The story of my life

I was raised in Oklahoma as a home-schooled southern Baptist. I grew up in a teeny-tiny church where there were lots of old people and lots of babies but not much in between. As a home-schooler, this was a blow to my self-perception and self esteem. I didn’t know Jesus in a personal way and was too young to know that I could seek him out to find fulfillment in my lack of relationships with people (outside my family). When I finally found a friend (a BEST friend, in fact) around the age of 10, I was told only a few months later we were moving 8 hours away to Nebraska. I had already inherited some anxiety and depression from my parents, so this only piled negativity on to what was already going on in my mind. Leaving Katie after going a decade without having a person!?! Not fair. Not cool.

Fortunately, after a couple of the worst months of my life settling into Omaha, we found a large church with lots of kids my age. The only problem was that I wasn’t that good at friendship yet and a lot of drama and hurt came from that. However, this new church was explaining Jesus to me in a personal way and I fully committed my life to Jesus in the seventh grade. Jesus wasn’t foreign or distant anymore to me. He was real. Then again, I didn’t fully pursue Him until much, much later. Fast forward, my mental health was still on the decline for some reason, and (I think, God-driven) I asked my mom to send me to public school so I could be around people more often than just at church. In the mean time I had started an anonymous help text line where I would counsel strangers through their hardships. Almost one hundred people ended up coming to me for help and I used the word of God to get them through another day. It was very hypocritical of me though because I was never looking to God when I was planning painless ways to end my life. I was using their issues to distract me from my own. High school finally came and I was beyond excited. Students who had grown up in public school were shaking in their boots walking in to their new high school, but NOT ME. I was ready for people. I met this girl on the first day and we figured out we had the same schedule. AND she loved Jesus. AND she could harmonize. We were a match made in Heaven. That first year was me figuring out how to live out my baby-faith and navigate through high school. It all came to a sudden halt when my new bestie got into a car accident and she ended up dying. This immediately followed Katie’s dad’s death plus my grandma (who had lived with us for nine years)’s death. God????? Why????????? The mental health decline that had plateaued began again. At this point I was just used to losing people. That summer I had my wisdom teeth taken out. The chemicals from the meds plus the imbalance in my brain were no bueno mixing together. Sitting on my bedside with the heavy duty pills they’d given me was a nightly thing. I hated my life. God wasn’t even on my mind anymore. They say fake it ‘til you make it. And boy oh boy, that’s what I did. Counseling didn’t work, so I guessed I was a lost cause. The next three years weren’t awful from the outside. I still laughed and smiled but I didn’t mean it half the time. I wasn’t in a good community. It seemed every best friend I got abandoned me after a short while. I wasn’t pursuing the Lord like it looked like I was. I was going through the motions. Somehow through high school God still used me to touch lives. It’s literally only by His power because looking back it shouldn’t have been possible. Everything changed senior year when I went early on a retreat (I was planning on skipping that part up until the day before) and re-connected with some people I hadn’t spoken to for a few years from the youth group. These people cared about me; you could see it in their eyes. The joy I felt when I was with them was incomparable to anything I’ve ever felt before. I could feel God saying “this is what I have for you,” as I shifted my gaze over to these people and God’s will. I wasn’t numb anymore. I wasn’t anxiously wondering what they all thought of me. I wasn’t striving to be someone I wasn’t. I was finally able to truly understand the call God had on my life. A couple of weeks later I met someone my age who went to a different church than I did… a Pentecostal church. He invited me and for some reason I went. It was there that I figured out Who the Holy Spirit was. It was there I learned God still did miracles every day and spoke to people very personally. I learned how to hear his voice all the time and how to pray (just regularly and in tongues). I learned my nightmares were spiritual and as soon as I claimed the baptism of the Holy Spirit for my own, learned how to get rid of the demonic dreams. After a couple of students discerned what was going on in my spirit regarding the mental illnesses, they fasted and prayed over me, and GOD DELIVERED ME FROM THE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. God delivered me from the gripping anxiety and deepest depression. I was made new. Now as I delve deeper and deeper every day into who God has called me to be, I fall in love with Him more and more. All of these gifts and passions were unlocked inside of me and my excitement to do His work increases every single day. Looking back to the lonely, numb, hopeless person I was before is mind-blowing for me. I was one of the few who really knew it was all a façade. I will be forever grateful for the community God has given me to help pull me from the place that I had grown to know so well. Even as a “church kid,” not everything is sunshine and rainbows all the way. Sometimes you have to take your faith and make it your own and truly discover Who God is for yourself. So that’s what I did. I hope everyone else does the same.