Brett Crowell
Book started at age 16
Present age 18
Some have said that maturity comes from age, but I would say that maturity comes through observation, and experience. If you believe it comes with age, then this book will have no words of wisdom for you. If you do in fact believe it comes from events, exposure, and having a personal walk with God, then perhaps a slight background of myself might be helpful.
At the age of four I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my own personal Savior. Since then, I have never done anything, from the world's point of view, extremely bad. I have been called "goodie-two-shoes" a few times, and have been generally known as a pretty respectable person. Though all this may be true, it is quite a joke to think I was truly good inside. I was girl crazy, and often struggled with extreme depression, even to the point of very serious contemplation of suicide. My greatest pitfall in life was undoubtedly my constant thinking upon girls, which would constantly poison my mind at all times of the day or night. Understand, I would hide it, and even my own mom was not fully aware of this fact, because I kept most of the thoughts in my head, rather then ever showing them. These thoughts would not only clot my mind, but also distract me from God, and keep me from thinking upon Him, and His ways. These distractions were probably the reason I suffered from depression most of the time.
My life lessons really began after two major events. The first being, I was not supposed to live at birth, I was buried alive in snow, nearly fell off a massive cliff, and a falling tree landed right on top of me, but some previously cut trees stopped it's fall a few feet above me. These events, plus the deaths of others around me, made me realize the fragility of my life.
The second life-changing event was probably that I came to a realization that secular music was not spiritually benefiting, but distracting. Upon giving up secular music and it's poisoning, the lyrics of love songs faded in my mind, and I was then capable of more readily controlling myself from selfish, useless emotions beyond friendship for those of the feminine gender.
Through these events, I came to earn peoples trust, and people would discuss their problems with me. Each solution was different, and spawned a desire to know God more, that I might, in my fallibility, and ignorance, in some way benefit these people. I learned mistakes not to make, and thought upon them that I might avoid them in my own life. I believe it is this thinking that inspired me to try to capture some of the things within me, that others may avoid such mistakes, and also find encouragement in knowing that there is also a teen adhering, and writing down what is written in this book. In all that I say throughout this book, I wish to portray to you what God has placed in my mind. Some are personal thoughts, but all of them are taken from my undersderstanding of God and the Scriptures, and are spiritual concepts. If you do not believe that the Bible is the guide to life, and that Jesus is not only Lord and Master, but example and leader, then this book will be utterly useless in your hands. * May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.