I never thought I’d do this over a blog, but I’ve always said I’m an open book and I absolutely mean it, however, somehow I put stipulations on being an open book with people only face to face. I realize now that I may never meet some of you face to face so I wanted to share the story God has given me and how I came to know Him!
So, my parents, Debi And Baxter (fondly known as Deb and Daddy Bax) never really talked about having kids when they married and my mom never thought she wanted kids until she saw one of her closest friends get pregnant and she pondered the thought of having a kid and what that would do to her life. Well, much to her surprise, she became prego!
I honestly consider my life to be a miracle in itself because my mom was in a severe car accident just years before I was born where her best friend died on impact and she ended up with a knee injury. Also, my name is kind of important, but I’ll get to that later.
My parents divorced 8 months after I was born and so I lived with my mom throughout my life, visiting dad every so often, but I never really felt like we had a relationship while I was growing up. And when I was 7 my mom and I moved to Florida where I can honestly say I became a small adult. I had to grow up. My mom would say this too, that she wasn’t ready to be a mom, especially a single parent trying to make ends meet. Without getting into a lot of details life was just really tough for me. I saw things and went through some stuff a normal 7 year old doesn’t probably go through. I DO NOT blame my mom because she was trying to figure her own stuff out too. And we’ve worked through all of it, praise God!
I visited my dad twice a year while we lived in Florida, but even then I didn’t feel close to him. There was this empty space I wanted him to fill in me because he was my Daddy but long story short he just didn’t fill it, and when I became a Christian later in life I saw that he wasn’t supposed to.
Church background: I didn’t grow up going to church, and my mom would probably say that she believed in a God and in a Jesus that she knew about when she was growing up but there was no relationship with them. And so, I had no sort of concept growing up who God or Jesus were.
When I was 10, mom decided that we needed to move back to Georgia where I could be closer to my dad. So, we made the move back. And a year later I started middle school. From 6th grade until I was in college I experienced some of the hardest moments I will probably ever face in my life.
I didn’t want to live.
I remember writing a note to my parents saying “I’m sorry for who I am, for how horrible of a daughter I am…” and so on. I never gave it to them nor did I ever try to kill myself because I knew I didn’t have the guts to do it. But I was plagued by depression, dark thoughts, and loneliness. I felt so lost.
And then in 8th grade mom wanted me to go to a private school and so I moved there where everyone had grown up together since kindergarten so I was the odd girl out for a little bit. But I met 3 girls who thankfully included me into their circle, but little did I know how deep their struggles were. They all had some level of an eating disorder and some cut themselves. My awareness level for all of that was now broadened and I began my own journey into that darkness. I began having an eating disorder, a body image disorder, and for a short period of time I cut myself while in the shower.
When my mom found out I was cutting myself she freaked out and I soon stopped because I didn’t want to be sent to a counselor. The best way I can explain why I did that was because I wanted there to be physical pain instead of emotional, and I could focus on that instead of how badly I was hurting emotionally.
Going into high school it just spiraled downward. I started partying, sneaking out, lying to my mom, drinking an obscene amount, and my eating disorder just got worse and worse.
But no one knew. I just wanted to be loved.
Starting my sophomore year in high school I was introduced to something called YoungLife, and this woman, Lisa, started to approach me after school and at YoungLife meetings and would ask me to hangout with her. I’m sorry…me? You want me, a dweeb of a teenager, to hang out with you, a cool college student?? Okay.
She told me about Jesus for the first time. That He loved me, that God wants a relationship with me and there is nothing better in the world than knowing Him. Hm. Interesting.
But how could I believe in such a God who was LOVE and LIGHT and yet I had only experienced such darkness in my life?? Why, why, why, why questions kept coming to my mind the more I learned, but I was intrigued because I had never heard of a Savior. But Lisa was so patient with me. However, I went to the YoungLife meetings, hung out with Lisa all the time but still partied and drank and pursued the wrong path for my life. However, I knew I wanted what Lisa described to me. I wanted to be saved.
Lisa was also the very first person I told about my eating disorder and issues, and when I told her she just cried. She cried for me and over me. Little did I know then but that was truly Christ’s love overflowing in her.
Then there was a boy.
We met my junior year and he apparently believed in this God and in Jesus too, but I could tell he wasn’t very serious about Him, but we would talk about it every so often, especially the more I learned about God. However, we lived a life of sin together, doing what curious teenagers do when they think they’re “in love.” In ways, I thought he could save me and so the longer we were together, the harder I clung.
Also during my junior year my mom found out about my eating disorder and one night crawled into my bed next to me begging me to go to counseling. Agreeing to go, I made my dad take me because I thought he was the reason I had my problems, and I wanted us to be fixed too. It didn’t work, needless to say. I went for 2 weeks.
By my senior year I was going to church with this boyfriend of mine and decided I wanted to practice Religion, because if you had asked me straight to my face if I believed in God I would have said no, but yet I was going to be a good “Christian” girl, or at least act like one. No more drinking, no more partying, no more cussing, no more “bad” things.
I became a great fake. But deep down I was a messed up child.
Deciding for a college was easy, I wanted to get away from Athens, from that life of depression, from everything. I literally ran. Berry College was the perfect choice. Then the day before my college classes started, this boyfriend called me and told me had cheated on me a couple of times with different girls. I was shattered. Right then and there I wanted to decide and find out whether God was real or whether He wasn’t. I needed to stop pretending.
From August until November I spent every moment I could find alone, reading the Bible someone had gotten me, praying, and searching for Him with all my heart. Then November 2, 2008 I was invited by a friend to church and that day the service was all about what a REAL relationship with God looked like, “you wake up wanting it, you go to bed wanting it, it’s everything to you…and if you want that we want you to come up and we will pray for you.” I wasn’t about to move. I’m not embarrassing myself in front of all of these people!! BUT the Holy Spirit just straight up took over my whole body and I RAN to those stairs and fell flat on my face.
I accepted Christ that day and that very moment I was INSTANTLY healed of my eating disorder and since that day have NEVER struggled with it; the single greatest miracle of my life. It may be hard for some of you to believe, but just email my mother and ask her to testify. It was incredible and God is so good to me!
Oh, and by the way, my name: Kiersten, which my mom picked off a receipt while she was waiting tables, means Follower of Christ. He was pursuing me from the start.
