and it crashed hard.

    Perhaps it was hard for others to see...I still had a 4.0 in a very difficult major in college.  It was a good major that lead to the highest paying jobs for a Bachelor in Science degree.  Some how, I did really well on the Chemical Engineering tests I took the week of the MCAT.  I now had a clean apartment, clean underwear, many great friends, a great family, a promising future, and externally looked like I was on top of the world again - I should be happy, right?  But NO!  On the contrary...the whole event above was a plane crash.   I had been desperately hanging onto the wing of that plane that was out of control heading into the future, but now it no longer moved...it had crashed.  Where was I?  I was amidst a major that I had now grown to loathe.  I couldn't imagine doing Chemical Engineering problems for the rest of my life.  And furthermore, because of the demands of Chemical Engineering, I had just ruined my opportunity to go into medicine because I was sure I had done horribly on the MCAT.  So my two hopes, Chemical Engineering and Medicine, seemed to be destroyed in the plane crash.  I didn't want one and screwed up the other.  Furthermore, I had given up my chance to play tennis at a smaller school, I had given up a lot of 'fun college times', I had given up everything!  I felt like I had just totally wasted 3 years of my life, if not more...and had no idea what to do about the dismal looking future. Something had to change, and something had to change now!  I could not put up with all of this boiling pot and jigsaw puzzle nonsense!  I got really mad at God...and screamed out at Him!  I screamed out for myself and the world!  Why was it this way???  Why?!  I went outside one night crying.  I didn't want my roommate or anybody else to hear or know.  It was none of their business...it was nobody's business...and I really didn't care about anything or anyone.  I walked silently along a railroad track; there wasn't a train in sight.  Nor was there a cloud in the sky as I looked up with watery eyes pleading for answers.  I sat down to re-evaluate my situation and my life.  I knew I had to get rid of a pot or a jigsaw puzzle within my head.  I had to or I would end up in an institution.  After again visiting each issue with my mind, I first thought it was hopeless...there was no issue I could get rid of.  But then I realized there was one issue I could resolve and get rid of - one issue that had been eating up a lot of my thoughts and time lately - it was the issue of religion and God!  I could prove for myself that religion is for fools and that God does not exist!  The only thing holding me back in the past was a slight fear of turning on God.  At this point, though, I was very angry and very desperate...and God did not seem to be answering any of my questions or pleas.  If He was not going to help me at this very lowest time in my life, then I didn't want to believe in a God like that anyway.  I knew it would not solve any of my other problems, but at least it would clear my mind of that issue...and there was a comfort in that...a big comfort.  With that thought, I stood up and looked up into the sky.  I nodded as I thought of my resolution, and walked away from the train track.  I turned my back on nothing, I thought - for God did not even exist.

In short: I was desperately in need.  I needed relief.  I needed answers.  I needed sanity.  I saw and felt hopelessness in myself, in others, and in the whole world.  My plane had crashed - I was dead, and in my mind, so was God.

Part 3: How I Received Christ