Well i cant say I'm the best with words, so please bare with me!
I grew up in a Christian home, blessed with two wonderful parents and three amazing older brothers (I also had a younger sister but she was stillborn) Mom was mennonite and Dad was Chatholic, so every sunday we would alternate between the catholic church and the monnonite church. This was good, me and my brothers always looked forward to the caotholic services becuase we were in and out of there in 1 hour, never like the mennonite church where is was 2 -3 hours long sometimes. As a child i accepted Christ into my life at a very young age, I dont even recall when it was but thats what mom tells me! Growing up I had a really strong circle of good christian friends, then moving into middle school and highschool i still was good friends with all of them but i started to shift towards a different group of people. I started drinking, smoking and partying, my christian friends still would invite me places to hang out (and to this day i cant thank them enough, they never shut me out). Then once I hit grade 12 and turned 18 I was partying everyweekend at the bars and not going to church and fighting with my parents alot.Then graduation came and i just wanted to be done with highschool and all the people there, I moved out of my parents house in september of 2011 (july of 2011 my oldest brother cody left on his world race) and started college in Lethbridge, AB. Things got worse once i moved out, i was partying alomost every night of the week and getting into all kinds of trouble. Then in december of 2011 i got the news, Dad was diagnoised with bladder cancer. They say the cyst that was in his bladder had been there for about 3 years now (he hadnt notice anything) and that it had been cause from smoking (which he hadnt had a cigarette in 25 years!). So needless to say the whole family was scared, and we couldnt even get ahold of cody for 4 days! So then in february dad started chemo, he did two rounds of it and it didnt seem to affect him alot. He was still eating good and he wasnt sick at all, not like what you would normally expect. February 22, 2011 mom and dad spent their 25 wedding anniversary in the hospital, while dad was getting chemo. Also when dad started his first round of chemo, AIM let my brother Cody come home for a week and a half, he surprised us all showing up at the house one night! So chemo went great and dads scans were looking good, they had the cancer under control. Then they decided to book him for surgury to take his bladder out, it was going to be an 8 hour surgery. He made it thru well! the scans showed that all the cancer was gone, so he was in the hospital for a week and then got to come home! It was awesome, i was working less so i could be at home with dad and things were going great. I had signed up for my Passport trip with a good friend of mine, Colten Murray, moved back home to save money for my trip and dad was super pumped for me to go! Then dad started not being able to eat and throwing up all the time, so finally we got him back into the hospital to get some tests done. And this day always gives me nightmares, it was july 13 and colten and I were leaving for training camp that night. So I was up in the hospital with Dad hanging out with him for a little while before i had to leave. It was just Dad and I when his doctor came in, all i remember is he said something about the cancer has spread, its all over, they wont be able to control it or cure it in anyway, he told me i might have 3 months with my father, it took what felt like 2 hours before my mom came back to the hospital, and the whole time i was holding dads hand, crying my eyes our while he was telling me that it was going to be ok and that we were going to get through this and this was a part of life. I can never thank my father enough for how calm and brave he was through his last months on earth, it made it so much easier on me and my family that he was ok with dying, he was at peace with everything. Then august 17, 2011 He passed away. that was one of the hardest things i have ever gone thru in my entire life. And so i was very upset with God, I wanted to go on this passport trip, i was trying to change my life around and live for him and what happends instead, my father dies. I was anger for a long time, I couldnt believe it. I figured well then i guess thats a sign that i'm not supposed to go in this trip and that im supposed to keep living my life like i had before. So thats what i did, i continued to party and to not go to church, which i can see now only made all of my problems worse. I fought with mom alot, felt guilty for leaving her home by herself on weekends all then time when i would be out partying. But Her and Cody never stopped bugging me about signing up for another trip. Then in january of 2013 I hit a wall, i had been out partying one weekend and things just got out of hand, sunday afternoon when i got back home i decided that i couldnt keep doing this, couldnt keep living my life like this. I needed to get out of this town, i blamed this town for being my problem. So well i was looking on the internet for somewhere to travel to and live for a year, maybe nannying or something, I stumbled across the AIM website again, i checked out some of the world race routes and found that some of them went to Ireland (The one place my dad and I had always wanted to go) but all the Ireland trips were full, so I closed that and kept looking at other things. Few days later i stumbled arcoss the wedsite again, and low and behold one of the routes had been changed and was now going to ireland! Now i had never really felt God telling me to do something before, but heck you cant miss a sign that big right? So I filled out my application and paid my fee, got my date set up for my interview. Now i had told my brother cody that i signed up and just before my interview i told my mom, but i didnt want anyone else to know. I wasnted then next few months to fly by and then for me to just get on a plane and leave without telling any friends and as few family as possible. So obviously i got accepted and i told a few people,then a few people turned into alot and now i cant contain my excitment for what God is doing in my life now and what He will be doing over the course of this next year! My faith and telling people about it is still real new to me and not always easy to share. (like writing this blog). But i feel like thru my story maybe i can help someone else who was like me! My journey with God hasnt been an easy one, but then again whose has and im over joyed with the plans He has for me!
Ill leave you with a verse that we disscussed this morning in my moms bible study
"The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it" Proverbs 27:12
– I saw the way my life was going, partying and partying, i knew one day i would regret it all but i was "simple" so i kept going and i suffered from it. Im done being simple, Im going to start taking action and keep my eyes focused straight ahead on the path that God wants me to take.
Thanks for reading!
Lacey
