Okay so this is now the third time tonight I've tried to write this thing (my browser keeps on crashing)… so I hope third time's the charm.. 
I am 21 years old. I am a Sacred Music major at Texas Wesleyan University. I graduate in December (yay!!!!!!). I have a vivid imagination and sometimes I put that to use writing stories. I am creative and I often think outside the box. My cat that I've had since she was born twelve years ago is named Diet Coke. My favorite drink is….. Dr. Pepper. I have been a Christian since I was 6 years old.
My family
This is my mom. She plays the piano and she scrapbooks. My sister and I used to dance while she played the piano.
This is my dad. He very rarely takes a serious picture. He runs long distances (he's even done an ultra marathon) and he is a deacon at our church.
This is my sister Delissa with her fiance Jonathan. She's a kindergarten teacher and she bakes yummy cupcakes. They're getting married in July :))
This is me with my Aunt Charis. I've been lucky enough that she's lived close by all my life. She's a middle school teacher (brave woman) and she was my alto buddy when she went to church with us and was in the choir.
I am very shy and quiet. When I was six years old, I accepted Christ as my Savior, but didn't make my profession of faith until later that year because I was scared to get up in front of people. Then, one day, God just told me in very clear terms that it was time, so I turned to my dad and told him to take me up to the front because it was time. (For those of you who don't know, parents normally go up with their children when they make their profession of faith). I wish I could say that from then on I tried to be the best Christian I could be, but I didn't. Not that I acted badly, but I did not go out of my way to act like a Christian because my theory was that God would just forgive me no matter how I acted. Also, I didn't realize that to be a Christian is to actively pursue a relationship with God. I thought the journey ended after you accepted His gift. But then one year at children's camp, I sort of had a revelation.
You see, we went to camp at Riverbend, and it was in the middle of the summer so it was EXTREMELY hot. One day when we walked to worship service, I thought I was about to die. (Bit of an exaggeration, but whatever). When the pastor got up to speak he started talking about an actual relationship with God. Then He told us to ask God to hug us. So being my funny little fifth grade self, I asked God to hug me, but make it a cold hug that would cool me down. Then, later during the worship service, I noticed that I was shivering, I was so cold. I remembered what I had asked of God and realized that He had answered my prayer. That was when God became not just a Historical, Biblical being, but One that lives on today, and actually wants to know us and have a relationship with us. So I kind of got closer to God that summer. But, I still didn't make too much of an effort to pursue that relationship, so for lack of progress, my relationship with God became stagnant once again.
Fast forward two years when I went to my first Hawk Nelson concert. I was sitting in the middle of the Six Flags arena, and I could feel God calling me to the music ministry. So I got excited and fired up for God because He and I were communicating. But then I let things get in the way and let self-doubt creep into my heart. I convinced myself that there was no possible way that I could go into music. I wasn't good enough, and I didn't think anybody believed in me, so I decided to give up on being a musician and to become a vet instead.
Over the years, I would go to church camp and would feel the call every time I got closer to God, but I would supress it with self-doubt. As a result, my relationship with God wasn't all it could be because I would wrestle with that self-doubt and I would always let it win. I didn't have faith in myself, and therefore I didn't have faith in God.
However, the youth camp after my junior year in high school, things began to change. Every year, there is one special night that is dedicated to.. soul check I guess would be a good way to describe it. The pastor gives a sermon then invites us to look into ourselves to make sure that we are definitely Christians. The pastor that year did it differently though. I don't remember exactly the words he spoke, but it seemed as if he was speaking directly to me. He was talking about those people who knew that they were Christians, but didn't do anything about it. Then he told us that if we were ready to start living our lives for Christ, then we needed to stand. That moment I got really cold (God-hug!) and God told me that I needed to stand. It was almost as if He grabbed my heart and pulled me up to stand by my heart. So I stood up, and just burst into tears because I knew what I had done by rejecting my calling. I saw how much I had avoided God because I didn't want to see that my rejecting His call, I was rejecting Him. I also saw various aspects of my life that needed changing. So right then I made the decision to live for God. However, when I got home, I made the decision to go pre-vet until my grades started slipping like I knew they would and then I would change my major to music. I was scared to tell people what God wanted me to do because I didn't want to deal with their disbelief. Eventually that plan faded, and I more emphasized on becoming a vet.
Later that summer, we went on our second mission trip to New Orleans. It was an awesome week. I had a lot of fun doing God's work. Then, for some reason, on the last day I was very sad that we had to go. I felt as if my work wasn't done in New Orleans. So, I while everyone was in the common room, I went into the room where we slept and started praying and reading the Bible to find out what these feelings were all about. When God revealed to me that He wanted me to go to New Orleans the next summer for an extended mission trip, I didn't give the best response for someone who had just given their life to Christ. I pretty much just told God "Haha you're funny God. No way." Yeah…it was then that I learned that God doesn't like being told no… haha. I was scared. That was the summer that I was supposed to go off to college and right then I was planning to go to Belmont in Nashville for college. I wanted to spend that summer with my family and my friends. Not away from everybody. I came up with about a billion and one reasons why I shouldn't and couldn't go. Yet, still God kept pressuring me until finally I surrendered to His will. Then I came up with a bunch of tests to make sure that God was the one telling me to do this and it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me. Everything I asked pointed to God. Once I knew for sure that God was in this, nothing was going to stop me. I didn't care if I had to go all by myself and just find some way to serve I wasn't going to let me parents tell me I couldn't go. I had already told myself that I was going no matter what they said. (Luckily they said yes so I didn't have to cross that bridge. It was so amazing how God worked everything out so perfectly.
Over the school year, my faith started to grow. And it continued to grow during New Orleans because God had told me what He wanted, worked it out, and now I was reaping the results.
Three days after I came back from New Orleans, our youth group headed out to my last youth camp. After seeing how God's plan had worked out in New Orleans, I started wondering again about my true calling. So in family group, which was all the girls in our youth group, I asked for prayer that I would find my calling. Then God started answering. 😀 When I was thinking about being a musician, one of the girls came up to me and brought up the whole true calling issue. So then I asked God for a clear answer. I had been reading the bible through and asked God that if he really wanted me to be a musician, the bible story I read that night would be about David getting annointed. …And it was. So then I realized that God could do this. But I still had doubts in myself. Then I started seeing everywhere evidence that it's not what we think that matters. All that matters is God having faith in us. So then I changed to a music major.
I ended up not going to Belmont, but Texas Wesleyan University instead.
In the spring semester of my freshman year, I got into a car accident and broke my foot. Initially, the paramedics told me that my foot would just heal itself naturally, but then when I went to the podiatrist, he told me I would have to have surgery. Seeing how reluctant we were to have my foot operated on (I have a deathly fear of needles, doctors, and surgery) he gave us two weeks. If my foot was not healing itself, then he would have to operate. As we were heading home, I was freaking out and my mom was trying to calm me down and then "Praise You in the Storm" by Casting Crowns came on. I just felt God reassuring me that He was going to take care of things. Still, every night when I would have to take off my boot and I would feel how weak my foot felt, I got scared. Yet every night, God had patience with me and just reassured me that He had everything under control and that nothing would happen that He didn't ordain. Two weeks went by and the morning of the appointment I determined that I would not freak out if I had to have surgery. I would trust that God had me in His hands and would take care of me. The podiatrist took the x-ray, examined it…. and told us the bone was healing itself naturally, everything was looking good and I could take off my boot. I was just so amazed at how God worked everything out. It was a growing experience in my faith.
