My Story

I've started a creative journaling project with my Student Leadership team at youth group.  We are taking the 1st week to tell our story and then start writing about what leadership means to me ... i wanted to share on here the 1st part of "My Story". I wrote this on 3/10/11

As I sit on my couch on this rainy night, a blanket around my legs and Riley curled up next to me, I'm remembering how my story in Christ began.

I was raised in a Christian home but did not answer God's call in my life until I was 15.  It was summer and I was at a family Bible conference in Indiana. During the evening session, a tornado warning was sounded and several hundred of us were ushered into the basement to wait out the storm. It occurred to me that if the tornado did hit the building and I died that night, I would end up in Hell for all eternity. That realization was the start for me and about a week later I asked God into my heart and for the first time believed with faith that He had saved me. That my eternity would forever be with Him in Heaven.

Fast forward 19 years and here I am today. I never could have predicted how my life would end up.  If you had told me when I was 15 that in 19 years, I would be living by myself, with a dog, attending a large non-denominational church and working with teenagers, I would have asked you what drugs you were taking.

In my 15 year old mind, I would have imagined being 34, married to a perfect man (Derek Jeter perhaps), have 4 or 5 kids, a large house in a big city and been members of a small community church. None of which has come true. But I am more than okay with that because I see just how completely God is in control and how His plans are greater and more importantly, always correct.  I feel like if God had given my the life I dreamed of, I would not have been happy; I would have resented my kids, disagree with my husband and complain about it all to anyone who would listen. I'm very thankful God has had the control in my life and not me

Here is a picture of me in 1996 - I was 19. This was on a road trip to Tennessee. We stopped in Virginia for church. This is with my 2 best friends at the time; my brother Jon and our best friend Josh.