John was a disciple who saw God made visible.
When God became visible, life became visible.
Life to us is existence, its death.
Death is what we have to look forward to.
If death is in front of you, you live in fear, afraid to die.
In life we there’s always an argument on what’s right or wrong, true or false when in reality what we are searching for is life.
Gods a writer, He makes your story better, more profound.
Our story can bring others to the story of God.
Here’s part one of my story, my life before I started living FULLY.
My Youth
I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but I had a great childhood. I have a twin brother and a little brother who’s about 7 years younger than me. I have supportive and loving parents who always pushed me to chase my dreams and be happy. When I was growing up I was friends with someone who had to go to bible school every week and she hated it. I viewed God as something only adults would need to know, I didn’t know much about Him. My 8th grade year, my teacher invited us to Kalahari, which is this huge indoor waterpark, for $50 for the weekend. Of course I was down so all my friends signed up. A few days before we left for the weekend of fun, my dad got off the phone with someone and he started laughing a little and he asked me “You want to know what you’re really doing this weekend? You’re going to be learning about JESUS.” My immediate reaction was “NOOOO, I knew there was a catch!!” but I still went into the weekend with an open mind. The weekend was SO MUCH FUN. I learned about Jesus and had a ton of fun with my friends. They talked about signing up for a camp that was during the summer that was like the weekend but 100x better. So naturally I was first in line to sign up to go. The group this was through was called Wyldlife for middle school then it was Younglife in high school. I went to Wyldlife camp that summer, learned more about Jesus and decided to commit my life to Christ. I felt like I was obligated to, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. It wasn’t until I got to high school and decided to volunteer at a Younglife camp a few years later that I really started walking in my faith. I didn’t know what a testimony was until this time. I was a baker in a kitchen for hundreds of campers a week, it was a lot of fun but it pushed me to my breaking point where I realized that I needed to depend on the Lord to continue.
“Perfect”
Throughout high school I was known as the Younglife girl. Younglife was my life, I was always going to different events and counseling and leading younger girls, it’s all I did outside of sports and school. I was always viewed as “perfect” in the eyes of my family and community around me, the “good girl who does everything right”. When I was applying for colleges I wanted to study Nursing. I decided to go to Notre Dame College, which is a small catholic university right outside of Cleveland. I went to college trying to make a new name for myself, for so long I was put on this pedestal and watched because I always had to be the perfect Christian girl. At first I didn’t drink, I always thought I was better than that. I was very closed off and shy when meeting new people. I ran cross country my first two years in college and it was an easy way to make friends. After my last cross country race of the season my freshman year the girls convinced me that it was worth celebrating. With our luck it was Halloween so there were going to be parties everywhere. So I drank, I had so much fun and I thought that this was the start of a new me. When I partied I was a different person, alcohol really helped bring me out of my shell and I made a lot of “friends” doing it. I went out every weekend because it was all people did at my school. I didn’t want to be the loser I thought I was in high school, I wanted to be the outgoing cool one who everybody knows. I partied every weekend for four years. I had a big group of friends I would party with all the time and we would go to festivals and parties on the weekends. God and Jesus got put on hold, partying became a priority in my life. I went to church throughout college but I would often go hungover because I was living that double life. It was a time in my life where I lived for the weekend. I was really searching for worth and satisfaction in the wrong places.
From Life to Death
My sophomore year of college was when life started to hit me. Rewind to my high school graduation, my best friend’s mom was diagnosed with cancer in her lymphatic system, they gave her a few years to live. While I was in college I was so caught up in the party life that I list touch with my friend. She texted me one day once school started school saying that her mom was in intensive care, just giving me an update on how she was doing. I realized that I was super close to the hospital she was staying at so I decided to visit her every day before and after school. For about a month and a half I watched her health get better but then rapidly decline. She went from ICU to medical holding almost going back home back to ICU and then on hospice. We took her home to pass and that next morning we watched her take her last breath. I remember trying to comfort my friend knowing it wasn’t going to be okay for a while. But I was relieved in knowing that she was with Jesus now, out of pain and suffering. I felt like I was the emotional support for that family for a few weeks. Helping them try and figure out why Jesus or God took her to heaven too early was beyond me but I was a firm believer that everything happened for a reason.
The day that she died I remember immediately wanting to go back to Cleveland so I could go out with my friends and forget. I got to my friend’s house after drinking a ton and I just started sobbing so hard that I couldn’t move. It was like all the emotion from the day had hit me all at once and I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I started not caring about anything, would show up to class still drunk from the night before, I didn’t care about my grades and I cheated my way through my classes. Then an old friend from younglife invited me to go on a mission trip to Haiti. I knew it was my time to get back to what I love and that was pursuing Jesus and spreading his love. I started going to counseling sessions prior to this trip and it lasted all spring semester. My counseling sessions forced me to make time for myself to process life. After I came back from Haiti my counselor knew I had a break through and that I was actually happy again. For once I wasn’t using tissue box after tissue box to cry it out.
Summer before my junior year I decided to move to a different house with my really close friends, it was close to school, had a full bar in the basement, super ideal for the life I was living. My junior year I got into the nursing program and the summer before the program started I started dating my first boyfriend. We meet while I was leading a team of college kids to do habitat for humanity in West Palm Beach, Florida. We had an instant connection and I was in love. He was funny and smart; he was going into medical school that next year to become a doctor. A Doctor and a Nurse, could our future be any better. We dated for 6 months and we spent most of those months together almost every day. I gave everything to him, my mind, heart and body. Our relationship became all physical. He would tell me that I “didn’t love him” if I wouldn’t have sex with him all the time. I was so blinded by loving him that I didn’t see the damage he was doing to me. Whenever we would fight he always turned it around to be my fault. He brought out the best of me and the absolute worst in me.
Before I meet him I decided to volunteer at a younglife camp for a month that summer in Oregon. My parents were moving from Ohio to Oregon in a few weeks so it was perfect for me to get back involved in Younglife again. For about a month of our relationship I was across the country helping my parents move and being a volunteer lifeguard. That’s when our relationship started going downhill. Any time I tried calling him it was always “the worst time” and he would get mad every time we talked. I had a feeling when I got back things weren’t going to be the same. When I got back from camp I knew I wanted to change some things and live a better life but it never happened. Once school started we decided to break-up so we could focus on school. At the end of our relationship he told me we were never going to be anything and that I was nothing to him. So here I was the day before I start nursing school, heart broken and feeling completely worthless. I hated guys for a long time, I would use them for food or sex. I also felt like I couldn’t trust anybody for a while. I just wanted to be wanted. I lost my value in sex that I had once before, I didn’t care who’s feelings I was hurting by leading them on. I was numb to it. I found myself back in this depressed lifestyle, partying even more and smothering my deep hurt in drugs and alcohol. I looked put together on the outside but on the inside I was falling apart.
I was alone.
I was consumed by school and my social life.
I was stressed out.
I was empty and searching for more in life.
There had to be more to life than this.
(NOW READ PART 2 I PROMISE IT GETS BETTER)
