My Story!

So this is me.

For 11 years I was my parents' only child. I was always super close with them, and we did EVERYTHING together. Then along came my cute baby brother and my sweet baby sister, and we still did EVERYTHING together. I learned how to take care of them, I even named my sister, and I think this is how I really started to learn first-hand the importance of being selfless and caring for other people. (I wasn't great at it, but I've been figuring it out ever since =D).

At the age of 12, I came to Christ. I don't have a super-interesting testimony, no moving "prodigal son" type of story. I actually was just a very anxious kid, and I remember 7th grade being a very overwhelming time for me. I was so worried about having no friends and passing pre-algebra. :)

One evening, everything came crashing down emotionally for me in my 7th grade mind, not having any friends, not having the "right" binder that would supposedly help me get better at pre-algebra, etc. It was really stupid when I think back on it, but I guess when you're that age, little things are big things. :) In the middle of my anxiety freak-out, my dad scooped me up and shared with me wonderful news of Jesus Christ and Him coming to save me. I don't remember exactly what he told me, but I knew that I needed Jesus in my life and I had felt emptiness for a long time.

I had heard about Him in church, but it always was a little over my head. But the Lord had been working on me–ever since I started taking piano lessons. And we ended up going to the church that my piano teacher went to. I remember getting baptized at Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church in Allen, TX Dec. 12, 2003. It is such a great memory for me.

Life changed for me drastically. I remember my mom even saying that my eyes looked "lighter, happier" than they used to. I had a different outlook on life. I had hope and best of all, I had Jesus. And nothing was ever that bad anymore. I started making more friends and I would try my best to share Jesus with them, but I didn't really know how to. No one ever taught me.

And that's kind of where my spiritual journey stayed for a while. I didn't go to any kind of Sunday School at the time. I was so shy, and didn't like to leave my parents at all. And maybe my parents told me this and I just never quite understood, but I don't really remember anyone telling me the importance of spending time in the Bible everyday, how to read the Bible or where to even start, how to pray privately or out loud, how to share the Gospel correctly, or any kind of definite spiritual disciplines. (This is why today I strive to help newer Christians specifically know that these things are important and this is also why I have this blog and my Etsy.)

I got distracted somewhere between 7th grade and high school. First it was really nerdy things, like web design. At 12- and 13-years-old I taught myself how to make websites from scratch using Microsoft FrontPage, reading all kinds of tutorials on HTML and CSS (and my dad also helped me with a lot of this because he knows HTML really well). I also taught myself Photoshop, Corel Draw, Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and animation. (So funny to see where I am now and how God used this). I had this website called, "Sparklerules.com." =P

I had hundreds of hits a day. I had a prayer chain, and people from all over the world would send me prayer requests and each night I would pray for them in the best way I knew how. I kept a running list and would print it out each week. I made graphics for people and offered tutorials on how they could make their own sites.

Then high school rolled around, and I immediately figured out web design was not "cool." I went to high school at the time when Jessica Simpson was an icon and it was supposedly attractive for girls to be "dumb." So I let smart things go, and got all obsessed with being in the cool crowd, shopping and all things materialistic.

But God knew that was not a good idea for me. So he moved me from all the Dallas malls and bad influences by moving my family to Tennessee. I remember feeling like it was the end of the world for me, leaving my friends and all. But it ended up being the best thing.

Of course, I found my fair share of trouble in Tennessee too. My focus wasn't on God, but boys and friends. I was heavily influenced by the media and felt like I had to have a boyfriend. So I went from one to the next, treating them horribly and only caring about myself and my status. The entire time throughout high school though, I felt God tugging at my heart, and He protected me from the crowd that drank alcohol, did drugs and slept around. I never abandoned my morals on any of those things, and despite my superficial mindset at the time, I was still very cautious. My parents raised me to be a good girl and made it very clear how dangerous it was to be a part of that kind of crowd. I was a people-pleaser, and I especially wanted my parents to be proud of me. That was very important to me. But I never really thought about "pleasing God." I don't think I understood that concept completely.

Senior year of high school, my whole world kind of fell apart when the guy I had dated for over a year broke up with me. I remember I really liked him, but I think what I liked more than anything was the status I thought he gave me. He was on the football team, everybody liked him and I guess I had a lot of pride in that. But, I needed all my pride and everything that was important to me that was distracting me from God in order for me to completely come back to Him. When that happened, I started a habit of praying each night for a really long time, and reading Proverbs and Psalms over and over because I knew that I needed wisdom, help and healing. But even then, the rest of the Bible was this big, huge unknown book that I didn't even attempt to crack open and read outside of church. It was so thick–it was overwhelming, and I had no idea what to read first.

In addition to all of that, God also helped me to figure out what I wanted to do as a career that year: advertising, graphic design, writing – something media related. I had the opportunity to write for the school paper and serve as their photographer. It was a blast and I got to have some good conversations about Jesus with a few of the lost kids in that class.

Things got clearer for me spiritually when my family and I started going to Bellevue. I started to understand what the Christian life was about, and Bro. Steve Gaines taught it in such a way that I could really apply His Word to my life. We became members there right before I went to college. And at that time, I was all signed up to go to Baylor in Waco, TX. But God had other plans.

I don't know if Bro. Steve usually does this, but he took the time to personally visit our house and welcome us as new members to Bellevue. And he encouraged me to go to Union University. And basically because our Pastor told us to go there, I wanted to go there because I thought he had it all together! :)

So I did. I went to Union, and there I met two of my bridesmaids and the sweetest friends, and even my husband. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. Freshman year was a busy year for me. I joined Kappa Delta Sorority, reluctantly at first, only for it to be one of the greatest experiences I had in college because I met some of the greatest girls and it's there that I began to dabble in leadership, as well as t-shirt and graphic design. It also got me out of my comfort zone, gave me more confidence and I did things I thought I'd never do (like be on a stomp crew, for example!).

But because Union was a small campus, sororities and fraternities seemed to rule, run and section off the campus. (I hear that that's not what it was like on the independent side, but I only knew my side of things. :)) Everyone had labels and I didn't like that too much. And it also meant that everyone knew everyone. And because it was a Christian college, it just seemed like everyone was looking for their wife or husband right off the bat. I remember thinking it was so weird, and marriage was not even on my mind. I hadn't yet figured out how to process that idea yet. I was too excited about just being in college and studying advertising.

By the end of the first year of college though, I had grown tired of the way people were at Union and how small Jackson was, AND I missed my family A LOT. I would go home several weekends in a row because I wanted to be with them. I finally decided that it was best for me to go to school at the U of M so that I could be with them and also attend Bellevue.

This is when I really began to grow. I used the leadership skills I had learned from Union and put it to good use at my new school. I got really involved in media and journalism clubs, decided against being involved in a secular school's sorority, and focused on studies, family and Jesus. I made a habit of reading my Bible every night, and it was through Bellevue's "Chronological Bible Study" that I first read through the entire Bible in a year. I even had the opportunity to intern in the Communications office there and learned SO MUCH about how a church functions, and the importance of church communications. It was there that I really started developing what I wanted to do with my life after graduating college.

As I grew spiritually, God started putting me in situations where I had the opportunity to share my faith with unbelievers. I made opportunities for myself to have the topic come up more naturally with those I was in class with by covering my planner covers in encouraging Bible verses, writing verses on my hand and making it very clear on Facebook that I was a Christian. Through that, I had a lot of unique opportunities to talk with people about Jesus and plant seeds, and even through a complicated situation at the time, was able to help someone older than me come to Christ.

At the end of my junior year of college, through a very random, but God-ordained series of events, began talking to and eventually dating Ben (my husband now) who was living in Fort Worth at the time. Through months and months of skyping, phone calls, letters, roadtrips halfway and all the way, we dated and fell in love! And through our relationship I grew even more in my faith. Ben was the most encouraging, godliest guy I had ever known in my entire life. I kept wondering if he was really real, but each day he never changed, just got better! It was so surreal. (It still feels like that now!!) I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. :)

I had to wait a while before I met Ben, but God truly blessed me with the best husband in the world and I didn't do anything to deserve him. He loves Jesus and has a perspective on life that we all should have. I look up to him and want to be like him. And on top of all that, he's funny, understanding, thoughtful, romantic, protective and SMART, so so smart. And he's CREATIVE, and everyday is an adventure with him. I'm so thankful that I am the one that got to marry him on that beautiful last day of summer, Sept. 21, 2012 on a ranch at sunset in Texas. Our wedding was small but perfect. And we even had Mexican food and sweet tea (my favorite.) ;)

Stepping out on faith, I moved to the unknown world of Fort Worth to live in Seminary housing. God blessed me with my dream job of working as a Full time Graphic Designer at a Bible-believing, Jesus-focused church. And He even blessed us with a stray chihuahua to be our pet (I have always wanted a chihuahua)! And now, we even get to work together. I really don't know if it gets any better than this. :)

So those of you who are younger, I want to encourage you with this: GOD HAS SUCH AN AMAZING PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE. You just wait!

And for those of you that know me know that I didn't do anything to deserve all these blessings.

I'm so thankful that God has been so patient with me and still is. Each day, I learn more and more about how wonderful He really is and how undeserving I am of His love. I just hope and pray that he'll use me somehow, even if it's just in a really small way.