My story from birth to the present. Let’s start from the beginning with an early photo.
As a latchkey kid I felt abandoned, even though I wasn’t. Many bad things resulted from this vacancy inside. Everything looked right on the surface but in the deeper places, I was a real mess.
To cope I lived to find comfort and found it through unbelievable excess. From age 13 into my late 20s, a normal day consisted of:
loads of coffee,
a dozen donuts (yes, really),
cigarettes,
acting out in damaging ways,
movie theatre box candy, and
3 carb-loaded meals,
all later to be washed down with too much alcohol.
In my defense, things could have been worse.
These vices can soothe because they release the pleasure chemical dopamine. There are over 100 different ways people unknowingly self-medicate their despair.
My pleasure tank was empty. Yet as a child, I certainly didn’t have the awareness, understanding, or skills to recognize the problem in my reactive patterns. This was simply my normal.
My spiritual convictions were as a proud atheist. I didn’t care for people of faith. All I saw were degrees of bondage, no noticeable impact, and judgments behind an ever-imposing smile. I believed myself to be a very unlikely convert.
Then something unexpected happened.
At age 25 a phone call stopped me in my tracks. A friend from college, Stephen, called out of the blue and asked if I was sitting down. I said, yes. What’s going on?! He proceeded to tell me that my former beau, Brian, had just passed away on his 28th birthday!!!
I was completely beside myself. No one lived larger than Brian and he was the most influential person in my life up to that point. I was devasted and in complete and utter shock by this terrible news.
Turns out Stephen was a person of faith. He and Brian had become good friends over the year prior. One week before Brian’s death something quite miraculous happened.
Brian called Stephen asking to spend time when in town in the coming weeks. Stephen normally would have said, cool bro and left it at that. But for some reason, he asked Brian why he wanted to meet. Brian had a business plan he wanted to share and wanted to talk more about that Jesus thing. Stephen asked Brian if he was ready to make Jesus His Lord. Brian said he was. Stephen had been planting faith seeds for a while.
At that very moment, Stephen said, well then we need to pray now because you could die tomorrow. They prayed. Exactly one week later, Brian unexpectedly (to us) made his way to his eternal home. Safely arriving to his destiny which never would have happened without that conversation and decision.
(You can text JESUS to 7204389310 if you want to learn more.)
When Stephen told me this, I was baffled beyond belief.
I was still very active in all my dysfunctions and was making even more offensive lifestyle choices. Really bad stuff like having fallen profoundly in love with my boss who was married. I became an active participant in destroying a beautiful family. It certainly wasn’t planned but even still it happened. :*( An experience I can’t undo no matter how much I wish I could.
The weekend of Brian’s funeral, Stephen was there for me. We talked endlessly upwards of ~15 hours a day. It took him and others a lot of effort (+ 40 hours with at times 3 people demonstrating biblical truth in ways that countered all my beliefs) to convince me that belief in Jesus was actually a sound decision. Around 4 am on Memorial Day, they succeeded.
Talk about being a fish out of water. How does a girl who has mostly despised Christians now identify as one?!
Soon after this decision, my boss left me. I was severely crushed after losing both him and Brian.
For the next few years, my functions remained dysfunctional. But I was now much more aware of my inner despair and abundant trespasses. The veil into my darkness had been lifted. I was no longer oblivious to the magnitude of my filth. A rude but necessary awakening.
I eventually started to lean into understanding my faith with the same sort of vigor, I did as an atheist. In that place, miracles became my norm.
With each mind-blowing experience, I became even more alarmed! But maybe for different reasons than you might think.
The more I learned about God’s design I couldn’t understand why there was such an enormous disconnect between the way those who were representing Him.
His ways are REMARKABLE! Much more noticeable than what I had been getting exposed to.
Decades later, I still don’t accept this reality well but I’m no longer oblivious to why it happens. (Barna data at the time revealed that 98% of churches were failing to fulfill their primary task of making disciples of all nations. There are reasons.)
I still experience supernatural healings, and miracles often. I’ve been graced with not 1 but 2 divine callings. First is soul restoration; 1 Peter 1:9, which is the greatest passion of my life and the goal of our faith (another word for faith is what you believe and/or highly value for people not of faith).
The second involves unraveling the power of deception that keeps people stuck in their despair. This has been a mighty treacherous road to discovery and something I boldly declared I wasn’t willing to sign up for. I counted the cost and said no. I even made significant attempts to disassociate from all correlated to ensure my disqualification.
I ran in the opposite direction of all related, on purpose to escape my purpose!
My disqualification efforts didn’t work. There are MANY details left untold but what I can say with certainty is no one was more shocked than I. Demonstrating God is good even when I’m not. That is good news certainly for me and also for everyone. Love is recognizable and it is truly remarkable.
There were 3 things that I got right. It turns out, they matter because they are what remain; faith, hope, and love. To learn more, attend the flagship faith, hope, and love session TEXT REMAIN to 7204389310. A restorative message with a mission.