2007 and 2008 were rough for me. I was 17-18 years old, stopped believing in Yah, mom put me out, got arrested, was broke as shyt in Detroit. Surely the hardest/most difficult chapter in my life.
I was always smart, articulate, and ambitious, so I just kept grinding and started praying again and reading the Bible. I managed to graduate and was accepted to several good universities. Ended up going to community college, while working shytty ass jobs, and got a lot of help from my aunt/uncle, support from my girlfriend at the time. Rekindled things with my mother, moved back in, kept grinding and praying. Things got 1000x better for me in 2009 and beyond. It was due to prayer, ambition, blessings, endurance and just pure luck.
I think that it was a wake up call from Yah. I was going around saying that I was "agnostic" and "atheist". I truly stopped believing in The Most High and that was when things went completely down for me. I could have easily been another statistic stuck in Detroit. I took a lot of things for granted. Now I thank Yah every single day and my family (wife and kids) and I pray together every day. I pray that my fellow brothers and sisters also wise up, endure, and get out of their terrible circumstances, too.