I’m going to tell you about a time that I wasn’t like the kid I am now. I’m only going to tell you the highlights of this weekend, not the whole thing. This is my story, the one episode that changed a young kid’s life.
There was a time that all I wanted in life was to find myself. But I realized through one experience that discovering something bigger than life itself is all that I needed. I figured out through this experience that deep down in my soul I could find diamonds later in my life and get rich. In March 2016, I was given my Confirmation.

I was placed in a group with three other kids; David, Chris, Andrew, and our group leader Sara. Sara was eighteen and had already made her Confirmation. For three straight days we would wake up early to go to our local church in a town called Wyckoff, and go home late in the evening. At first, I wasn’t too thrilled with spending the entire weekend at church with little sleep given. But after I stepped into the church, I saw a couple of familiar faces, and cracked a couple of jokes. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. My group and I got together so we could get to know each other a little more. David, I saw around school every now and then, Andrew, who I have been very good friends with since our childhood, Chris, who I haven’t seen since the seventh grade, and one stranger, Sara. We sat down in a circle and waited for orders by the head honcho, Jonathan. Johnathan introduced himself and explained his travels through his own Confirmation years ago. “The point of the people in your group is not to talk to the one person that you have known for your entire life, but to talk to those you have lost, know a little bit about, and hopefully open up to a stranger.” Jonathan realized that not everyone that attended was excited to get their Confirmation, but instead most were forced by their parents, like me. “On a scale from one to ten, rate how fateful you feel in your life,” Jonathan said. My group went in a circle, “Two,” David said. “Light three,” Chris said. “Heavy three to a light four,” Andrew said. “Probably a light 2,” I explained. One thing I didn’t see coming was that my answer would lead me to feel furious about myself the third day I went home.

The first activity was team-building, obviously. We talked about our life, from one shining sea to the other, from topics as simple as school and how many siblings we have, to our fear of death, our own legacy, and what our highest and lowest moments have been. “My highest moment in life was when I realized how to take care of my family and friends, learn how to love, and take care of more important things than me,” which is what I wish I had said. In reality, I  had just another cheesy answer. “The time when I pitched the game winner and everybody stormed the baseball field, yeah that was the best moment of my life,” were the words that came out. Something which at the time I didn’t realize was so important to me; family and love. Sara, who looked at me thinking there was more to me, said. “If you can’t learn how to love others and love yourself, it will be difficult for you to love God. God will never judge a man, because he has experienced all of our lives first hand and therefore he would accept our actions, so never be afraid to look up to the most high.” That got me thinking.

The first day of the retreat was discovering yourself, the second day is getting rid of your old self. In preparation for receiving Confirmation, we had to receive forgiveness. Which sounds easy, but this requires that you sit in a room with a Priest that you see every week and dump out your soul, and it is suppose to look like a trash dump. All of the wrongs, all of the guilt, and all of the shame. One thing that I feel proud for is doing just that. Seeing an innocent Priest, and throwing all of my demons and times I gave in to temptation. I was the paint brush, he was the canvas. In the end, the painting would not look hideous, no, it looked beauteous. “Sin always comes from stress. Stress comes from trying to control the future. Only one man can truly control the future, and you know who he is. However, you are the only one who controls your life, and God wants to see what you can do with it.” I nodded my head and said, “Thank you,” and the man said something back, “One thing that I ask of you is to never be afraid of death. The ones who are scared of death are the ones who don’t believe there is a God waiting for you on the other side.” And so I left the room with the sound-proof walls and flowered wallpaper, thinking if the Priest says that to everyone, or just to specifically me. When I left the room, I was stepping away from the place of spirituality, and stepping back into the real world, to test my knowledge.

The third day was the most important, but only for about twenty minutes. I was placed in an isolated room, and stripped of my phone. Then, laying on a table was a brown paper bag with the word “Jack” on it. I opened the bag, and inside were pictures of me and my family when I was a little boy. I looked through the photos, and saw a drawing of me and my baby cousins that lived in Maryland who I haven’t seen in forever. It took me a while to figure out who had drawn it, because the tan colored child that was drawn with crayon looked like several other people in the family. In the bag, pieces of paper were still unopened. The papers were letters from my parents and my brother, the most important people in my life. I read the letters, feeling somber about their content. I left that room feeling better about my life as a whole, but I also felt that there was a story for me to make in my life. Then I concluded that it's my job to return home with a better mind and with the intention to treat people right. Lord help me if I lose my grip, if I stumble and fall, but welcome a new member to your kingdom, for I’m making my Confirmation. On a scale from one to ten, I’m going to try to be an eleven.

Rationale: The theme of this story is to always be open to change and new things. The symbol I used was the contents that were inside the brown bag. The pictures represent the progress I’ve made in my life and facing the adult stretch of life. The theme is showed when I am open to new people such as the Priest and Sara. They offered my valuable information that hopefully I will remember for the rest of my life. The reflective element in the story was the question that Jonathan asked me, and when I was later upset with my answer. In the last sentence of the story, I refer back to the question by answering with “eleven.”