This article is a version of the video transcript. AI has been used to remove pauses and clean the text.
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I Felt Utterly Alone and Invisible, But Jesus Saw Me
I thought that no one would notice if I was gone.
I had a really unusual childhood. I traveled with my family in an RV for five years around the US. We moved every few weeks, and I really didn't have any relationship with anyone outside my family, like teachers or friends. And I felt like pretty much the most isolated person on earth.
But my story doesn't end there. This is my story of how Jesus brought hope and healing to my journey.
My name is Brennen, and this is my true story.
My Childhood
I grew up in Southern California with two awesome parents and a sister who was six years younger than me. I had a great childhood with a lot of happy memories.
My spiritual journey started with my mom because my mom was an atheist and my dad was an agnostic. One day she had this miraculous dream where she learned about the realities of heaven and hell, and she became a Christian overnight. I adopted that mentality and became a Christian at a pretty young age. But I had two sides growing up. On one side, I was caring and loved to help people. On the other side, I was really rebellious and disrespectful. I just wanted to do my own thing.
As a kid, I got into a lot of trouble. I was in detention every single day of second grade. But I started to change around nine years old when I got baptized. I started to give my life to Christ because I didn't like the side of me that was hurting people. I didn't like the side of me that was selfish, and I really wanted out of that.
Early on, I had a pretty good relationship with God. I remember trying to listen for God's voice, and I actually heard something. God spoke to me. He said, "You can trust me wherever you go," and that became an anchor for my faith.
Going On the Road
But something different happened around 2010 when my family bought an RV. The real estate crash had just happened, so my parents felt like God was calling us to go around the country and tell people about Jesus. It was amazing in some ways because we got to go to state parks, national parks, and see history all around us. I was homeschooled and learning about the Oregon Trail while looking out my window and literally seeing it. That lasted for five years, from when I was ten to fifteen years old.
I was really blessed by my family. My mom was a super strong Christian who taught us Bible study and how to be critical thinkers. My dad came to faith about a year after my mom and would teach us his morning Bible studies. I had solid parents that loved God, and our family unit was really strong.
But things were not going well for me in the community area. When you're moving every few weeks for five years, you end up losing a lot in terms of community. No friends, no real teachers, nothing consistent. We visited 150 churches during our time out there. All of my friends back in California were ten years old, so they weren't great at keeping up with me. I'd see them maybe once a year. It started to create this insecurity: if I wasn't here, how many people would notice that I was gone? How many people would truly care about me? I felt like from their perspective, I was just a random kid that came along for a little while and then left again.
It really told me, you're alone. People don't care about you. That created a deep fear in me of being alone, being lonely.
Coming Back to California
Around 2015, we came off the road. My parents' marriage was having a hard time, and my mom was experiencing mental illness issues. She had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which messes with your sense of reality. She would sometimes get really strange theories that would mess with our family and belief system. My dad was struggling with his own stuff. This perfect storm happened, and our family fell apart for a time.
During this time, I was thinking a lot about God and faith. I'd always been a Christian and wanted to please God. But now life kind of sucked. I didn't have the friends I wanted. My mom had mental illness, and I had a real hard time with that because how could a good God allow somebody to get something that takes their mind from them? I couldn't get past that. So I started making compromises. I started watching pornography. I was heavily addicted to video games. We had moved back to California by then, but I still didn't have much community, and I had this anger against God. I felt like God was alive and real, but he wasn't doing anything for me.
But the deeper I got into these addictions, I realized they were capable of hurting a lot of people, and I didn't want that. So I tried to get off pornography, only to realize I really couldn't. Every time I tried, I just fell right back. But I remembered that when I was a wild kid before, God had changed me. I knew he could help me with this. But he was the person I was mad at. I had to learn to set aside that anger and say, okay, I don't have answers for why you allow these things, but I need your help right now because I don't want to be this person I'm becoming.
I'm so glad I made that decision because God, over the next few years, helped me completely get out of both addictions. But that was just the first part of the story. God started bringing me friends and community. These were people that loved God and loved me and wanted to pour into my life. They noticed if I was gone. It felt so refreshing to have real community, real family among believers.
I started to realize something too. All those years I spent not experiencing community had given me such empathy for other lonely people. I naturally gravitated towards people experiencing loneliness. I was able to help them and start communities and bring those people into my group. I realized that the suffering God was redeeming and changing around.
My mom ended up getting healed from a lot of her mental illness. She found medication that really helped her with her bipolar, and she slowly became restored to the rational, loving, amazing person I knew her as. Today, she's that person again. I saw God heal not only me and my loneliness, but also my mom and my family. He did an awesome work in my parents' marriage, and today our family is healed. We love each other and are closer than ever.
It hasn't just stopped with our personal healing. We've had friends that we've been able to invite over and help. We have Bible studies in our living room. It's so cool to see the same things that God healed us from, now he's using us to heal other people.
A few years after that, God called me to ministry. Now I get the chance to share stories with people through videos.
Why?
But the biggest thing from my story is, people ask, why would you serve a God that allowed all this stuff? Don't you have a problem with that suffering? I did for a long time.
When God creates a free will world where we can make choices that actually matter, things are going to happen. There are going to be consequences, whether good or bad. God doesn't intervene in many scenarios. I don't think he forced me to go through those things, but he was there for me. When it was time to answer those prayers, he was there to get me out of those situations. He used what happened in my life that was hard, that was suffering, and he turned it to good. There are people today that might not have been alive if I hadn't gone through those difficult things, learned how to have strength, learned how to have a relationship with God, and then helped them. Now I've created Bible studies and communities and brought people together, all out of the loneliness I had felt. It informed my empathy and who I am today.
Honestly, I wouldn't have the relationship with God that I have today unless I had gone through that. And it is so worth it. If you asked me to describe my relationship with God, it's not like I'm just reading the Bible and Jesus is some historical figure. That's more religion. I'm talking about how Jesus has helped me through my worst moments where I'm bawling my eyes out and need someone to comfort me. I can actually hear his voice. The Bible talks about that—God sends the Holy Spirit to teach us all things. He actually speaks to us. He's spoken to me at critical times in my life, from when I was a kid to today. He's my best friend. The longest friend I've had.
So for any of you that want a relationship with God like that, that are chasing that, there's an emptiness—I feel alone, I don't feel loved, I feel like if I disappeared, no one would notice. There is somebody who does. Jesus is definitely one of the biggest ones. He loves you. He has a plan for you. He cares about you. None of my prayers for community went unanswered. In time, he brought those people into my life. So I encourage you, trust him, talk to God, and listen for his voice because he wants to have a relationship with you and you will never feel alone if you have that in your life.
My Advice
If you're in a hard place where you don't have community, there are good places to find it. If you're a young adult, there are college campus ministries like Cru, churches that have groups for this. You might have to make some lifestyle changes, but it's important to get into a community where you're being filled up and people are helping and supporting you.
For somebody going through pornography addiction or other addictions, my advice is, why do you want out of that? For me, I didn't want to hurt people. I didn't want to let this control me. That's what brought me back to God. Really think about why you want to get free from that. Then let God back into that area of your life. For me, there was a block because I had anger against him, and I had to remove that block. Once I did, he helped me get back to a place where I'm out of that control and out of the shame and guilt.
If you're struggling, ask God to help. Ask him to give you motivation to change. There are awesome resources—accountability groups, apps like Covenant Eyes that can help you monitor your internet usage. But it really starts with motivation. Do you want this enough? Ask God for help. Make a change.
Thank you for reading my testimony. At Tru Witness, we're collecting testimonies of radical change in people's lives. If you want to be part of what we're doing, subscribe and tell some friends about us. You can also support us monthly. So excited to be on this journey with you guys!
Support TruWitness
Our mission is to reach young adults online by sharing radical video testimonies that awaken hearts to Jesus Christ, ignite hope, and inspire transformed lives.