I grew up in a small town going to church every Sunday. I put my faith in Jesus at a young age. I knew about God, but I didn’t know him and I didn’t understand what it meant to live for him. I grew up having very few friends and didn’t feel accepted in many places. After High School, I didn’t know who I was so the men I dated became the center of my life. My identity and worth revolved around them. I was lost.
During that time, I went to college and started my career. With beginning my career, buying my own place at age 24, and dating a guy who adored me, I thought I had it all! And didn’t I? A career, independence, my own home… Isn’t that the dream? I reached all my goals and yet, why didn’t it feel like enough? I had completed all these life milestones and yet why did I feel so empty? I could keep myself occupied, but at the end of the day, it all had no meaning to me. Why was this life not enough to make me happy? Why was my job not enough? Why was a man’s love not enough? Why was I not enough to make myself happy?
I battled these hard questions for a long time and each day they drove me further into despair. And no one knew. No one around me could see I was suffering so greatly. The crutches I had come to rely heavily on during this time were removed from me one by one. Now I was utterly alone. Isolated. I was walking through life a very angry hurting person and now things just got worse. I felt an emptiness beyond anything I had felt before. I was now just going through the motions of life as a hollow, broken person. I felt numb. Like a person already dead I moved about my days. It all had no meaning. I would just sob during my drives home from work. I remained in this dark state for about a month till something changed.
Of all things I began to go to church, a place I hadn’t gone to in a while and it was a church where I knew no one. I didn’t like the things I heard there, but I kept going… sorta. One Sunday I realized in my numb mental state, I had slept in and missed church. As I lay in my bed wanting to give up everything, this sense of stark resolution came over me in my own voice. What? I can’t commit to this one simple task on Sunday mornings? So that day I made up my mind. I was committing to this attending-church-thing.
That morning was in December of 2019 and I did go to church every Sunday. That is until everything was shut down 3 months later because COVID had reached the States. But in that small window of time things were beginning to change. After agreeing with the masses for so long, it was hard to listen to God’s word being preached. I was struggling with a lot of truths, but God did something amazing. He slowly began uncovering things to get at what I truly believed all along. It was true. I did believe in Jesus, as the Son of God, sent to save us from our sins. So if I really did believe, what did that mean? I had to experience something I hadn’t before. I had to truly be born again.
I was saved by grace at a young age because Jesus gave his life for me. Now at age 24, he was calling me to give my life to him. Something he had been asking me to do all my life. February 6th 2020, I fully gave my life up to Jesus Christ. I held nothing back. How can I summarize all that has happened since then?
I can’t really. It would take a book full of poetry to share all the contents of my heart about this and a book or two to document it all. But that’s why I am writing this blog. To share the rest of the story and parts of my testimony in more depth as time goes on. Even when I was lost He didn’t leave me and I am still walking through this journey called life with Him. I was not alone. I am not alone now. And neither are you.
