I’ll begin my story at the prime age of 13. Oh yes, it was those blessed teenage years. I was in the 8th grade and I would consider myself a pretty good student. I always went to school, always did my homework, always aced my tests, and I was the teacher’s pet in every class, but you see I had this problem. Outside of my student life, I was rotten. I was your typical teenage girl who was semi-defiant to her parents, didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted, had a pretty bad mouth, and of course, this sweet precious angel, yeah well she had a really bad temper. It’s almost as if I was two different people; it all just depended upon which role I was for the day: the student (in school) and your typical teenager (outside of school).
Then something inside of me woke up. Now, I don’t exactly remember what it was, but it changed me forever. I distinctly remember thinking one day, “You are such a mean person. You don’t say very nice things and you hurt people with the words you speak to them. You’re not physically abusive, but you’re emotionally abusive.” I also remember thinking, “You must sound pretty dumb with how many swear words come out of your mouth; only people with limited vocabularies resort to swearing because they can’t think of any other adjective/adverb to put there.”
This is when my life changed. I had grown up in a home where we would attend church and Sunday school (permitting we didn’t have a sporting event), so church and God were not necessarily strange to me. I complied with my mom to go, but I never really understood it all. I guess you could say it never really struck a chord with me. It was just something we did on Sunday’s every once in a while. But here I was faced with a dilemma. I wanted and needed to change but I didn’t know how. So I turned to the person I remember from Sunday School: God.
I remember saying to God one evening, “God if you’re real and you care about me, you will help me control my temper.” I remember this being a prayer of mine for many many nights. Eventually, my temper was nothing to be concerned about. God helped me to control that by answering my prayers, but do you think I gave Him the credit? I wish I could say that that was all it took for me to start believing, but I was still skeptical. So I said, “Okay God. You helped me to control my temper, but if you’re real and you love me, you will help me to stop swearing.” After many and many weeks of prayer over controlling this issue, I just stopped swearing. God had helped me to control my tongue. Do you see a pattern? I kept testing God and His validity and He kept answering me with love and patience.
After these two instances, I finally decided to put my trust in God. I want to say that from this point I gave my life to Christ and allowed Him to have complete reigns. I want to tell you that my life has been smooth sailing since this point. I want to tell you that I have chased after God and His kingdom with abandonment. But I can’t do any of those or that would be a lie.
Now let’s fast forward 8 years into the future. At this point, I graduated high school, moved to New Mexico and graduated from college down there, and I find myself back to where it all began. In those 8 years, I learned a great deal about myself and who I am. I also have had a rollercoaster ride in my relationship with Christ. Going off to school and separating myself from everything I knew allowed me to become responsible for me and to grow up. I was out on my own and no longer under the faith and religion of my parents. I had to seek God out myself and I sure did find Him.
However, it wasn’t until this last year that God really tested me in my faith. The summer of 2010 was really the beginning point of my deeper walk with Christ. Before, I had a relationship with Him, but it was only superficial. It was a “God what can you do for me now” kind of relationship. It really had neither merit nor substance. I only sought God out when things were bad. I hadn’t allowed Christ to consume my very being.
Like I said, it was the summer of 2010 that tested and rocked my faith. The ground that I was standing upon was no longer sustaining the weight I was placing upon it. It became brittle and dry. The brother of my friend (someone I grew up with) committed suicide. I had left the very life I had known and established over the past four years to reenter into the unknown. One of my best friends moved away. My dog died and a very close childhood neighbor of mine died from a drug overdose. All of these events caused me to question and wonder and it eventually sent me into a downward spiral that I would have to fight to crawl out of.
I guess you could say I became depressed. I didn’t want to do anything except for sleep and stay in bed. Going to work became a chore instead of something I loved to do. I started to fall away from the friends I had. I became short and curse when engaging in dialogue. I even stopped working out. I didn’t like when my friend came back for the weekend because it kept reminding me of the pain I felt, so then our time spent together while she was back wasn’t as rewarding. I went to the largest Christian festival in the northeast and was surrounded by 70,000 other people but still felt like the loneliest. Heck, I even got the chance to go on vacation to the beach but couldn’t enjoy my time there.
Granted, I was still going to church and I was still hanging out with friends, but I was just going through the motions. I put on a happy face so others wouldn’t have to be burdened with my pain. It was something I thought I had to deal with myself. At this point, trying to tell other people would have been pointless because I didn’t know what was going on with me. How could I explain something to someone when I couldn’t even express it or put words to it?
It took a phone call from one of my best friends to say, “Hey listen. You are not you. You are not the Jenn that I know. What is going on?” Not wanting to bore you with all the details, after our conversation, a few tears (actual breakdowns), I found myself at the foot of my bed with my book open to James 1:12. I earnestly sought after God for help. I asked Him to heal my broken heart, to fix all what was going on. And then I took a big move, I started asking for prayer from others which meant telling them the story. That was hard because then speaking to someone else actually and finally made it all real; something I was denying. I then went to those people that I hurt during this process and apologized for how I had been. I found myself back in the Word and recommitted to God.
This was a really hard time for me and something that I never want to relive, but its outcome made it all worth it. Now, I can sit here and write that I am stronger in my faith with God and my relationship with Christ has reached a new level I never thought it could reach. Don’t get me wrong, my relationship with Christ still has been a rollercoaster ride. We have really good seasons and then there are really bad (dry) seasons where it feels like He left me alone. That’s when I open my Bible back to that verse that sustained me through my transformation: James 1:12, but never again will I find myself far away from His love and His gentle hand.
His love it sustains me and His right hand guides me. Through all this hurt, I have been transformed into a child of God. I have been transformed into one of His kids. He took me from a place of brokenness and depression, and He placed me right back upon solid ground. Crawling out of the hole that I dug was one of the hardest things I have done in my life. I had to crawl, kick, scream, dig, and push through it. I have the scars on my heart, dirt under my nails, and tear-stained Bible pages as proof.
After my eyes were opened to a new life and Christ renewed the spirit inside of me, I kept hearing this song on the radio. You should look it up and become familiar with it. It really helped me through the testing of my faith this summer. It’s by Kerrie Roberts and it’s called “No Matter What.” It rings true to the trials and tribulations that I faced and what you may be facing too. The whole song is a testimony to say that no matter what pain or hurt comes into our life, God is going to be there and that no matter what, we are going to need Him, we should love Him, and we should trust Him. No matter what you do, He’s going to be there. So no matter what happens to you, you should still seek God out. Just remember, “Before a heartache ever hits your life, it has to go through God’s hands.”
People ask me all the time now why I am smiling or why I am so happy. It’s because Jesus saved my life. Because of Him, I have joy in my heart and a new song to sing. Because of Jesus, I can smile and laugh again. It’s all because of Jesus. (1 Thess. 5:16). He can transform you. He took me from being a bad tempered, bad mouth teenage girl and transformed me into an “always smiling, having joy in my life, and well-spoken” young adult. He took my brokenness and my instability and He placed me on a Rock that can’t be shaken. The Lord has done a transformation in my life that allows me to raise my hands in worship and sing to the top of my lungs (you need to understand that I don’t have the most beautiful voice) but no longer am I ashamed of who I am because Christ changed me.
Guess what? He can change you too if you let Him!
Until next time!
~ Not for my glory but for His. Not for the kingdom of this world, but for God’s Kingdom in Heaven. God be with you now and forever! ~
**I finally got baptized on January 30, 2011 and this was my testimony:
I’ve believed in Christ for the past 8 years or so, but it wasn’t until this last year that I really started living for Him. Words can’t explain what it felt like when I stopped living for the things of this world and started living for Christ. I’ve been able to love deeper, my relationships are more meaningful, and I was able to find who I was.
I’ve been searching for myself for a number of years. I’ve come to find myself only in Christ. Before Jesus, I was lost and broken. Now, I found how to live by how He died. I found how to breathe with His last breath. I found how to love by His sacrifice on the cross. He has truly given me a life and a love that I’ve never known before.
For the past year, God has pressed upon my heart to get baptized in His Holy Spirit and so I stand before you today and most importantly before God declaring that I am ready to be born again. Two verses I have really read over are 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 2:20. This is only the beginning.
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