When I was little, I understood simple facts about God, and believed in him blindly without much knowledge. Throughout elementary school nobody talked about church or God, therefore; it wasn’t a big deal that I didn’t go to church or know all the stories about God. Then middle school came and people began talking about Jesus and church, but I didn’t know what they knew because I didn’t go to church or youth group.
While realizing my lack of knowledge in middle school I tried to block out the feelings of being confused about if there were a God and decided that I was not going to focus on that. I instead chose to focus on boys, show choir, and sports.
In the last year of middle school I was in a relationship with someone who was a good person, but wasn’t a good person for me. Our relationship started out well, but soon turned to a relationship that was solely based around sex and slight emotional abuse. He constantly told me that I wasn’t smart or talented enough to get anywhere in life. This abuse broke me down in so many ways that I began to isolate myself from all my friends even though they were trying to help me see he wasn’t good for me. I began to eat less due to anxiety about losing him and began to become a more bitter and less bubbly person all around.
This relationship lasted for a year and a half, but I broke it off in April of my freshman and his sophomore year. Although I was relieved about the breakup, I forgot how to be friends with people because he was all I had. Throughout the summer going into sophomore I began to rebuild friendships and figure out part of my life. Then during sophomore year, when I least expected it God brought me to him in ways I could never have imagined. In English class we had to write a paper about an experience we had and I wrote about my confusion of God that had been built up for 16 years of my life. After writing this paper I felt the need to explain my thoughts to my new boyfriend at the time. After this conversation he invited me to go to church with him. I did go, but didn’t feel comfortable there due to my lack of knowledge. However, God didn’t give up on me, and I for some reason talked to one of my friends about how I didn’t understand the concept of God and he brought with me to youth group with him. Now that day at church it wasn’t a revelation of becoming a perfect Christian right away, but the first thing I noticed about that church is it somehow felt like a home I’d been missing.
I started going to Marion First United Methodist church in March of 2016, and God showed me so much of his love that I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior at Summer Games University on July 13th, 2016. Less than one month after I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart, I was on a plane to Haiti where I would teach children about the gospel for a week. This trip transformed my heart and God showed me how to love others the way he loved me. The next year I slipped away from my faith and felt like God could never love me. However, God’s relentless love and pursuit of me helped me go back to the same church camp that helped give me a relationship with God, brought me back to Haiti and gave me people in my life who would help me pursue Jesus no matter what. People who would support a crazy faithful idea of going on a 9 month trip around the world to teach others about the one true Savior.
Now this testimony is not a story of how McKenna rose above an awful relationship, this is the story of how God was the only one who could save me from all the brokenness, all the mess, and all the hurt that was in my heart. This story shows that no matter how broken the people I encounter are, that God will help mend them, and he will speak through me to them. This testimony is proof that no matter how many times someone turns their back on God that He wants us to love and worship him. His relentless love is stronger, greater, and more powerful than our sins could ever be.
