Real Life from the Sugar Creek Gang

My life was made up of serveral major achievements with no meaning once I got there. What was the point to life?

Story Tags

identity, suicide, depression, relationships, emptiness

Explore the Story

• Identity Crisis
• Twists and Turns
• Where's God in suffering?
• The Hole in Our Heart
• Craving Acceptance
• Finding True Love

The events in my life give me little reason to complain. I grew up being a part of the popular crowd in elementary school. This changed little throughout middle school. I have always been naturally athletic, fairly intelligent, and a good person. I grew up going to church, playing sports, doing well in school, and being liked by most people.

Because of this, I began to feel as though I had the perfect life. I was talented at a variety of things and was able to fit in well with most everyone. Because I had gone to church all my life I figured that I must have been blessed so much because I had found the right God. I looked at my life and figured that nothing terrible had ever happened to me, so God must be happy with me.

The more things I tried, the more kinds of people I became friends with. But as I started middle school I began to feel bits of emptiness in my life. These feelings increased throughout middle school despite my accomplishments and continued popularity. I began to seriously hate many parts of my life. I grew to hate school in particular even though I continued to do well. My friendships became less and less valuable to me, and my accomplishments stopped giving me pleasure. I felt as though my life was meaningless and worthless.

If I had continued to dwell on these feelings of emptiness I might not be here today. Suicidal thoughts had already entered my mind. I dwelt on my lack of meaning in life and began to think that noone would care if I weren't around because of my insignificance.

Around this time I began reading a series of books called the Sugar Creek Gang. They were about a group of friends growing up in the 1950's near Sugar Creek, Ohio. The boys in the story, like me, went to church on Sundays and went through pretty much every other aspect of life that I did. The storyline brought the boys through many adventures and challenges, but none of them seemed very important, so I was confused as to why they seemed to not be having the problem with emptiness and pointlessness in their lives that I did. Finally the series answered my question. The boys were explaining the idea of church and Christianity to a new member of the group whose parents did not go to church. One of the characters in particular explained that being a Christian was so much more than going to church.

I felt no immediate change in my life and my problems did not dissapear. But I did begin to take my faith a little more seriously. I got involved with my youth group, and eventually Young Life when I entered high school. In high school I began to read my Bible to try and get a better picture of who Jesus was and how exactly he was supposed to be involved in my life. I began to feel love from other people who had Jesus in their lives. I had joy in the truth I had discovered. Most amazingly, I began to feel a peace about my life that I had not felt before. During the time in high school when I had to look for a college and figure out what I wanted to major in, I knew that my decisions would lead me on the path that God had for me because he was in my life and was directing me somehow.

Since then I have felt more and more meaning, love, joy, peace, and many other characteristics of God in my life. I have also faced struggles and hardships, but they have not been anywhere near as overwhelming as the feelings of utter worthlessness and pointlessness that I felt before I asked Jesus to be a part of my life.