I wanted to share my story with everyone, my story of God’s redemptive power in my life, and I just started writing, but I realized that my story didn’t really start at the beginning of my life. I grew up in a Christian home, but the most significant thing that God has done for me has been in the last 4 years. God has done wonderful things throughout my life, and if you want to hear about them I’ll tell you, but the most important event happened in 2009.
In 2009 I was selfish. I decided to wallow in self-pity, and become angry with everyone and the world. I slipped into a depression and I felt miserable about my life. I didn’t want to do anything about making it better, because everyone else needed to apologize to me and work to make it better for ME. I didn’t try to rely on God to help me. Towards the fall of that year I started realizing that I needed help. I didn’t know why I was so angry and bitter, and feeling so sorry about myself, I just was. So I started seeing a counselor and God started speaking through her. Her words were helping me realize that God was still there for me and He could help me and heal me. But I was still selfish and trying to blame everyone for how I was feeling.
Then I woke up on the morning of December 11, 2009 and checked facebook as usual, not expecting my world to be turned upside down. The first post I saw was from a friend of mine back home who said that another friend of mine, Luke Gullberg, was missing on a climb up Mount Hood! I had always looked up to Luke, he set such a wonderful example of the light of Christ, and he was such a nice Godly man. How could this be? All day I was in a limbo waiting for more information, when a single text message from my sister changed everything. “They found him. He’s dead.” The room started spinning and my life, my selfish life, came crashing down around me. Who was I to be complaining about my life? Who was I to call myself a Christian when I hadn’t been sharing God’s love with any of my friends? Who was I to be wallowing in self-pity, when just 2 hours away, one of the godliest men I knew, a man who lived every day to honor and serve others in the name of Christ, was being carried off a mountainside, taken into the hands of his Father?
I started crying and I couldn’t stop. Not just grieving for the loss of Luke, but for the loss of my own life for all the years I lashed out to God in my anger, and wallowed in the pit of my own self-pity. I looked at all the support his family received online as well as at his jam packed funeral, and admired him. In his short life of just 26 Luke Gullberg had touched more lives than some people touch in 80 years. At his funeral the pastor had the family stay facing forward while he named off categories of people who came in contact with Luke at one time. If you could place yourself in that category we were to stand up. More than 90% of the full Middle School auditorium stood up, well over 400 people if I’d say so. I looked around at all of us standing and I just thought, how many would stand at my funeral? How had I tried to shine the light of Christ at all in the last few years? I couldn’t answer, but I knew right then that I wanted to change. I prayed to God to ask him to help me find my place in Him, to heal my shattered life, and find my way to him and others.
That was in December 2009. 2009, the year of brokenness. That’s when God took my limp, aching body and picked me up into his arms and started carrying me through.
2010, the year of healing. God slowly started to put together the pieces of my broken heart. Once I watched a video by the skit guys about God being the sculptor and he was chiseling away at our souls to create his perfect masterpiece. While he chipped us away it was going to be painful, but in the end we were going to be his greatest masterpiece. It’s a beautiful video and I suggest you go look at it. Anyways, this was the year that God started gently chiseling away. I started seeing a regular Christian Therapist, as well as volunteering with a little girl with Leukemia at the hospital. I felt God’s peace and soothing balm wash over me and I started to feel so much better and more confident about my relationship with Him. He was healing me, slowly and surely.
2011, the year of discovering God. In 2011 I took leaps of faith to following God where he wanted me to be, and in the process I discovered something. God is Alive! Everywhere, in everything, and in everyone, He is Alive! I don’t know why I never saw that before. I saw it first hand in Uganda at the refugee camp. I listened to his whispers in my heart and I started attending my parents church and got involved in the youth group, realize my love for teenagers, a group of children I never thought I could serve before. At my work at the YMCA, I discovered what it felt like to have a job that I loved! God was so Good, and I was so ready to trust him completely.
2012, the year of following. This year I learned first hand what it meant in Jeremiah 29:11 “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope for a future.” I was so happy, with my three jobs, especially my job at the YMCA, and working with the youth at church, and God was so good. But then I lost my job at the YMCA, and again I thought my world was falling apart. But I held tight to the words in Jeremiah, trusting that God had a plan for all of it, that he had his plans to prosper me and not to harm me. Three things happened to me. One, I applied to go back to school in the Recreation department at Western Washington University. Second I was researching going to Australia with YWAM, a mission organization, for all my life all I’ve ever wanted to do was be a missionary, to help people around the world in the name of Jesus Christ. Third, I applied to work with Disney Cruise Line. The first thing, I was accepted into the WWU recreation program, only 800 out of 1200 applicants were chosen, and I was picked, which was an honor, but I felt in my heart that I wasn’t supposed to go, and so I declined the acceptance, feeling in my soul that that was what God wanted me to do. The second thing, with YWAM, I just kept feeling doubts about it inside of me, and I was so torn about applying and soon the desire died out and I moved on. That’s when I heard back from Disney Cruise Line, I was hired! I started work out of Port Canaveral, Florida, and moved away from home in a flash, to live on board the Disney Dream working with children 3-12 years old, and everything about if felt like a dream, but also so right!
2013, the year of magic. This year I learned from my job what it really meant to be a light. I lived on board a ship with 1500 crew members, most of them living a life of sin. I was surrounded on all sides with sins of all kinds, and I had no church family to protect me from it. I saw first hand what a life without Christ meant, and it softened my heart. I had to find my own way to God since I didn’t have a church service to attend, just a Christian Fellowship that rarely fell into my work schedule! But this year my faith grew more than I thought it would. I would stand on a beach in the Bahamas and just admire the beauty and pray to God, thanking him for his goodness. I would walk down the hall having a bad day, when I’d see a handicapped child overjoyed at taking a picture with Mickey Mouse and thank God for reminding me why I was working here, to make a magical cruise for the guests. Disney is a grand company, that values the magic within everyone.
Isn’t that the story of the Bible? That God lives inside of all of us, if we open the door to him, and we need to allow Him to shine His light through us! Working with Disney I’ve seen first hand what magic can be made out of. It comes out of thin air. One story I have from my job happened this summer when a little boy came into the nursery I was working at. He had a brain tumor that left him blind and very handicapped. One day Minnie Mouse came in to visit and we sat this little boy on her lap. He reached up his hands and touch her face, feeling her nose and ears, and the biggest smile lit up his face, because he knew who this was. He would not let her leave his side for the rest of the time. When we moved him off her lap to allow other children the chance, he scooched around until he found her again and he placed his hand on her lap and just leaned against her. Now Minnie could have just ignored him or pushed him aside, but she didn’t, Minnie took that boys hand and placed it back on her nose, eyes, and ears again, just to allow him another chance to recognize her. When we told Dad about this encounter his face lit up and he just started telling us all about his son, and everything he’s accomplished. You could see the love and light radiating from this man, he was so proud of his son! It didn’t matter to him that his son may never play sports, or possibly never walk, he just saw his son for the beautiful creation he was!
Its events like this one that made my time on board the Disney Cruise Line ships one of the greatest experiences of my life. God has truly blessed me in my life with just a chance to live, to change, and to draw closer to him! Most of all Disney has taught me that everybody is a Prince or Princess because God is the King and we are his Children! Thank you God for teaching me so many valuable lessons day in and day out, and I pray that you will continue to use me and bless me, and teach me every single day just how good you are! I can’t wait for 2014 to see what God has in store for me now!!
