Life

A friend recently asked me to share my testimony with them so I thought I would share with you all too. This is how it goes:

My story is a true testament to God's grace. I'm so thankful when I look back and see how he has been at work in my life.

I asked God to live in my heart when I was 6 years old. I was blessed to grow up with Christian parents and an amazing church family. My parents were faithful in attending church. My mom was also faithful in having her quiet times in the morning and modeling repentance constantly. She even had my siblings and I do a mother’s day out program where we picked a mom to go help during the summer so that we could see other parents sinning and repenting.

When I was 13, I was in a car accident with my mom and 12 year old sister, Rachael. Rachael was killed on impact. Losing my sister was traumatic. This was the first point in my life where I really remember struggling with my faith. During high school, I looked to other things like relationships and food to find comfort and identity. At the end of high school, God began opening my eyes to recognize my idols and stripped me of a bad relationship I was in. I clung tightly to that relationship and it was hard to let it go. However, God was gracious by providing me with many other great relationships with Christian friends and another great church family when I went to college. In college I was struggling a lot with how to forgive myself for past sins. I didn’t really know what it meant to live by grace and not by works.

During the summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned at a church in Bay St Louis, MS and did hurricane relief work. It was a place of brokenness. The town, church facilities, and people living there were all hurting. Their philosophy was that it is okay to not be okay. That was a new concept for me. Being from the South, everyone is okay if you ask them--I was taken aback when people in MS actually responded with anything that was honest. They were being real and that scared me because I knew what my real self was like and I wasn't okay with showing it. We were also encouraged/forced to bring our grievances against others out into the open (they called it “festivus” in case you’re a Seinfeld fan). Even if you were good at pretending that you were okay, we were working and living in such close quarters that you were bound to be confronted about something. It was revitalizing to have people know your faults, even confront you about them, and experience grace and forgiveness from them instead of trying to hide your faults and pretend that you are fine. We were constantly being confronted with our sins then the gospel. It was incredible—I don’t really know how else to describe it. That summer was the first time that I felt myself let go of the sins from my past and move on. I felt so free.

During college, I lost a couple of other friends as well. One friend committed suicide and another friend was taken in a car accident. Losing so many people close to me has been something that I continue to struggle with. Since so much in my life was out of my control, I’ve tried that much harder to control things. I worry about a lot of things instead of trusting God to take care of it and use it for His glory. I am constantly working to hand things over to Him and it terrifies me. God is gracious though and continues to provide what is best for me even when I don’t know what it is. I see this in how he has saved me from past relationships, how he brought me to live in New Orleans when I didn’t want to, in providing my current job when I didn’t even want to work in a charter school, and how he is providing everything I need in order to start foster parenting.

God is good all the time!

Winding Down

My summer has officially come to an end. It's amazing how quickly it goes. I enjoyed all of my travels visiting family and friends. I feel blessed to be able to catch up with people during the summer because I am so bad at doing it during the school year.

When I got back to NOLA I was finally able to track down my home development worker. She came out and did my first home visit--just glanced around to make sure I had enough room for kids. Now she should be sending out my reference letters as I try to schedule my finger printing and wait for my last two home visits. The process probably won't be finished until the end of August at the earliest but I'm so excited that things are finally moving along again.

Visiting my friends with young children this summer provided some perspective on parenting. Illness, fidgety eaters, kids needing naps, poop...need I say more? These are all things that I know are realities of dealing with kids. I deal with these things with my students all the time but it freaks me out a bit knowing that I'll be dealing with it at home by myself too. Right now my fear is balanced by excitement. I pray that the excitement of ministering to these kiddos continues once the realities of parenting hits.

"Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success!" (Psalm 118:25 ESV)

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever" (Psalm 136:1 ESV)

There is a one year old in Athens that holds my heart in his hands. It was only this time last year that we were waiting in the hospital for him to make his grand appearance. Now he’s walking and talking! Since I first arrived for my visit we had been practicing my name and now he says it on his own. J I woke up from my Sunday nap (yes, I still take naps whenever I get a chance) to him playing in their living room and he said my name and waddled over to me. This was definitely the highlight of the weekend! When he says my name and toddles toward me with his arms held high, I am pretty sure I would do anything for him. If my sinful self feels this way when someone who is not my own child calls out my name, I can only imagine how much greater is the response of our Heavenly Father when we call out His name and run to Him with our arms held high.