What should I gain from His reward.
His wounds have paid my ransom.
Since the first month of the race I have wanted to share my testimony.
But I haven’t.
I have wanted to write it so many times, but have stopped myself time and time again.
I have struggled with the idea of sharing my testimony because it is messy, it is full of mistakes, but it is also full of grace.
When I really thought about it, I didn’t want to share it because I was afraid of what people would think of me, or that their opinions would change.. and yes they might, but it also might stir something in someone who has needed to hear that they are not alone in their own struggles, they are not alone in their own story. So here is goes..
This is a story that is filled with the grace of God. While I couldn’t see it at the time, the trials and temptations that I faced along the way, and even now have made me into the daughter of Christ that I am today.
It all started on January 1st 2012.
On this day I decided to turn my life around and really truly start following Jesus. See before that I was really good at wearing masks, I was good at playing the good girl, and covering up everything that I was really truly struggling with.
I could say all the right things and play the part but inside I was a train wreck.
I’ll rewind a couple of years.
Church for me became optional when I hit high school. As a family we started going to one that was closer to our house, but not having gone there for years I didn’t want to jump into the youth group for various excuses that I continued to come up with in my head. I would go, sit with my family, listen to the message and than head home. I didn’t understand a lot of what the bible had to say, I would jump from devotional to devotional looking for something that I would “find interesting” or for something that would speak straight to me.
I didn’t know that I could have a personal relationship with Jesus.
I considered myself a Christian but only thought that that meant I had a list of do’s and dont’s.
I knew of His grace but I had never experienced it first hand.
I didn’t fully understand what Christ was about, or even what a relationship with Him looked like. My relationship with Him had always been through my parents and I didn’t know how to truly make it my own.
Around this time we were going through some bumps with one of my sisters, the stress that was put on my family was crazy and we just didn’t know what to do about any of it. I tried to ignore it in my own way by turning to my relationships. In my mind, the less time that I spent at home the better. Everyone seemed to have something better than what I thought I had, and so I tried to make high school about the relationships that I could have. I put friends above a lot of things and I didn’t try super hard at school. The strain that it put on my family was hard to watch, I could see the hurt behind my parents eyes and there was nothing I could do.
I could see my sister slipping farther and farther away and no matter what I did it was never enough to reel her back in.
I remember her coming to me and telling me things that I wish I could have protected her from.
It hurt to be the big sister and not know how to protect her from the things that the world was throwing at her at fast pitch speed. She needed someone to step into her life, and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t make it be me.
Instead of turning to God in this time I turned to friends, boys and the relationships that I could maintain.
I was looking for something more, but I was looking for it in all the wrong places.
{Continued.. Grace Abounds: Part Two}
