Hey everybody! I’ve been meaning to post a blog for a while now. God put it on my heart to share my testimony, which is really nerve wracking, so I’ve been avoiding it! But here it is:
*Also, sidenote, I really want to post a Question & Answer blog, so if you have questions, please leave them in the comments!
The first truly memorable event in my life was my parent’s divorce. When I was seven years old, I started going in between their houses every few days. Not too long after that, my dad started dating someone. Because of unresolved conflicts in her past, she was broken and hurting. This caused her to have some mental health issues, which caused her to be manipulative, extremely possessive of my dad, and verbally and physically abusive toward him. It got so bad that my dad would have to leave, on multiple occasions, with my sister and I, to our grandma’s house.
During their marriage, something strange started happening to me. It was as if I obtained a temporary mental illness. They got divorced, but the effects of her presence still lingered. I felt like I couldn’t physically do anything because I couldn’t do it perfectly. I would break down in tears trying to do my homework or clean the dishes because I couldn’t get them perfectly clean or do it perfectly right. By the middle of seventh grade, that problem went away.
The next year, my dad started dating this woman from the Portland area. He had been seeking God earnestly since he and my ex-stepmom broke up. He didn’t want to put my sister and I through anything like that again. As he got to know this lady, I was super against them getting together or showing any affection towards each other at all. One visit when we were saying goodbye, I literally hid under a blanket in my dad’s car because I didn’t want to see her. *Keep in mind that I was about 12 years old.* Not long after, they got married. It was hard, but good. Now I can’t imagine my life without her!
Then I started high school. I was shy and I didn’t say a lot. I loved writing and reading and getting good grades. That year, I finally got involved in the youth group of the church I’d gone to for years. In the winter, I went on a weekend retreat. It was there that I truly experienced the Lord’s presence for the first time. I didn’t want it to stop! Even though I’d grown up in a Christian home, I didn’t truly start to understand what it meant to be in a relationship with God until then. So when my youth pastor told us about the upcoming Mexico mission trip that spring, I knew I had to go! That trip was amazing. I again felt and experienced God in a way I never had before. Because of this, I went the next year and the next.
Flash forward to the summer before junior year. My mom remarried. This was so hard for me. Then, in December, my mom and stepdad told me they were moving to Nevada for his job. I had never thought that could happen to me. Both of my parents had steady jobs near my hometown, so I never even considered it as a possibility. By that time, my dad had moved an hour away, so I still went to his house every few days, and drove to school from there.
My mom moved and I kept going to my school. I was told I’d be able to finish the remaining 2 months of my junior year there. I soon found out that was not the case. On a Wednesday, I found out that Friday would be my last day. So, the next Wednesday I started at a new school. Thanks to a woman at our church in that new town, some girls at the school started texting me. They adopted me into their friend group and I automatically gained about 10 new friends. The whole situation was super hard in the moment, but I saw how God provided for me!
As senior year started to unfold and my classmates filled out their FAFSA forms and began getting accepted into schools, I began questioning what the next year would look like for me. I had researched colleges since freshman year, and figured I’d go to one because, “That’s just what you do”.
But I had no idea where I’d want to go or what I’d want to study. So, I asked God if I should go to college and He said no. I’d heard about the World Race before, and I was interested. I knew that missions was a passion of mine, even if didn’t know what major I was interested in. So I applied and was accepted, and continued through senior year.
Now I’m here, in Cambodia! Getting to serve and share the good news with people I meet! God is so so good! He can take a broken story like mine and weave it in to His own beautiful narrative of redemption and reconciliation. I’m so grateful that He’d choose to use me.
