Elijah Carswell

My name is Elijah Carswell, and my story begins when I was a toddler. I was adopted due to my parents being drug addicts. Due to this, I was left with feelings of anger, bitterness, and no forgiveness in my heart.

I went through life unhappy and sad. But when I reached elementary school, that is when all of those feelings started coming out. My parents had given up on me, and oh, how they made it known.

When I had reached the age of 8, my godmother came to take care of me to try and see if that would help change me. During the first few months, I actually thought, you know, I have a chance. I was happy that my teachers had said that I could be taken out of the special education class because of my improvement.

Oh, but little did I know, things were going to get even worse. Thanksgiving comes around, and my godmother and I went to spend some time with her boyfriend's family. While we were there, an accusation came up against me, accusing me of having sexual intercourse with another young man around my age, and nobody believed me.

So, in my head, the best decision was to make them think that they were right, but in doing so, it left even more unforgiveness in my heart. After all of this, I went into what I call my dark ages.

I fell into a deep depression. I was in deeper darkness than before. I lied to my godmother due to the anger and unforgiveness in my heart that were eating away at my soul. And unfortunately, as a result, I ended up in a far darker place in my mind back at home with my parents.

I was a troubled teenager. I fell into the addiction of pornography, and the next thing you knew, I was in middle school. I saw everyone with their happy lives, and what I didn't know was that Jesus Christ had what I needed.

When I was in 7th grade, I fell into homosexuality, and that lasted forever. One day I was sitting in my living room, and I got a call from my aunt saying that she was going to take me to church. I didn't want to go and see everyone with their happy godly lives, given where I was, but I ended up going anyway.

I was so distracted with my thoughts the whole service, but at one point, it was like a light bulb turned on, and I heard the pastor say that if anyone wants to give their life over to Christ, come to the altar now. Even though my mind was just so distracted, something told me to go up there.

To my surprise, I saw my teacher up there. We had developed a godly connection. And from there, I kept coming and even joined the youth ministry. I went on the BTYM retreat, and the song “Something Has to Break” came on, and I surrendered everything.

When we got back to our cabin, we all went to sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night, and I went into an amazing presence of God. All of the depression, anxiety, lustfulness, heartache, and pain of my past were delivered from my life that day.