They say there’s a God-shaped hole in every human heart that is so big that only God can fill it. When I was younger, I tried to fill it with all kinds of things that seemed to medicate the pain of the profound sense of emptiness inside of me. Starting in high school, I turned to drinking and partying. When I got to college, I was drinking six or seven days out of the week. I was trying to fill the emptiness with whatever I could get my hands on.

One day, my mom came to me and said, “Alex, would you go on a free trip to this place called Medjugorje, if I paid for it?” Medjugorje is this beautiful little town in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apparently, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been appearing there since the 1980s. My mom could see that I was really struggling, and she was looking for anything that might be able to get me on the right path. I thought, “Why not? A free trip. I’ll check it out and do something new.”

When I got there, something began to change in me. I felt this sense of interior peace and stillness that I hadn’t felt in years. In Medjugorje, people line up all day long to go to confession. The idea popped into my head, “You should go, Alex. You should go to confession.” I immediately thought, “I would like that. It’s been a long time, and I would love to get a fresh start.” But then something else happened. These waves of shame began washing over me. “You can’t go in there, Alex. If you tell the priest the things that you’ve done, he’s going to stop you mid-confession and kick you out.” I was wrestling. I wanted to go to confession, but I hadn’t been for years because I was ashamed and afraid.

In the midst of the wrestling, God’s grace broke into my life. Every single sin I ever committed in my life was suddenly present to my conscious awareness. The terrible things I did, the people that I hurt, and the ways that I hurt myself were instantly brought to mind. I also realized for the first time in my life the relationship between my sin and the cross. I realized that Jesus died for me and for all the terrible things that I did. He didn’t just die for humanity in general. He died for me. I was confronted with the horror of the things that I had done, and yet it was absolutely nothing compared to the overwhelming, unconditional love that I felt washing over me.

Something has value to the extent that someone is willing to pay for it. What is your value? Your value is the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, coming into this world and laying down his life. The Scripture says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Pt. 2:24) On that day in confession, I was healed. I felt this infusion of God’s love into my heart and soul, and that gnawing emptiness that I felt before was gone. The huge, gaping, empty space in my heart was filled with God Himself. I didn’t need to fill it with these other things anymore. Jesus died knowing all the things you would ever do that make you feel unlovable and unworthy. Jesus sacrificed Himself so that through Him, 6 you might have life to the full.