Life after High School
The winter of my freshman year at Sac State was totally life changing. I had injured my hip when I was 16 in a wakeboarding accident and the rowing practice every day had worn down the cartilage in my joint. I was no longer able to participate with my team and had to wait until the following summer to have hip surgery. Weeks after the hip surgery and the first couple of weeks into my sophomore year I was diagnosed with mononucleosis and had to withdraw from classes because I was too ill. I felt like my world was collapsing around me. I kept telling myself that everything that I had worked for during high school was a complete waste because I wasn’t in college on a scholarship anymore. I fell into a deep depression during my months with mono and never once thought to turn to God because I didn’t think I was important enough.
Little did I know, this was part of His plan for my life all along.
The following fall, about a year later, I went back to school at a community college and got an apartment with my best friend back in Sacramento. I was working as a personal trainer and taking classes part-time. From the outside everything looked great, but I was dying inside.
I wasn’t happy with the way my life was going. I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to go back to school and have a job at the same time, because that’s what hard-working successful people do. I couldn’t understand why I was constantly unhappy and felt like what I was doing was not important.
From spring of 2011 to the fall of that year I was unknowingly struggling with anorexia. I made it through moving back to Sacramento, becoming a personal trainer, starting a new job, going back to school, and the stress of everyday life eating less than the average person eats for breakfast. In October I was hospitalized for two weeks because of a low heart rate due to restricting my food intake. I was in complete denial and refused to accept that I was not in control of what I was doing.
I never gave control of my life to Christ because I thought that being a Christian was just accepting that Jesus died for my sins. Living life the way I thought was right lead me to near death, but it was exactly the wake-up call I needed.
I moved back home with my mom, started going to church again, and got re-connected the people who love Jesus and care about me. This March I decided to be baptized so I could give a public declaration that I was putting my life in God’s hands. Later that month I attended an International Leadership International History Makers conference and a fire was lit inside of me to share the hope of the Lord to underprivileged people in desolate countries.
But more on how I was called to serve on the World Race later…. : )
So that is who I was, but it’s not who I am.
I believe that God is changing me every day and leading my life in the direction that He always had planned. Over the course of my World Race experience I hope to grow deeper in who I am in The Lord, not who I am to the world because in the end I want my life to be the proof of God’s love and how he wants to save every lost soul!
This song by For King and Country "Proof of Your Love" is the inspiration for the rest of my life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr9YVD05x8M
