My parents always told me about God and Jesus. My parents were missionaries, and had a ministry among the street children in the Philippines. During my childhood, I saw my parents live in total trust in God, even in times of poverty. We would always get enough food to feed people, or get what was needed, just in time. I have always had a firm faith in God as One who cares, leads and gives. I had a very stable upbringing in faith, and it was very beautiful.

When I was about 14 years old, I started smoking weed and went to all sorts of parties. I did not see any harm in it at the time as kids my age were doing the same thing. When I turned 16, I met my wife and she took me to the church she attended. I saw that she was a perfect person, never did anything wrong, was faithful and very kind, and had lots of good friends.

At 18, I left home to live in the city, where I started studying. It was then, I noticed there where two different types of people, within myself. When I was with my girlfriend, I would act like a sweet, spiritual, Christian boy. I wanted that all to be true, because I thought that my girlfriend and others from the church expected it from me. I was heavily in search for my identity. When I turned 19, I took my girlfriend to Paris and asked her to marry me. We got engaged. After that, my friend told me about a place where squatters were staying, and it sounded interesting. All you had to do was pay a one-time fee for maintenance and then you could live there for free. You only had to pay the energy costs. It was a nice place with a lot of space, but at the same time, I saw a lot of brokenness in the people who lived there. I had the feeling I was not making the right decision by staying there, but I was attracted to the idea that these people were completely free, or, at least it seemed that way at the time. Twenty people lived in the old building, several were on drugs or drinking. Most of them would only get up at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, use drugs, and then go back to bed again. This cycle repeated itself daily. I started building relationships, by playing poker with people every night. A lot of weed went through their pockets and they drank a lot as well. I was one of the few there who studied. I went to sleep at two o’clock in the morning, and would get up at six to go to school.

After a while, I was feeling very unhappy, and things were starting to slip out of control. I only saw my girlfriend twice a year. I would go visit her, as she would not come and see me in that house. I kept this part of my life hidden from her. When I went to see her, I was showered and smelled nice, everything seemed normal. We even went to a Bible group together.

One day I woke up late and had forgotten about one important meeting I had. I looked around my messy room and asked myself, what exactly was I doing. I thought reading the Bible might help me, but I could not even find it in that mess. Finally, I found it under a pile of dirty laundry and realised that I had let everything go.

Shortly after, things started coming to the light. My girlfriend and I looked at my bank account one day, and she wondered why I had so little money in it, especially as we were supposed to be saving for our wedding. When she looked closer at the situation, she saw transactions from places where I had bought cigarettes and the likes. It hit me then that I could no longer marry my girlfriend as there were things in my life she knew nothing about and were she to find out, she probably wouldn’t want to marry me anyway.

I cried out to God about not wanting to lose her and how I had deceived her. I saw our whole future in front of us. I told God that I had ruined everything I had with her and with Him. I could have skipped it all, but chose to go down this path, and now regretted every step. I said: “I’m sorry. I have done things, said things, and held back things. How am I ever going to make this right?” I, myself, could never make this situation right, but Jesus made it right for me. Jesus made it right in my place. God then said to me: “I am glad you are coming back to Me, and everything will be alright. Between us, it is already good, and between you and your girlfriend, it will also be good. Just tell the truth, tell her everything.”

I opened up to her about all the guilt and shame I felt. I started telling her everything that I had held back from her. At first, my girlfriend did not understand and was very angry with me. I remember how I was crying out aloud while lying in her arms. Her embrace, at one point, felt like Jesus’ arms around me. It was all very hard for her to hear, but she held me in her arms, the whole time. I felt her heart pounding, and she said for me to tell her everything, because it was going to be okay. Within a week, everything was out in the open, and she knew everything. It took a lot of pain and tears, but by the end, I felt so much freedom.

Once it was all out in the open, my girlfriend suggested that we go for counseling. She came up with the idea of asking my parents. I called my mother, and asked her if we could come by that day to have a chat, and a meal with them. My mother was happy to have us, and she told me that she had dreamt about me that past week, and that she was curious about what I wanted to tell her. We arrived at my parents’ house and I postponed the conversation for as long as I could. When I wanted to start, my mother asked if she could share her dream with us first. She dreamt that our family was having a weekend away. We were all outside and the weather was nice. Every time she looked at me in her dream, she saw that I was the only one in the shade. Even though the sun was shining everywhere, I had a dark cloud above me. Everyone was playing and happy, but I was the only one caught in a kind of darkness. Then, my mother said that she did not know what I was going to tell her, but she knew that God had been preparing her, for this conversation. She said they were going to listen to us, with the idea that I would step out of that shadow. “We are prepared for this,” my mother said. That was bizarre. When I told them, God said different things to my parents. Things I struggled with, things I grieved over. These were things like pornography, spinning glasses and conjuring up ghosts when I was about 10 years old, during a sleepover. I had no idea that there was anything behind these things. My parents did not pass any judgment or opinion about it. All these things were brought into the light and broken down. The reason why I kept all these things hidden for so long was because I felt that they would no longer love me, were they to know. The moment you open up, you see how God puts people in your path to give you the love you need at that moment.

The step of getting married was a scary one for my wife. I lied for four years about who I was, and now she was going to marry me. She felt as if God were saying to her, “this is your husband and to believe and trust that it is going to be alright, because I am going to change him, and change you both together”. She made the decision to marry me based on what God said to her. It was courageous of her. She actually married someone she had yet to get to know. This is what grace is.

I wanted to invest in God, so I started studying theology, because I wanted to change my life 180 degrees. The life we have now is exactly what I dreamed and imagined it would be like. We have three beautiful children. I wouldn’t be able to come here, as the person who I used to be, when I was a squatter. I am the complete opposite of who I was back then.