My family went to church regularly when I was young and I remember someone telling me how to get into heaven and I prayed what they told me and was baptized. The older I got the more I started rebelling against the Lord and living my life without Him. I knew what I should be doing, I just didn’t care. After college I became very tired of what the world was offering and trying to do everything on my own. I remember feeling very alone and feeling like no one cared for me. I finally “caved” and went to church with my parents. This time it was different. There was this strange pulling on my heart that made me want to run the other way and find every little thing wrong with the church and people. But when I went again that strange pull was still there. I started attending church regularly but I knew I was still missing something. I knew all the answers from when I was a child but I wasn’t sure if I ever truly believed them.

I struggled during those months with all that I had done in my past. I didn’t think I deserved the love and peace that was offered to me by the Lord. But during a missions conference I heard a missionary tell his story. I was amazed because he had lived a life like mine and he was a missionary. It finally made sense. All I had to do was ask the Lord into my life and ask for forgiveness and He would forgive me and love me forever. I wasn’t sure what to do so I went to a friend and she prayed with me as I asked Him to come into my life.

I still struggle with things from my past, but I know that the Lord has forgiven me and that gives me hope. A verse that helps me is Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not harm you, to give you a hope and future.” Life is not always perfect but I now have hope in a future with God as he leads me through life’s journeys. I know that I will never be alone again because I have a personal relationship with God who loves and cherishes me.

I was very blessed to have grown up in a Christian home where we went to church every Sunday and prayed before every meal. I can’t really remember my life before accepting Christ as my savior at 11 years old, however I did not realize the awesomeness of God’s gift and the depth of His grace until much later. As a young teenager, I started drifting quickly away from God. I was binge drinking every weekend, spent all my time with my boyfriend, occasionally experimented with drugs and my favorite hobbies were going to keg parties, street racing, and doing anything that sounded “dangerous”. By the time I was 15, I had totally turned my back to God. All that mattered to me was having fun and being in the popular crowd.

My second year of college, I started dating Wade, my future husband. We had similar Christian backgrounds, but neither of us were walking the walk. We continued living a very sinful life for a couple of years.When our relationship became more serious and we both had marriage in mind, we decided we should start going to church. This is when my life really changed and I started to understand how great God’s love was for me and how awesome He really was. I was now being pulled in two different directions – God or the world - and I started to see that I couldn’t live for both. Wade and I stopped doing a lot of the things we had been doing for the past few years, and started to truly grow in the Lord. I had not prayed to God since I was 13 years old, but I began praying for God’s direction in my life.