Once again I was in darkness. My twin brother with whom I shared a room always fell asleep quickly. I enjoyed wrestling with him during the day, but I dreaded the wrestling match I faced each night. Out of the darkness imposing thoughts seized me like, "What would happen if I were to die tonight?" I didn't want to die, but it was the uncertainty of what followed death that really terrified me. In the morning after a particularly long night of struggling to fall asleep, I approached my mother in the kitchen.

"What will happen after I die?" I asked her.  She hesitated and pensively replied, "You're just a little boy. You don't need to worry about that." Her answer was like a slice of white bread. It appeased my hunger for the moment, but it had little nutritional value.

I suppose I should have posed my questions to someone at church. After all, my family went to church every Sunday. However, I didn't enjoy going and knew very little about God. I wanted to believe that after I died I could go to heaven. I thought that the way to get to heaven was to do more good deeds than bad. Maybe this is why I was so scared of dying! My list of bad deeds was long.

Then when I was 16 years old I was invited to a weekend retreat for teenagers. There someone spoke about God from the Bible. Before, I had always felt that God was very distant from me.  I did not know God personally. I didn't know the truth about the real God. But at the retreat I understood for the first time that God is always near and that He loves me despite the wrong things I've done. I remember someone saying that if I was the only person on earth that God would have still sent Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. This helped me to realize that God loves me personally. Not only did Jesus die to pay for my sins, but He rose from the dead.  Believing in Jesus, I wake up every day with hope and no longer fear death. I know that I have eternal life through Jesus Christ.