Stepping Stones in my Walk with God

            Growing up I have always loved the outdoors and playing all kinds of sports.  In middle school and high school a lot of my identity was found in how well I did in whatever sport I was playing at the time (mainly soccer).  In the fall of my sophomore year of high school, while I was playing in a huge soccer tournament with my club team, I got slid-tackled from behind and completely tore my ACL and MCL.  I was devastated!!  My life, according to me at the time, was ruined!!  I was out for the rest of the season, I didn’t think I would see my friends on the team anymore, etc.; and I began to get really angry with God for “letting this happen to me”.  Over the course of the next few weeks, I continued to get more angry and bitter towards God because I could not understand why a “loving God would let my life be ruined” (Looking back I have to laugh at how dramatic I was, but at the time that is exactly how I felt!).  In November of that year, I finally had knee surgery to repair my ACL and then had to have about four months of intense physical therapy.  Those four months seemed to drag on longer than any other four months of my life, because all I wanted to do was be able to run around and be healthy again.  One night around the end of January, I finally came to my breaking point…I had been fighting asking for God’s help through this whole process and in doing so had become a negative person that could not see any of the good in the situation.  I knew I didn’t want to stay like that and then cried out to God to forgive me for blaming Him and asked Him to bring peace back into my heart; almost instantly, I felt a sense of peace come over me.  To this day, I still look back on that moment as a major stepping stone in my walk with God, because it was one of those times when I realized that it was all God and none of me that gives me the strength and peace to carry on each day!