This calling that God has placed upon my heart is just utterly amazing!! Like seriously..I am in awe of these life changing and defining moments that have been taking place exponentially lately. Before I can actually talk about the moments as of late, I should mention the moments that led up to me choosing to lead a life that exalted the King of Kings…in my case (Queen) 🙂
I wasn't necessarily raised in church, well definately not a Christian home. My parents are not together and I'm ok with that; but that doesn't mean that wounds weren't opened and mistakes not made. My dad took my sister and I to church for a while but then we stopped and I found other ways to fill my weekend time. My habits started to form when I was in junior high, and I started choosing a lifestyle that was self-satisfying and self-indulgent. In high school it only got worse and then I felt stuck. Stuck in a life I didn't want to leave and a life I didn't want. So where do you go from there? Church. Ok, church will fix it. How come church isn't fixing it, was all I could seem to think. How come I am still so unahppy in this life but I can't seem to get out, how come I still don't want to?
Ok, now it's time for college where do I go from here? What's next?
Only through the work of God and my mother's prayers did I end up with a wonderful godly roommate. She was so understanding and willing to answer all my questions about God and help me through this time of finding myself. By her support and encouragement I decided to get baptized and start serving God. So I did. Shortly, after she moved away and I felt like i found myself back in the same spot that I was before I met her. I realized that I relied to much on her relationship with God and didn't develop my own. After living for myself, yet again, I decided that that still wasn't working for me. The only time I felt like I was living for something greater than myself was when I was serving the Lord. I had to find that passion again, that relationship. I realized that I needed a drastic change in my life; not a temporary one, a permanent one!
I began serving God wholeheartedly. I got invovled in ministry after ministry and just (tried) waiting patiently on God and for Him to move me, and soften my heart. As I got involved in ministries for about a year I began to feel a disappointment in my relationship with God. He revealed to me that I was now serving out of obligation and not out of a willing heart. I was spending more time with other people than with God. I had forgotten my first love. My heart broke, I felt like such a failure, a hypocrit, and unimportant. Lies! such Lies!! As God began to remove me from church ministry He began to show me that my ministry is in so many places! In so many different areas and ways that I bless others and in ways I never even imagined. Oh Jesus, you are so sweet.
I honestly felt that although I was going to school and working two jobs that if I wasn't involved in ministry I was being selfish, lazy. Through trial and error the Lord has shown me that he has different plans, greater plans, for my life than I do.
He told me to stay in school and get my Master's. No Lord, please no, school sucks. I stayed. I got to work with young boys in a group home that just needed a big sister's love, that needed affirmation that they are important and worthy of a life better than one they see. It wasn't easy working there…at all… but through it God showed me that as much as they needed me, I needed them. We all learned something from each other. Next, I worked in a juvnile detention facility…well I currently am. I seriously thought this is what God wanted me to do for a good portion of my life. Honestly, I am glad that it isn't. It is so hard and so frustrating but through this all God has softened my heart for these teenage boys. He has shown me that their lives are not their own and that they too, have such an awesome calling on their lives, yet no one has ever told them anything good. I may not be a magical therapist who can turn a hard rock into jelly, but God can use me to pray for them so that He may turn their hard rock hearts into jelly. Ohh so humbling!! Jesus you are so sweet!!
When I think of my life and of the places I've been, the things I've done, haven't done, wish I would have done, wish I wouldn't have done all I can do is laugh. Laugh you say?? Yea, I say laugh because honestly my life is a story of redemption, a life well lived, a life worth living. Living because each day is not my own, living because I want others to know of the calming contentment and joy that I find in our Savior Jesus Christ, living because one day our bodies will die, living because I will be alive with Christ. Living because Jesus lives in me.
