Alex Zuercher Junior Culinary Science
Growing up I went to church on Sundays with my family, I was in a bible study, and also did service projects through my church. However my attitude always fell back to treating it like another course at school. At my church we had a Wednesday night class throughout middle and high school and we had to fill out these sheets during Sunday service so I created a system where I would keep reusing the same answers week to week so all I had to do was get the sheet done and didn’t have to worry about it for the rest of the week. I found myself moving further away from the church not because I didn’t want to believe but because I was missing the message entirely and didn’t realize the true value of what I actually had.
Before coming to college I was the overweight kid of my friends and in my classes. I never could seem to escape from it because everywhere I went I was constantly reminded of my weight whether I was being teased or my friends were joking about me. I fell into a bad cycle my senior year of high school that lead me to have a one track mind about my weight and that was all I could focus on. I lost about 100 pounds over the summer before college which seems like a good thing but the habits I fell into were far from it and it only got worse from there. I found satisfaction in the ability to control that aspect of my life but in reality I was losing it and my weight started to control my actions. Eventually I faced a hard reality of how far I had drifted away from where I thought I was. I really started to take a look and realized that wasn’t who or where I wanted to be. My girlfriend had been going to CRU for the past year and it was really through her that I started to venture back into seriously thinking about Christianity. When I first started coming to CRU I was shocked and a little overwhelmed that everyone there had a deeper connection towards their faith because all I had known was my attitude that If I said and did the right things I would somehow pass the test and get an A in religion. I started then to realize that there was a lot more to being a Christian than filling out the right answers on the sheet over and over again.
Once again it was time to reevaluate were I was and once again It was time for a change. Instead of being my old self and being stuck in my past I wanted to start moving forwards. I filled out one of those comment cards at CRU and said I was interested in a bible study and try to get more involved. It wasn’t until I got the chance to talk to Adam about my spiritual life I realized how much of the message I was actually missing. In Romans 6:23 the first part of the verse says for the wages of sin is death. Which for the first time hearing it I was like well I am not a bad person and I try to do good things, but then it threw me because the second part says but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Which for me was the Duh moment where I realized it’s not anything that I can do or just fill in the answers to. I accepted Christ that day in the MU which is actually comforting to me because it allows me to know that it can really happen anywhere. After accepting Christ I have actually seen a lot of change in my life. I have found the strength to switch majors, join clubs, do bible studies and I finally gave up my control of my weight and that isn’t a problem in my life. Just three months ago I wasn’t even the same person. I have seen a large change in the attitude I have toward myself and instead of the quiet kid in the background I am trying to challenge myself to speak out. My outlook on my spiritual life has also changed. I am more motivated to gain knowledge and not to just pass it up. I find myself more and more giving up that control that I used to desperately hang on to. I now know even from just 2 months that taking a seat in the back doesn’t mean you are trapped. Now I apologize for my top gun reference but I like to think about it like this. For those who haven’t seen the movie you should cause it’s a classic but it is about Top Gun which is an elite US Flying school for advanced fighter pilots and its set back in the 80’s were they were using the F-14 Tomcats. One of the duos in the school is Tom Cruise as his usual crazy self playing maverick the pilot and his navigational officer GOOSE whose job is to sit in the copilot seat and navigate the plane but anyways. I now look at control in my life as just letting maverick fly plane and I can take Goose’s role In the back seat navigating my path and watching out for danger. Now even though maverick seems a little crazy sometimes he always takes that fly by past the control tower which makes me realize why I’m not the one in the pilot seat. I always used to want to take that role as pilot but I realize now I know I can’t fly an F-14 and I don’t have to.
I’m also not saying that there are no problems in the back seat either. I still have struggles in my life, but I now don’t have to put all of my struggles back onto myself I have someone who can take them away and help me get through them. I have come from trying to create the system all on my own to get an A when in reality it was a partner test all along and he has the answer sheet so why not take the test with him?
