My Testimony

When I was about 6 my mom and dad got divorced. It was then that music began to flourish out of me while questions I had no answers to began to fill my head. I was living with my mom and dad equally by switching back and forth each week. Before they got divorced we had went to church each week as a family, after their divorce my dad stopped going to church. My mom still went to church every Sunday though and my brother and I went with her. During this time I was taught through Sunday morning services and the program Awana that God should be my rock and Savior. In this time my beliefs were built upon a foundation of Christianity, I even wrote worship songs at such a young age as 8.

It was in 6^th grade when I slowly turned my back to God. The 3 years of Middle School are full of temptation and hardship for most kids. For me it was 3 years of small rebellious acts that led to a great depression by the middle of 7^th grade. My 7^th grade year my mom was very encouraging that I attend the youth group at my church, and so I did almost every week. I went in a group with two of my friends who had not really grown up in a Christian home. As the weeks and months went by my friends went just to meet boys at the youth group and get away from their parents for a few hours. During worship each week I could not help but get as close to the stage as possible and sing my heart out. One night after youth group I asked a youth leader to pray with because I felt ready to dedicate my life to the Lord. We prayed together and cried together; it was such a beautiful moment. However, as soon as I approached my friends to walk out to the car together they asked, “What were you guys talking about?” (referring to prayer moments ago with the youth leader) and with my whipmy reply, “Oh I just had to ask her something.” Everything I had prayed for suddenly vanished—not even minutes after asking for Jesus I denied him. And so it wouldn’t be until at least a year later that I would commit myself to God again.

In December of my 8^th grade year my life was the same; small rebellious acts that led to great depression. My small rebellious acts consisted of stealing a cigarette or two from my dad for my friends and I when we would sneak out of the house at 2am to talk a walk, kissing boys my parents wouldn’t approved of, the occasional taking of alcohol from my parents, sneaking into R rated movies, and dressing up as play boy bunnies for a Halloween party. The tinniest things such as these that were leading my life astray filled me with a burning ache of what felt like never-ending depression. I cried myself to sleep nightly, cut myself for the first time, believed no one loved me and that I was worthless. These lies spread like a wild fire through every atoms of my body until I believed it with my whole being and soul. At this same time my dad and step-mom were in the middle of constant fighting and talk of divorce, which made love sound unreal and trust sound impossible. If you have ever doubted trust and love to exist in the way I did at that time, it truly brings someone down to a low like no other, as being human we depend on those two things.

In the midst of all this I was still attending youth group regularly with my two friends. My brother was a Junior in high school at this time and was also attending a youth group at the same church for high school aged students. I really paid attention to how he was living at this time. He had friends from church and they would come over to the house to pray together and then watch a movie. They did plenty of laughing, eating, and smiling in between. I observed this closely and I craved what they all had. They had joy—not temporary happiness from a new cell phone, but pure and permanent joy. The kind of joy that just keeps shinning like the sun and I wanted that. One night we were having small group discussions at my youth group and one of the leaders asked, “Who do you want to be in High School?” In the moment she asked that, I knew instantly—I wanted to be a follower of Jesus and have that insane joy my brother and all his friends had. It was so obvious to me that I was headed down the opposite path. My friends still couldn’t care less about church and we were still being a bit rebellious while my depression was still hitting hard. Shortly after all of these realizations I prayer with several youth leaders of the course of weeks and began giving the Lord pieces of my heart. I would pray each night during worship, “Lord take my heart and make it clean. Give me a new heart.” I stopped hanging out with my friends and started making friends with the youth leaders who were so encouraging, uplifting and helpful.

It was in December of my 8^th grade year when all this was happening and by January 1^st I felt like a brand new girl! And so in January the journey began. I became so involved in my church and so faithfully committed to Jesus. The summer after 8^th grade I did an internship for high school students through my church called, ‘Burn’. I went on a missions trip, learned so much about God and was consistently encouraged to start a weekly prayer meeting on my school campus. So in 9^th grade when my brother was in 12^th grade we started a weekly campus prayer meeting to prayer for the salvation of our peers. My freshmen year was full of the wonders of God and also full of all the hardships and temptations of being a disciple.

The beginning of my sophomore year things took quit the turn. As I look back I know everything that happened in this season of my life was an attack from Satan, but at the time I would’ve never had thought to call him out. My mom and step-dad had just gotten divorced and I was struggling with accepting God’s reasoning for a third divorce in my family. When they had first separated over a year ago I had prayed every day for God to save their marriage. With the outcome of divorce I felt and believed that God had ignored me and failed me. While I struggled with this I also begin to look around and compare myself to so many other kids in the youth group, I thought they were all better and stronger than me and I thought God was working in their lives more. I know now that we ate all on a different path and travel and different paces so there is no way to justify comparing our journey with God, but at the time it just felt like God was ignoring me and failing me again. I let the lie that God could fail me and was failing me consume me and my life and so I made the choice to walk away from him. I remembering saying, “God, I don’t need you. If all you do is fail me then I obviously don’t need you. I am going to go explore this world and see if it’s as bad as everyone says it is!” And so that’s exactly what I did, I walked away from God and left the Christian lifestyle to explore the secular world.

I went right back to my rebellious ways and made new friends to be rebellious with. I started drinking and got drunk for the first time, I smoked marijuana for the first time, and I was always lying to my parents about where I was going and who I was going to be with. Spring break of my sophomore year I finally hit rock bottom (because that’s what happens when you leave God). I had a small get together with alcohol at my mom’s house while she was out of town of I got busted. That night was horrific beyond words, but that’s not the point of the story. I got caught and was grounded for two months. For someone who is an extrovert, being grounded for two months and not getting to see your friends is a long time. While not getting to see my friends was tough, realizing that I had fallen off the peda-stool my parents put me on was worse and twice as bad because it was all my fault. In the two months of seclusion I grew to hate myself. I had brought myself to a tragedy of not getting to see my friends, not getting my license, and losing my family’s trust. I also knew how disappointed my parents were and felt as though they had lost all love and pride in me. Those two long months resulted in a depression that led to a horrible summer of worse depression.

It was in July of summer 2012 when I started talking to a guy from school who was a year older than me. We started going on dates and I really liked him; he seemed so sweet, funny and was super cute. It turned out he was not very sweet though. Shortly we after we were dating the fights began. While having a casual conversation I could not even voice my opinion without offending him and having to apologize. The first few times I was so irritated that had to apologize for stuff like my opinions, but then I let it continue. I let him control me and walk all over me while I was walking on egg shells to please him. It was because of my self esteem at this time that I let this happen. I believed I was worthless and didn’t like myself, or felt like anyone in my family liked me, so I let him disrespect me like I was nothing because I too believed I was nothing.

As the fights got more intense I realized how wrong our relationship was. I knew I should decide between standing up for myself and walking away or I could stay with him because I wanted to keep trying to make him happy because at this time my happiness was dependent on him being happy. I knew the right choice was to walk away, but I couldn’t bring myself to do, I wanted to try to make him happy so I could be happy too. So I chose to stay with him. When I made that decision I hated myself even more because I knew it was disrespectful to myself. I disrespected myself with that choice and I planned on hiding it from everyone because I was ashamed of the choice so I decided to cut myself as a physical sign of disrespect and I cut myself on my waist where no one could see because I was ashamed of that too.

One night after a horrible fight, he wouldn’t even talk to me the next day. I felt so worthless because he wouldn’t even talk to me that I decided to end everything that night by just ending my life. I had a bag full of pain killers I was ready to take right before driving to a friend’s house. About thirty minutes before I was suppose to go to my friends house, she texted me saying she couldn’t hang out anymore because she had to babysit for her neighbor. When I told my mom I was no longer going over to my friend’s house she asked me to go out to dinner with her.

It was a miracle that God ruined my plans that night so that I lived to tell this story. Nobody really said anything to me to make me change my mind about suicide that night, it was just that my plan had fell through by having to go to dinner with my instead of going to my friend’s house. By having a few more hours to live I had a few more hours to think and something in me just decided not to do it. I’ll blame it on God—he put something in my mind, strength I suppose, strength to live and strength to walk away from that dumb boy! Because when he finally texted me back that night I did end things with him and it wasn’t smooth, but I did it.

A few days later at Desperation Conference I recommitted my life to God during worship. I was on my knees in tears because in a moment at that conference I realized that it was God’s timing and planning for me to live the past couple of days and I was so thankful. A few moments later God spoke to me that he was proud of me. I was awe struck, how good such a holy and marvelous God be proud of me and everything I had done, but he was!  And for the first time in a very long time I felt true love all over again and so I decided I wanted to live my life with God. That same night during the sermon I realized that when I had walked away from God almost a year ago I had walked away because I had forgotten who God really was, God is unfailing, and I had lost sight of that. So that night I decided to walk with God again and to know him.

As my junior year started so did a new relationship. It was my first very serious relationship, and I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but it was definitely in the way of a better relationship with God. I should have been laying my life down to God and asking him where he wanted me and what he will was for my life, but instead I kind of just did my own thing. I lived my life how I wanted, read my Bible out of praise occasionally, whenever I was having a bad day and went to church on Sunday. Yet, my relationship with my boyfriend consumed me too much and kept me from being closer to God. From September all the way through March I was too busy being intimate with my boyfriend to be intimate with God. In March things were slowly falling apart with my boyfriend just thread by thread, I came to a point where I had no idea what I wanted anymore because I felt things were out of my hands. I finally turned to God and asked him what he wanted from me; should I break up with my boyfriend of 7 months or stay with him?

Falling out of love is one of the most painful stories that could ever be told, written or experienced, but it’s what God brought me through so that I could be closer to my savior. God knows our hearts and knows what we truly need and what we truly want, and that is why we should always be seeking direction from God in our lives. It’s a hard journey that I am still in the midst of because I know I am still not anywhere near as close to God as he has planned, but I haven’t been very close to anyone since March. And I still struggle with daily asking God to lead my footprints, but I always do when I remember because I know it’s the best thing I can pray for myself. So as I finish typing this I think back to the beginning, back to when I was 6 years old and my parents got divorced. I look back throughout all three divorces and I think about the desire of my heart all these years—I have just wanted to see true love, and I even tried to find it on my own with a guy. But sitting here typing I realize God broke everything that was labeled as “true love” in this world to reveal to me that only his love is true, pure, whole, and eternal and I am so thankful for a love like that, I pray for that love to consume your life and mine in every way and every day.