To family, friends, and strangers –
Thank you for visiting my blog and allowing me to share a piece of my heart with you.
I was raised with little to no faith in my house, my mom being Jewish and my dad, Roman Catholic neither of whom actively practiced their faith. As I got older and realized your faith entails more than what holidays you celebrate (which we celebrated them all – just to add to the confusion). I began to see my family didn’t really know much about their faiths at all. My mom went to a Hebrew day school, at some point in her life spoke Hebrew, and had a Bat-mitzvah; yet, could only tell me about the traditions of Judaism. My paternal grandmother was a lukewarm Catholic more out of habit than heart and as I got older and life changed, relatives passed, hardships happened she stopped going to church altogether.
Most people have a “lost” part of their life. Where you start to feel like something is missing, you need more, need to experience more. That part of my life felt like a never ending season. The issue with going through that phase and not growing up in a home with believers is you start to look in all the wrong places to fill that void. And that’s what I did. It wasn’t like I had a tough childhood or bad parents, quite the opposite actually. I had an amazing childhood and parents that would do anything for me and a maternal grandmother who truly was one of God’s Angels on earth. The void was deeper than that and that journey took me to Philadelphia where – I went to college, did more empty soul searching, spent more “traditional” Jewish holidays, and fell back into behaviors I thought I left behind me in Florida; but worse created new ones I never dreamed I would face.
Little did I know this whole time God was in control, He had this beautiful and crazy plan! A good friend of my mom’s, Tina Mulligan, introduced her to a network marketing company; and we went to an international convention. On the last day the morning starts with a non-denominational church service. At this point I am completely ignorant to what that means and they told us if we wanted good seats for the day to go for the church service, so we went. Now there I am with my mom on one side and my dad with his arms folded tightly across his chest on the other listening to Pastor Boyd preach the gospel and talk about Jesus. My mom started making these weird sound effects of confusion and leans over to my dad and me to ask: “I thought they said this is non-denominational so why are they talking about Jesus?” In our minds non-denominational apparently meant non-religious based where only God would be the” highlight”, not understanding He totally was. I felt moved and inspired, yet ashamed of those feelings and confused how I was supposed to react because my parents were clearly not having the same reaction as me.
As I returned to Philadelphia and went about my life I couldn’t knock the feeling that what I was missing all these years was faith, knowing God in a real way. I sought out answers from my family asking about Judaism and if the Torah was made in English so I could read it. I was encouraged to just read the Bible,” that the Old Testament is basically the Torah in English”.
So, that’s what I did. I downloaded a Bible app on my phone and began to read. I skipped around a lot trying to keep myself interested which was harder than I thought it would be. Then I randomly got a “verse of the day” alert on my phone – I never set them up and I wasn’t getting them at all during the week that I had been reading on the app. But here is the crazier part the verse was from the New Testament and not knowing much about what book was where I opened it and began to read. There I read about Jesus Christ and who He is and the amazing miracles God performed using His son. “And you have been made complete in Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” Colossians 2:10 I found myself excited to learn more, in a confusing way. I was born Jewish, told my whole life be proud to be Jewish… but, when seeking answers all I found was traditions not a relationship.
My senior year of college I was fortunate enough to have planned out where I got to take 3 electives my final semester; one being a backpacking class. I grew up in Florida, the only mountain we have is the dump. So I was excited by the idea of seeing some beautiful sites and spending time outdoors. I always preferred outdoor activities I grew up riding horses so dirty and fresh air was my comfort zone. Again, little did I know God was totally in control, the more you grow in faith the more you learn coincidence is nothing more than God altering your imperfect plan for His. “For I know the plans I have for you; declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
Fast forward – I made the decision to give my life to Jesus and got baptized in July of 2015. Faith growing stronger, the enemy’s knocking getting louder. Blessed doesn’t begin to explain the people God was surrounding me with. My old friend from high school and her husband (Amanda and Rene Leonardi), friends from the network marketing company – Mario and Karen Romine, Christopher Jacques, and Tim Troxel were there alongside my parents and paternal grandparents. Here’s the crazy part my parents and grandparents are not believers and I still at this point didn’t recognize that God was working through me to get to them. Here we are, my small mind thinking they are there for me when really I was doing this for them!
Stay tuned for what led me to the WORLD RACE !
