I Became a Christian

I don't know where to begin. Those who know me from earlier in my life know me as an atheist, someone who doesn't believe in the existence of God. Only facts, science, things we can prove, quantify, and observe, not someone watching us from above like playing The Sims.

My wife, on the contrary, has always been religious, went to Church every Sunday, prayed a lot, and always fought with me when I told her it was a waste of time. There's no need to pray, only focus your time on things that matter to make progress in your life. There isn't a magic set of phrases that will unlock the world for you and move you forward.

Everything started with bad habits. I was always in a very bad mood; it felt like life had no purpose other than work. My life started by waking up, preparing to go to work, working, then coming back home to sleep. This aggravated when I started flying frequently to co-locate with clients, and I started distancing myself from my main support network: my family. To add to that, I developed certain addictions, dark ones, and I started spending time with people who encouraged my bad decisions. I felt I could stop everything when I wanted, but everything proved to be more difficult than it sounded. I stopped for a few days and then relapsed, and that behavior went on for years and years and years.

I'm not going to say I thought of taking my own life, because I didn't, but my personal situation was quite bad: debt, low energy, always in a bad mood, always angry, yelling, pushing everyone away, and not even my family could stand me. We were all about to give up...

At that time, I was traveling a lot and I wasn't spending too much time at home. From time to time, I chose to stay abroad over the weekends to rest from the airports and airplanes, and during that time my wife started attending a Christian prayer group because the Catholic Church we used to go to was not giving mass in Spanish anymore. I think she started feeling hope and renewing her faith, so after some time she started asking me to join her in attending the group whenever I was in Dubai. I, of course, refused many times until, by the end of 2023, I felt stuck, I couldn't escape the cycle, and when you feel like you tried everything and tired, there's nothing left to lose in trying something else. So I joined my wife, and the whole group prayed for me. It was a nice experience, but I didn't think it would change anything.

Look, I know correlation does not imply causality, but I swear a couple of weeks later a lot of things happened: I was rolled off the project I was in due to some budget issues in the case, taking me away from those “friends” encouraging my bad decisions and keeping me more time at home. I found a therapist who has been helping me with the addictions. I started attending church, slowly surrounding myself with people with purpose and getting to feel their happiness. I wanted that for me too. I spent part of 2023 and 2024 attending church with my family again, but this time paying attention to the message and listening carefully, and everything started to make sense. Why did it take me so long?

I had my baptism on Oct 6th, 2024, and it's been quite a journey, full of learnings, meeting new people, and doing my best to make better choices. Everything is more under control because I know I can't do everything by myself, but I also know I am not alone.

Becoming a Christian has not been a magical solution to all my problems. In fact, I have more problems now because I am more conscious, so I have to consciously choose the right thing, even if it's not entirely good for me. It's not easy, it won't be, but somehow it has brought me inner peace.

These days I'm studying Scripture and becoming familiar with the Gospel. I've read a lot of books in my life, but somehow reading the ones in the Bible feels different, hits different, and I like it.

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