I put myself through more pain by going back to where everything happened. And that’s one thing that you don’t want to do. You don’t want to go back to the same thing.
My name is Ishmael Rogowski, I’m from Brooklyn, Coney Island. I went to jail for five years. And in that situation with me going to jail, I lost my mom. She got caught in the crossfire, it was a fight that turned into a gunfight, and she got caught in the crossfire. I ended up going to jail, she ends up losing her life. I end up spending five years in prison, in that five years I watched a lot of things happen, I watch a lot of people get hurt. I lost a lot of people while I was in prison, I lost my grandmother while I was in prison. I didn’t go to my mom’s funeral, but I went to my grandma’s funeral while I was in prison. And I just kept hearing of all my friends losing their lives, going to jail for life.
And then I came home, I came home in 2014. And when I came home 2014, you know, I was thinking everything’s gonna be good. And I never got to experience like, what it was like to come back home and my mom wasn’t going to be there. I thought I was gonna, you know, get to see her again. And you know, feel her presence, I’m gonna say, I put myself through more pain by going back to where everything happened. And that’s one thing that you don’t want to do. You don’t want to go back to the same thing. And I was just destroying myself. And I felt like that was that was God though. Like, He needed me to go through that to get me to where I’m at right now. And it was like God, like, you know, revealing things to me that no matter what you go through, continue to be who you are, continue being who I put you on this earth to be and that’s spread love and joy. No matter what you go through, I’ve been through too much.
Since I came to Teen Challenge, I’m not saying everything is all perfect, but I’m getting it. I can tell you that it’s all a process. But when you start to have faith and trust in the process, everything starts to work out because you start felling God, you start hearing Him speak to you, you start, He starts putting people in your path who really need to hear your story. And you feel it, you feel a change in you. And I can’t take no credit into none of these things that are going on like God did that, God is, He’s great, He’s good. When you have Jesus, you got everything, He gives it to you. Even when you, even when you have those thoughts in your head like man, it’s not gonna happen, it happened. That’s how loving and caring He is. But it all falls on to you, that falls onto your beliefs and your faith, how much faith you got in him. Do you? Do you really believe that He died for you? Do you really believe that He forgives you? And that’s when all the miracles gonna start happening, when you really take that step out on faith and believe and hope that it’s gonna be changed in your life. Because ever since I’ve done that, that’s how I came to this place to Teen Challenge.
I didn’t know nothing about Teen Challenge. But coming to Teen Challenge has opened my eyes to a lot of things. When we when we allow the Spirit within us that God put that spirit that God put in us to move, things start to happen, miracles start to happen. You start to change people lives that around you, they could be gone. Never, never, never just, you know, be bent out on the things that you’re going through. Because you never know what the things that you’re going through, you can help somebody else, something that they’re going through. And that’s what I’m learning, now being in Teen Challenge, that is teaching me how to open up about the past and how to just let it go. Because all things happen for a reason, God use everything for His glory. Ishmael Jr, my little man, someone I carry with me all the time. God makes sure I’m reminded on why everything is happening when it’s happening. Because, you know, say if I ever had a kid he would never experience what I what I go through and God made sure that He making sure He’s making sure that I stand on my promise. He’s making sure that He’s not allowing me to go nowhere, He’s not allowing me to mess up anymore. The person who created, you can’t you can’t figure this out, nobody can figure it out. We can’t even fathom. I can’t fathom it. Like I said it feels good. Because you will feel it you will know when you accept God in your life. You will feel things change.
