If you had told me ten years ago that I’d be talking openly about healing, faith, and mental health, I probably would’ve laughed. Not because I didn’t need healing because I did, desperately. But because I didn’t even realize how wounded I was.

Strangers noticed before I did. Funny how that works.

For most of my life, I never saw the point of therapy. Why sit in an office and spill my heart to someone? Why pay hundreds of dollars just to talk? To me, therapy sounded like something for other people, not me.

I was wrong.

I still don’t go to therapy, but I’ve learned something important: you can’t ignore what hurts and expect to heal. Mental and spiritual health aren’t optional. Sooner or later, all those hidden cracks show themselves.

Growing Up Different

I always felt out of place, like I was born on the wrong planet.
I wasn’t cool.
I wasn’t a nerd.
I wasn’t enough of anything to belong anywhere.

I was “too Mexican” for some people, and “not Mexican enough” for others, even though I’m first-gen here. I wasn’t churchy enough for church kids, and the Christians I did know seemed perfect in public but very different in private.

So I found my friends in music and books.
The piano became my way of expressing myself when I couldn’t.

It wasn’t a phase or aesthetic. I was lonely. Painfully lonely.

The Kitchen Floor

My healing didn’t start in a peaceful sanctuary with me finding God at the altar.
It started on a kitchen floor with a knife in my hand and my heart shattered beyond recognition.

That’s where God met me. Not in the best version of myself, but at rock bottom.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy or to trauma dump. I’m sharing it because someone out there might be where I was. And I need you to hear me:

You are not alone. You are not forgotten. There is hope.

The Phone Call That Changed Things

Around the same time, I got a call from someone I believed truly cared about me. Later, I realized they weren’t who I thought they were, manipulation wears a deceiving mask.

But God still used that moment to nudge me forward. Healing doesn’t always arrive packaged neatly. Sometimes it comes through people who weren’t meant to stay.

Faith & God

I’d love to tell you my faith journey was clean and instant, but no. It was messy. It was full of doubt. And at some points, I walked away.

I wasn’t the raging atheist angry at God. I was just lost. I chased whatever felt good, even if it only filled me for a minute.

The world can give temporary joy, but joy without peace is just distraction.

And when I finally started cutting out the things pulling me from God, I got to experience real peace — the kind you feel not just in your head, but in your soul.

Got Questions? Good.

Growing up, questioning anything in church was basically treated like blasphemy. You don’t doubt. You don’t ask. You just believe.

But faith without questions is just blind obedience, and blind obedience isn’t faith at all, it’s indoctrination.

Now as a youth leader, I tell the next generation something I wish someone told me:

Ask. Wonder. Wrestle. Question everything — God can handle it.

And let me tell you, this generation has some incredible questions.
And God has even better answers.

Jesus Was Different

Even when I doubted God, I never questioned the teaching of Jesus. His teachings hit different:

“³⁴ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (John 13:34, ESV)
“¹³ But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴ and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”” (Luke 14:13-14, ESV)

That isn’t religion. That’s radical love!

There Is an Enemy, But It’s Not God

For years, I blamed God for pain He never caused.
Until one day the Scripture made it clear to me:

“⁸ Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Pain didn’t mean God abandoned me, it meant I was in a battle worth fighting.

Sometimes the world tells us, “If it feels good, do it.”
But you can’t heal by feeding what hurts you.

Just like eating junk won’t lead to a healthy body, feeding sin won’t lead to a peaceful soul.

Let’s Talk About the Holy Spirit

Pentecostal moment incoming, don’t ignore. Trust me.

The Holy Spirit isn’t chaos or theatrics.
He isn’t emotion or hype.

He’s the quiet power that pulls you off the kitchen floor.
The whisper that says, “You are here for a reason.”
The strength to resist the things that once owned you.

When I received the Holy Spirit, I didn’t become perfect, but I got transformed.

Healing Takes Time

Healing and faith aren’t microwave miracles. They take:

• Time
• Patience
• Relapses
• Grace
• God

And that’s okay.

You don’t have to be 100% healed or 100% holy to belong to Him.
You just have to keep walking.

Healing is slow, but so is redemption. And both are worth the journey.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Truly.

Here’s a song for y’all to listen to! I remember hearing it when I found God once again, and I can’t tell you how much I cried when I truly listened to the lyrics. I hope it blesses you and speaks to your heart the same way it did for me!

“¹⁴ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” – 2 Corinthians 13:14 (ESV)