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Arielle Enriquez

English 10

Ms. Chung

12 August 2019

This I Believe Essay

I believe that God can help with problems that you think are too much to handle. All you

have to do is reflect and let God in and everything will fall into place. God can do many

wonderful things to help you. He can send you signs through things and/or people you wouldn’t

think of to have the answers to help you. You just need to believe and have faith.

I was having overwhelming problems at home, school, and with myself. I didn’t know

what to do that will help my situation. I was so stressed that the problems seemed to get bigger

every day that I didn’t do anything to improve them. I began to think that my parents hated me

with a passion, I was never going to get my grades up, and that I was never going to be the

person my parents wanted and knew I could be. When I finally left for 8th-grade Retreat I was

prepared to make it an escape. I thought that I could just relax in nature and forget the real world

for a while. Little did I know, that once I got there I would have an eye-opening and breathtaking

spiritual journey.

We stayed at Whispering Winds Retreat Center for three days and two nights. When we

arrived there on Wednesday morning we went straight to the hall after putting our bags in our

rooms. We started the day with goal setting, meditation, and reflection. Our goal was to come

back to society as a new person with a new mindset. My homeroom teacher told us to forget

everything that was burdening you back at home and at school. That we needed to focus on
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bettering ourselves instead of carrying burdens with us that could hold us back. Then my religion

teacher said to reflect on our spiritual life that we had then and that it would become a lot more

important and bigger here. Later that afternoon, started the real opening up we had to just sit and

pray to God but in different way than we normally would. We would stay completely silent and

open-minded to hear him speak to us through the wind and we would answer him.

We did a lot more activities of that nature throughout the whole trip that things that I had

buried a long time ago came rushing back to me because it would help me and be significant in

my life now in the present. All I had to do was listen deeply not just with my ears but with my

heart and soul as well. I came back from that trip and all my problems were fixed. It’s almost as

if it were a miracle. I told my parents in detail about my spiritual journey and the problems with

them were gone. The problems I was having with my self disappeared because I came back with

confidence and pride of who I was and no one and nothing was going to shake me down. I had

got back into the groove with my school work with all the burdens I gave up to the Lord because

they were holding me back.

The gist of all is that opening up to God and letting Him guide and help you is the best

way to live your life. If you let him in he will do great things for you this I believe.