My Testimony

I tend to overthink things sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time. In fact, I have been overthinking how to write out this testimony. I thought I needed to write it with excellent skill, being sure to make it entertaining and captivating. For a lot of my life, I thought my testimony was not as important as other people’s or not very powerful so I didn’t share it very often. What I have realized through sharing my testimony is that it is powerful. My story is not even my story, it is God’s. So, here I am sharing the story of God’s faithfulness in my life in a way that is authentic. I don’t need to embellish this story because who am I to say what God has done in my life isn’t good enough? So here it goes… the simple story of God and His loving faithfulness in my life.

I was born into a Christian home and raised in the church. My mom and dad love the Lord and have been beautiful role models for me. My brother loves the Lord too and I have loved growing up with him and growing in our faith together. My grandparents have also been there to disciple me and teach me about Jesus. Along with going to
church, I was in AWANA, and as I got older youth group. My life has always revolved around church and I love that. When I was four years old I prayed and asked Jesus to be the Lord of my life and I am so blessed to have started my relationship with Jesus so early in my life. As a kid, I viewed Jesus as my friend, and for the most part that has stayed the same.

When I was thirteen my family moved to Colorado. Being shy and not knowing how to make friends made this particularly hard. I didn’t know how to talk to people and to be honest I don’t think I wanted to talk to them anyway. I prayed and prayed for God to move me and my family back to Washington, where we had lived for nine years, but that prayer wasn’t answered. I still live in Colorado. But now I am so glad I do and grateful God knew what was better. Eventually, I did start making friends at youth group and then through taekwondo as well. Taekwondo was definitely a part of God’s plan, but not because of the actual sport. It was because it taught me confidence, discipline, and leadership skills. In a lot of ways it grew my faith in God, but it also started letting pride creep into my life. Our competition team was ranked first in the state and we even won an international competition in South Korea. I started to think I was better than other people, and I let that lie extend into other areas of my life. My identity rested in how good I was at taekwondo or school or how much I knew about the Bible. The lie of my worth being in what I produced tainted my relationship with Jesus and with the people around me. I started to think that I could earn more of Jesus’ love by being a better Christian or when I messed up that He would love me less.

Through taekwondo, I also met one of my best friends, whom I also dated for several years of my life. Since my identity wasn’t firmly rooted in Christ it was easy for things to slip and my identity, which was also partially defined by how people viewed me, became rooted in my boyfriend. The things that were important to me were how he saw me, what he liked me to wear, things he was interested in, etc.. The words he said deeply affected me, even if I didn’t let on that they did. Through most of high school, we dated on and off, then even into college we dated for a little bit. The last time we got back together we both thought we would be getting married. A new layer was added to who I was, and it still wasn’t God. I was still praying and when I was twenty I started being more serious about reading my Bible, but my main identity became who I would be if my boyfriend and I got married. It became so important to me that I was unwilling to obey what the Lord was telling me. He was asking me to set up more boundaries between my boyfriend and me, especially when it came to physical things, but I was terrified that if I did he would break up with me. A year after we started dating, he broke up with me anyway. I think that was God’s way of protecting both of us. We were not ready to be married. I know that now, but I didn’t know that then.

This breakup hit me hard. My parents were even kind enough to come back from a camping trip they were on to make sure I was ok. To be honest, I probably wasn’t really ok, but at least I was taking it to God. My prayers were filled with anger and questions. Did I hear from God? How could God let me be hurt this badly? Why did God let me date this boy in the first place? It felt like God had tricked me into dating him just so he could take him away. That doesn’t seem fair. Do I even want to serve a God who would do that to me? Even though I was angry and hurt, I am glad I still took all those feelings to God. This was the start of healing. God wanted to heal me from all the things I was placing my identity in that were not healthy. It was more than just my boyfriend, I needed this hard breakup to happen in order to turn back to God and rely on Him again.

So, I started the process of healing and seeking God again. One of God’s many blessings was putting the idea of The World Race on my heart and another was
leading me to community with swing dancing. I started going swing dancing every Wednesday night at The Loft with my friend and quickly started making friends. I fell in love with dancing, especially Lindy Hop, and even started driving up to Denver on Tuesday nights too. At these dances, I met people who loved talking about religion with me. Mainly we talked about Christianity but we also talked about Taoism, Catholicism, and atheism. Some of my friends are believers and some are not, but God used all of them to bring me closer to him. They all were willing to ask the hard questions and it caused me to seek out the answers. What I found is all the answers point back to Jesus.

God used that year of healing from the breakup to begin the process of changing my heart, but the big changes were yet to come. In September I left for an 11-month-long mission trip called The World Race. You probably already knew that since I am writing this blog on The World Race website, but I just like how it sounded in the sentence. I have changed beyond anything I had ever imagined since being on this adventure with God. I knew I would change, but I mostly signed up for the program thinking I would be helping other people. My goal was to be servant-hearted and keep the focus off myself. But, God in all His wisdom, had different and better plans for me.

Guatemala was and still probably is my favorite country so far on the race. It taught me what close community looks like and showed me that God can speak to me in visions. Romania is where God exposed my pride. Like I said, I signed up to help other people but then God placed
me in a ministry where we spent a lot of our time doing Bible studies and it felt pointless to me. I can do Bible studies at home when I am not out here to work. Doesn’t God want me to be doing things for people? But God used this time to teach me some things. One: God is the Creator of the universe. He doesn’t need me to do anything, but He does want me. Two: He loves me no matter what I do, which is good because what I do is never enough. I am not perfect and I never will be. Once I surrendered my identity and the pride with it, I walked into Albania ready to learn. There, I learned even more about how God loves me. I learned that if I want to share the gospel and serve others, I first need to understand God’s love. In Turkey, I was ready to practice what I had learned.

Now I am in Nepal and can truthfully say I am totally changed. I am not perfect. I am still learning. I still ask for God to humble me daily. But I am not who I was when I left America and praise the Lord for that. The person I was when I left thought she couldn’t hear from God. That’s a lie. She thought she was only loved by God when she did good. Another lie. She was even judgmental and thought she was a better, wiser person than other people. Big lie. God has replaced all of those with truth and with that truth comes freedom. I do hear from God and now I can freely speak to Him and freely listen, knowing He will respond. I am loved by God unconditionally. Jesus didn’t die for me because I am perfect, He died for me because I needed saving. I am free to be who God created me to be and I don’t need to worry about what other people say because I know I am loved by God. I am created in the image of God just the same as other people and I need saving just as much as they do. I am free from being right all the time and from knowing all the answers. I am free to learn and be a beginner. God is so good to have pursued me even when I didn’t want to be pursued by Him. Without His faithfulness, I would still be trapped in the religion of Christianity and wouldn’t have been restored to the friendship I had at first with Jesus.

Now I digging even deeper into what I believe. Asking questions about what heaven and hell are actually like, and what true salvation looks like. Does the traditional “hell” we imagine exist? How do my ideas about salvation impact how I share the gospel? What is the true gospel at its core? What misconceptions do I have about the Bible due to my culture, upbringing, or translational misunderstandings? I have more questions than when I started the race and I am excited to learn more. If anyone wants to pursue any of these questions with me let me know! Especially if you are in the Colorado Springs area. I would love to explore the Bible with you. In two months we could even do it in person!

Thank you to everyone who read to the end. This is just one version of my testimony and is only a snapshot of what God has done and is continuing to do in my life. I would love to share more about this story God gave me with all of you. Feel free to ask questions in the comments or send an email or text. I would love to chat with you! Even if you think it would be weird to text me because you don’t know me that well or because you don’t know what to say. Just do it anyway. I get it, I am that person who would convince myself it would be awkward. Feel free to make it awkward. God’s story is worth sharing and His freedom is worth having. What are you willing to give to experience it? Also, I would love to hear your testimonies too! Share in the comments or DM me! Let’s share how good God is!

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