Failure and loneliness (or should I say not fitting in) were close to my heart 

My name is Damien Lange, (I am the author of this website) this was one of my weaknesses. The bottom line that I discovered to conquer this fear was UNDERSTANDING 2 things:

1). Getting to know personally without a shadow of doubt for myself (not just because somebody said so) that there was a God and what He thought about Me!
As soon as I accepted Jesus Christ into my life He became my Mate and through him I had direct access to the Father, who created everything.
Once you grasp this revelation then this along gives great boldness.

2). God mentions that he has a enemy (the devil) on this planet to fool people into taking the right path of right from wrong etc. So the question arises... HOW does the devil do this???
You see, it's simple as long as you see things like this...
You know how bullies at school and in the movies are - just like solicitors or lawyers - they know the law and use certain word a certain way to intimidate or speak just what you what to hear to make you move or ask a certain way (like a game of chess) In the end...you made the choice to do, say or react the way you did... because of their WORDS and you believing them.

So until you put yourself in God's hands He will use your life to bless and turn others to Him and not to their own way (it doesn't take too long to look at history to see the what a mess we, left to our ways, stuff things up).

So to START ask Him into your life click here, email me if you want to make the discission and I will respond within 24 hours to help you through... you will then see thing in a new light).

Send Me an Angel
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans give you a hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

Have you ever known someone who was given enormous blessings by the Lord, and ignored them, doubted them, and simply used them for the wrong things? I'm sure we all know someone like that, and believe me, we need to pray for them. Pray very hard. God is listening and he does have a plan. My name is Jim and I know God has a plan for me. But it has taken a long time for me to realize what it is. Let me tell you how He was finally able to help me meet Him.

I've only been a Christian for a relatively short period of time. Before coming to the Lord, I suppose I could be best described as a pragmatic agnostic. I wanted to believe in something, but I also wanted proof of it. I wanted to know that what I believed in was real. I couldn't accept that the very nature of my demand for proof would keep me from seeing the proof right in front of me.

I had hardened my heart to God, because he wouldn't prove himself to me. It was an agnostic cliché': I obviously wasn't important enough to God. Tough luck for me. With that sense of rejection that I created for myself, I turned defensive and built a wall. The best way to describe that wall comes in the form of a phrase I am sure you have all heard numerous times. God and I have an arrangement... He leaves me alone and I leave him alone. Thankfully, I was wrong, and God would never leave me alone. He would never leave any of his children alone. But I am getting way ahead of myself here.

On April 23rd of 1998, the fragile eggshell of my reality shattered around me. The self destructive tendencies that had crippled me through my 15 years of legal adulthood had finally risen strong enough to crush me. I had nowhere left to go, and there was nothing that anyone could tell me that would make a difference. I had nothing left to live for, no hope, no future... and I started to seriously consider suicide as a way out. That was what I wanted... a way out.

To fully understand who I am and where I was headed, I suppose I should tell you a bit more about how I got to that place where I could see only one door.

I had failed out of college after one year. It was a very miserable year academically, but I did excel at partying, drinking, drugs, and sex. The school didn't teach that though and they asked me to leave. I was immature and not ready for the self-disciplined and self-motivated world of college education. I moped around my parent's house for a summer and worked a little and finally decided to join the military. So I talked to some recruiters who were more than happy to tell me anything I wanted to hear in exchange for my signature. I pushed forward.

I tested off the scale for the army and the marines, and in the high ninetieth percentile for the other two. That meant, I could pick and choose my service, and my career field. I didn't want to be a soldier, and I couldn't swim, so that left me with the Air Force. I studied to be a computer technician and was sent to Colorado Springs to work in Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD. Pressure to the extreme, but it was structured and I actually liked it. After two years I was living pretty good and enjoying myself quite well. No drugs, but the partying continued, and the other things were quite easy to come by as well. Married or unmarried women, it didn't matter to me. I never really saw the morass of disaster that was looming ahead of me. I was getting myself into financial troubles because I was very fiscally irresponsible. I spent money as quickly as I got it, and sometimes faster. I began to play games with the checking account, and that led to writing bad checks on the hope that I could get money into the account on time.

The military is quite serious about bad check writers, and they too asked me to leave. The paperwork said Other than Honorable Conditions. I was devastated. I tried to get a grip on things at the very end and got counseling and had a budget advisor help me set up a way to pay my debts and live within my means, but it was too little too late.
I went home again, with my tail between my legs and another failure to notch on my belt. I choose to put it behind me and move forward. I wouldn't be beaten that easily, and I picked myself up and began a series of tedious jobs, that never scratched the surface of my potential. I became bored quickly and usually quit them to find something more promising, only to discover that the grass wasn't any greener at the new place either. So I'd do it again, and again. Sometimes it would take 6 months, or maybe two years, or five years. But I always left. Some jobs were physically imposing and being of small stature, I grew stronger, but began to show the effects of labor work quickly. My wrists became chronically inflamed with repetitive motion pain, I was pinned under a 30 inch television (bent over backwards by it and trapped until help came) and had to go to months of rehab to strengthen my back again and to stop the spasms. The list goes on and I'm sure you get the point.
Others jobs didn't satisfy me intellectually. Granted I didn't have a college degree, but that didn't mean I wasn't smart. My IQ scores were always high. But teachers told me and my parents I was an underachiever and would do so much better if I applied myself a little more. Blah, blah, blah... yawn.

After leaving the military, my social life began to diminish quickly and a few dismally short relationships later I found myself going several years in loneliness. I had friends, and many were female, but I grew more and more depressed and that made me more and more introverted about dating or trying to. I was beginning to shield myself from failures by not trying to succeed. I became reclusive and inwardly I was dying a slow death emotionally. I began to condemn myself as a loser and a failure and my self esteem sank lower and lower. Pornography began to really take hold. Ever since being a young teen, I had access to pornography, strong pornography at that. So I never saw anything wrong with it. But now it was becoming my main outlet for fantasy and since reality sucked, I drew more and more to fantasy as a means of coping with being a failure. In fantasy, people loved me, people thought I was cool, and girls were all over me. Better things were always just around the corner. I would do better. I had to. I simply couldn't fail again. I had to be more.
By the spring of 1997, I had put in five years at the job I was at, and I was topped out as far as advancements were concerned. A guy without a college education wasn't going to be made a manager there and I was an overqualified floor leader whose body was getting more and more beat up with each passing week. I was tired of the place.

Through the Internet I met a girl. A Christian girl whose marriage had fallen apart, and she was looking for some friendship. We chatted and eventually met in person and fell in love with each other. I was suddenly thinking I was on top again. Things were going to be cool in the real world. We decided to live closer to each other, and it was easy for me to pack up my life and move 3000 miles to California. I missed my friends but I hadn't been close to my family at all. I needed a new start, or so I believed.

So eager to escape my depression and the loneliness that I didn't realize that I had packed it up and took it all with me. I couldn't leave behind the wounded man who felt small because he could never be good enough for the standards set for him. I couldn't leave behind the boy who determined that perfection was the only thing worth achieving. I couldn't escape that same person who realized that he couldn't be perfect but couldn't stop trying... who sabotaged himself whenever there might be a chance of succeeding. I carried all this baggage with me to my new start.
It had nearly been a year, and the spring of 1998 was upon me. I liked my new job, not too physical, and a good bit more mental, and it offered challenges. My relationship was going okay, but there were tensions and little things were stressing me. Things like actually being in love and finding out that it might lead to more and doubts and insecurities ripped through me. And there were some temptations that I wasn't prepared to deal with and resist.

I was a ticking time bomb. By April, I had already begun a course of action that would very nearly destroy everything I had worked so hard for. I would very nearly destroy myself in the process.

On April 23, I was arrested at work. In the grand scheme of the universe, what I had done wasn't very big, but it was monumental to me and regardless of all that... it was illegal. I had fallen lower than ever before. The realization that my "victimless" crime did affect people and the realization that I had betrayed trusts and caused people emotional pain was more than I could bear. I had committed a crime that would cost me a job, my self respect, what little self esteem I had left, and it would jeopardize my relationship. What things I still had, I felt I no longer deserved. It all stood out glaringly in my mind as "one more failure" in my life. I had no reason to live. The shame and guilt weighed enormously upon me. I couldn't forgive myself and I refused to believe that anyone would be able to forgive me. Even if they did, I knew it wouldn't be enough.

My girlfriend stood by me though, and she didn't have to. I tried to close her out, shut her off. I tried to hide from her and the world so that I could make it easier to culminate my desire to kill myself. She refused to stand aside even when I felt there wasn't anything left of me worth salvaging. I was on a spiralling crash course with Hell and she knew it. She could see through those walls I put up, she saw through the ones I had built as a young boy, and those built as a teenager. She couldn't get in, but she could see there was something left inside. With faith, prayer and perseverance, she waded into the maelstrom.

There had been a couple of occasions in my life, amidst the loneliness and depression, that I toyed with the idea of suicide as a better end than where I was at at that point, but I never gave in. I always forced myself to move on. I never took help, and I never admitted a final defeat, but I never did more than survive until the next disaster. My fears of death always kept me from that big mistake and I always felt justified when I looked back, but this time was different. The fear was gone, and I thought coldly and logically about how to make it happen... quietly and easily. I saw nothing to stop me... but I listened to her when she asked me to go to a Christian Worship service and conference at a local church with her on the next night.

Deep inside I was crying for one more chance, but I didn't know who I was asking for help. I was simply asking for one more chance... one last chance. I wept all through the night and told her the next morning that I would go to the conference.

I went and sat near the centre aisle, in the middle of the church and melded anonymously into the crowd. Worship was loud and people sang with powerful voices. The good and bad singers all blended together in their joy of this time. I didn't understand it. I had been to this church a couple times as a visitor with my girlfriend, but it didn't do anything for me. This night I wanted to join them. I wanted to sing, but I didn't know how. I didn't know if anything was true and I had nothing to hold onto and call it reality. And so, I sat in the seat and wept as I watched.
The speaker was powerful and I felt like he spoke directly to me in my situation. I listened but I couldn't make his words real to me. I understood what he said, but I couldn't figure out how to bridge the gap. I couldn't fit it into my need to understand. He spoke about love and redemption and forgiveness for sins. Even sins like mine. He spoke about a hope and future and the Love of Jesus for the broken people of this world.

I knew I was one of those broken people. I knew I needed to be here. I could feel it. I was here for a reason. It's hard to explain how I knew, but I did. It defied my sense of understanding and logic, but it was real to me all the same. But it still wasn't enough.

His words told me how to find what I needed. His words showed me how to make it all real for me, but I didn't know how to let Christ into my heart... into my life. There were too many things already there and I couldn't open up any more space, even though I wanted to.
Hopelessness overwhelmed me as I struggled with this dilemma. I knew what I wanted, but I couldn't reach it, and I began to cry openly.
I wasn't good enough. I couldn't make it work. I had come here and knew I needed to be here, but I had failed and I began to lose control. It was then that the speaker took a break and the congregation broke up a bit to get refreshments and such. My girlfriend and a friend of hers left to use the bathroom, and I sat there in the seat by myself.

I was oblivious to everyone and everything around me and I sunk my head into my hands and cried.

There had to be something I had missed. Something I didn't know. Something I wasn't allowed to know. Something I was expected to know already. I wasn't good enough. Somebody like me didn't get forgiven. And I realized what it was that I needed. I needed to be forgiven. Forgiven by someone I wouldn't be able to dispute as not being qualified to forgive me. And the crying grew worse. I spoke to God between sobs, in gasping bursts. I didn't know if He heard me, I simply spoke and hoped. I didn't know of anything else to do. I remember my words pretty clearly.

"Please God... this is my last stop... I'm going down here... I have only you to turn to... Please... help me!"
And it wasn't enough and there was silence. I wanted to hear Charleton Heston's voice. I wanted to be shown the burning bush, or see the parted Red Sea. I wanted heaven to open up before me and God take me in his arms. But there was nothing. Time seemed to drag so slowly and I don't know how much of it passed me by as I wept and shuddered with wracking sobs.

"I have nothing left... Nothing to offer you... I don't know how to make you notice me... I have no pride... nothing... I am nothing... I can only give you... me... If you want it."
And there was silence. I said all that and it didn't help me feel any better. It wasn't enough. I slid from the chair, to the floor between the rows and the sobs came again in waves as I mentally tried to speak to God. I begged him to hear me.

"Please forgive me... If you could just give me a sign... some way to find you... some help to get close to you... anything... help me... I don't know what to do... send me an angel... anything... please..."
I felt a hand on my shoulder and I looked at it. A woman's hand. But my eyes were so filled with tears that I could only see the hand, everything else was obscured and out of focus. I tried to look up at her face. I had never met this woman before and I could barely see her, but she was kind and she smiled softly. Through my tears she looked like she glowed as the fluorescent lights created an aura about her in my tear filled eyes.
I struggled to get up into my seat again. I wiped my eyes but it only made it worse. She was blurry and I couldn't focus on her at all. I tried to compose myself before this stranger and I was doing a pretty poor job of it. And then she spoke, and said words I would never forget.
"I don't know who you are," she said, "but God told me to tell you that he loves you... and that you are forgiven."

And I cried tears of joy and I wanted to stand but I couldn't. There was a wave of warmth pouring over me and through me, and I was held in it's grasp. I nodded numbly and I think I thanked her, but I couldn't be sure that I was able to say anything with my throat so choked up. I felt a huge weight lifted from my heart, and my soul, and I knew that I could sing now. I could love God, and that he was real.

Those few words were all that this woman said, they were all she had to say. It was enough. It was more than enough.
I would be introduced to the woman a couple days later by my girlfriend's friend. I didn't really recognize her, since I never clearly saw her, but she remembered me and she reminded me where we met. I told her my name and I thanked her for bringing the word from God. She accepted that graciously and told me her name.

Angel.

More than a year has passed now, and my life has changed dramatically since then. I am still a fledgling in Christianity, but I grow stronger each day. I still struggle with things. It has taken me 33 years to get to this point and there's a lot of issues to give over to God. He helps me work through them little by little. And I will make it, I have faith in Him and He never lies.

Temptation is still in front of me, but now I possess new resources to fight it. The enemy challenges me constantly. He once owned my soul for a cheap price, and I almost cashed it it in to him. But now, I have been redeemed and cleansed, and bought in Blood of Christ. Satan is not pleased and I have become a target. Satan doesn't like to lose, but he simply doesn't understand he can't win.

My troubles didn't miraculously go away, I spent a short amount of time in a county jail, but Jesus went with me, and I witnessed to several people in there, and helped another poor soul find the path to Jesus. There was a reason for me to go. God took a bad situation and he used it for good. And, in the scope of Eternity, this life we live is a just a small moment in time.

I now know there is a hope and future, and that there is forgiveness for everyone who seeks it. The Lord has begun to prosper me with his blessings and help me use the gifts he bestowed upon me. With a diagnosis for ADD, I got some medicine that helps me keep my brain on track and "Apply Myself". I found a great Christian Counselor with a powerful testimony himself and a true compassion to help others. No longer will I be the underachiever. God has a plan to prosper me. I write, and have begun a couple of businesses, and best of all; my girlfriend is now my wife. I take small steps and walk in the footprints of the Lord as best I can. And like a child, I grasp his hand with mine so I don't get lost in the big supermarket called reality. We'll go home soon enough, and as long as I hang on to Daddy's hand everything will be just fine.
I have been to the *Edge* and I have stared into the face of the Abyss, and God has helped me come away from there. I have learned that God was with me all my life, waiting for me to invite him into my heart. Looking back, I can see all the little signs he offered me to let me know he was there. I realized that it was God who put it upon my heart to be moved to tears by the Footprints poem even while I spent a time being an ardent anti-Christian. At my darkest moments He was there to pick me up and carry me, if I would just ask Him to. He's there for you as well, always has been, and He has a plan for hope and a future of prosperity for you as well... with Him.

May God bless you and I thank you for reading.