While I was at training camp, I was thinking about all the ways my blog could reach people. I was excited to be able to share stories from my past as well as my experiences once I am on the field. As I was thinking about this, I had an idea. Why not let other people tell their stories? I have so many friends that have incredible testimonies or who just have really great thoughts and ideas. So here goes my first guest blog featuring my good friend Taylor Hayes.
Taylor and I met in our dorm freshmen year of college. We were neighbors and became friends with our other neighbors as well to form our friend group called “the triad.” Taylor has fiery red hair and had the nicknames Gingy and Taylor Sassy (mostly because we have another Taylor in the triad). We had many adventures mainly revolving around eating food late at night- including a very special late night trip to Ol’ South (our favorite 24 hour breakfast place) when Taylor rededicated her life to Christ. This August, Taylor will begin her Master’s in Public Health at OU in Oklahoma City. Anyway, enough of me, here is Taylor’s story:
“As a baby I was baptized in the Catholic Church. Both of my parents were converts to Catholicism and we were highly involved at our church. We attended mass almost every weekend, I attended Sunday school, and we volunteered as a family. I even attended Catholic school for middle and high school. However, my faith was shaken when my mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the end of my freshman year in high school. My mom’s faith became stronger during this time, but I just couldn’t understand why this was happening to our family. I began seriously doubting the abilities and kindness of God and dreaded attending church. As a result, when I moved from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth for college I stopped going to mass.
Despite my mom being in remission I still rarely felt a personal connection to God during mass; it was mainly going through the physical motions without being mentally or spiritually engaged. My mom remained in remission until my freshman year at TCU when the cancer came back with a vengeance. It was in the majority of her bones, which depleted her calcium and potassium levels leaving her too weak to walk. It was at this point that I fully rejected God and religion. I refused to believe that God would do this to a good and faithful woman. On May 4th, 2015 right as finals week began, my dad called to tell me that my mom was being admitted to the ICU. She spent 19 days in the hospital and hospice before passing away on May 23rd. Nothing I had experienced in life so far prepared me for how I would feel when my mom left this world. I felt that I would never be able to believe in a God whose plan for my family included my mom’s death. I spent the next year extremely angry with God and religion.
Eventually I came to the realization that my perfect, sweet, and faithful momma had to be in heaven. And after that realization I began desperately wanting to believe that one-day we’d be reunited. I started going back to church in the fall of 2016 at the invitation of a friend; she’d been asking me to come to for months and I finally decided to give it a try. It was a nondenominational church, which was very different than my prior church experience. My experience that first night quickly showed me that a personal relationship with God was possible. I began meeting weekly with my friend to ask her questions about God in an attempt to learn more about what a relationship with Him looks like. I was trying to build a faith from the ground up. I was so thankful and encouraged to have found a place and people that were more than willing to help me walk in faith. After one particularly hard week, I went to church and as soon as worship started I immediately felt at peace for the first time in months. That night the college pastor invited those who hadn’t, to accept Christ and I did. It was a freeing feeling! On March 5th, 2017 I was baptized and since then I’ve experienced a peace and happiness I’ve never experienced before. I spent years carrying the burden of being angry with God and unhappy in my life, but accepting Christ freed me from this burden. It has allowed me to rejoice in happiness knowing that my mom is in Heaven and that now I am living an earthly life that will allow me to see her again.”
Please comment below if you have any questions or comments for Taylor!
