There lived a young girl who never had true joy.

In high school I covered up the pain of sadness and a destructive self-image with a happy face and laughter. I involved myself with sports, music, academics, and activities to fill the need to prove to myself that I was worthy of love. To no surprise, I was disappointed by my actions.

In volleyball, we were close to advancing further than any team in the history of my school, but we didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted. In track, a last minute injury rendered me one place from state qualifying. In music, being good but not “good enough” for a superior rating hurt me more than anyone I told understood. I was never as smart as others in classes, and even when I was, others viewed it odd that I found beauty in thinking abstractly.

All these failures fed into the horrible image I held of myself. I did not feel worthy of friends, my family, and ultimately…the love of Jesus. I was always trying to prove to Him that He should love me.

God decided to change my way of thinking a few months ago. It has been a slow process, but He has placed people in my life that have shown me what He wants for me. He showed me that a relationship with the God that created the UNIVERSE is not just work, but a complete surrender of ME! I gave up my shame from past sin for complete FREEDOM!

Now I am in a passionate love affair with the One who created me and knows me the best! Even though I have days where I struggle with how I view myself, He pursues me with fiery love and envelops me with His intimate blessings. I am not worthy of the love He has given me, but because of Jesus dying on the cross I am able to spend every second with Him!!

Jesus has given me a joyous laugh to show what He has done for others, and me, and who I am to withhold His beautiful workmanship!

My beauty, worth, and JOY is in the One who created, and is, beauty.

Thankfully, my story that He’s writing will never end.

I’m trying to explain this but I can’t. I got to a point where I saw how weak, pathetic, and cowardly I am and how much potential I have and how little I do. God saving me is huge to me because I saw how huge a failure I am. I’m still constantly struggling with the fact that I don’t go out and do stuff for the glory of God even when he gives me everything I need to do it. I tell myself to be Gods servant, but I don’t even do half the stuff I could. I am wasting everything he gave me. But it just keeps pushing me forward closer to God. It’s a two way street: me improving myself and God forgiving up all my short comings. God definitely has the harder job. This is my story, and it is far from over. It will never end; I will always have more to learn and more to give and most definitely more to improve on. God works in me in my hard times and easy times. I am just trying to learn to listen to him and help others also listen. As the apostle Paul said, “Brothers I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of perfection. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13)”

I came to college with the mindset that the party was only just beginning, in that the parties were going to be crazier and more fun. The second day I was at college I received a cup that said Cru on the side of it.  It was advertising a weekly meeting that college students attend to learn about Jesus. I decided to check it out and enjoyed the community and the teaching they had about Jesus.

I attended Cru’s winter retreat and I was given a great conviction as to how I had lived my life. I realized that the way I was living my life was for me and not for God. On the last day I was given a question on a piece of paper.  The question was ”Would I give my life to Christ and follow his plans for me?” This was meant to be between me and God as to how I lived my life. Before the conference I would have instantly agreed to this question with a wink implying that I would keep living my life the way I had been for so long. This decision was a very difficult one for me to make. I knew that Gods plans for me were much better than my own, but still I wanted to control of my future. After reading the question more than 20 times I finally decided to give control of my plans, future, and life to God, and start a personal relationship with God.

Now, after giving control of my life to God, I have found that reassurance that I am not alone and that God is more than capable of controlling my life. I no longer have the desire to go out and party and pursue women. I still struggle with depression and loneliness at times, but am now  doing it with the Lord and a community that points me toward Jesus.

I moved to Moorhead Minnesota to go to college. I started feeling lonely about life, so I gave people I knew from high school a call to see what they were doing. I was invited to a Christian conference during December 28th and January 1st. While at the conference, I felt out of place and wasn’t sure what to expect of the Christians that were there. I saw truly the love of Christ working through them, and I thought to myself, “These people are legit and truly love one another.” I was told of what Jesus did, that he came to Earth because of our sins. I thought to myself, “Why would someone come to this planet?” Jesus proved to me that He does care for people and that He was working in the lives of the people around me. Later on at the conference, I fully trusted Jesus into my heart.

Fully trusting Jesus was the best decision I have ever made. Sure, my life is not perfect, I still have issues trying to trust people who have made promises to me and eventually will fail me. It is a lot easier to forgive people and not to think that everyone is out for themselves. I know that Jesus will never break a promise that He has given me.

When I got to college, I was still desperately yearning and seeking after that which would affirm and validate me. I ended up attending a meeting for a Christian ministry on campus during my second week of school. This meeting was the first time that I heard the news that would change my life forever. The speaker spoke of Jesus Christ and the mighty love He has for each and every one of us. I became extremely curious, and began attending a small group on campus. Slowly but surely, God began revealing truth about Himself to my heart. God loved ME  so much that He sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for all of my sins (and the sins of the whole world!). God desired to forgive me for all of the nasty things I had done, was doing, and was going to do in the future. All that I needed to do was admit that I had sinned, and accept Him into my life as my Lord and Savior. So after some time… that is exactly what I did.

Besides unconditional, perfect love, eternal life, and an awesome relationship with the Creator of the universe, God has shown me that I am 100% loved and affirmed in Him! My identity and self-worth are no longer found in the things that other people say or think about me. The longing and desire of my heart has been fully satisfied! The God of the universe loves ME! Because of Jesus, God sees no fault in me! He thinks I’m beautiful and loves me completely despite my many imperfections and all the ways I fall short. I can say with assurance that I find my value in Jesus and the sacrifice he made on the cross. It is because of HIM that I have any value whatsoever! And without him, I have none. I still struggle with finding all of my self-worth in Christ each day, but by the grace of God, I know that He loves me, and even if I start to turn away, He will be right there with open arms!

My freshman year completely flipped my world upside-down. For the first time in my life, I had no friends, and no support system. I hastily jumped into a relationship just so I could satisfy my need of security. I knew I was doing the wrong things, but I knew God would forgive me, and I couldn’t seem to break the cycle of sin-repent-forgiven…sin-repent-forgiven. Eventually, all my sins and my guilt piled up on me with devastating effects. I was scared to turn to Jesus because of all the shame I couldn’t let go of. Finally, in one giant push from God, I ended the sin-stained relationship with the guy. However, my guilt was still there. The shame turned into depression, and depression turned to cutting, and cutting turned into attempting suicide.

I will always remember that fateful day when I took so many pills, and collapsed. A dear friend dragged me to health services, where they could find nothing wrong with me. As I laid there after falling, I realized that I wasn’t ready to die, and I was so scared. I reached out to God like I never had before, and he pulled me up from the darkness. There is no earthly reason for why I didn’t die that day. The only reason is that God heard my cry, and literally saved my life. His overflowing and unconditional love poured over all my guilt, shame, and sin. His love, embodied by dying on the cross for ME, continues to astound me every single day.

Since then, God has revealed so many things to me, and has made me grow in every aspect of my life. The scars where I used to cut to ease my pain are now covered by God’s love – quite literally a tattoo that says ‘beloved’. It is a wonderful reminder of how Jesus died to wash away all my sin, and that I am HIS beloved! I am so thankful for the love and forgiveness He has given me, and my only aim and purpose is to glorify Jesus Christ in all that I do. Even when I remember everything that happened last year, I cannot help but smile and think of how much God has changed me. He has given me so much joy that I can’t even keep it inside me, most of the time.
*insert obnoxious laughter*

However, along with friends to party with, my dorm came with someone else. Someone who radiated with something other than the typical college excitement, and God had conveniently placed me on her floor as my RA. She had an almost constant expression of joy on her face, and I saw in her the same kind of feeling that I was longing to have. She continuously invited me to CRU, which is a Christian Ministry on college campuses. To me, it translated to church on a Tuesday, and I put a lot of effort into making excuses every single week, until I couldn’t make any more excuses for not going. The first week in November, I agreed to go, and afterwards met with my RA in her room to talk about where I was at in my own faith. She shared with me about God, who loved me more than I could ever actually understand, and who was waiting with open arms to accept me as I am. She shared with me the exact thing I had been searching for so long to find.

It was that same night that I placed my faith in Jesus. Since that night, my life has changed in ways I never believed possible. I am surrounded by amazing friends, who constantly push me closer to Jesus and support me and pray for me every day. I live in this house with absolutely incredible women, who provide laughter and encouragement all the time. And most of all, I have placed my faith in the hands of the most loving God, who loves me more than I will ever know. I went from this place of hurt, and despair, and emptiness, seeking acceptance and love from all these things that would never fully fulfill the void in my life – to the place I am now, resting in the arms of Jesus, and wrapped in so much love and filled with so much joy that it makes my head spin. Not only does Jesus love and accept me, He treasures me, created me as His masterpiece, and will continue to mold me until the day I join Him in heaven. How amazing is it, that God loves us enough to meet us where we are at, but loves us too much to leave us there?

Ephesians 3:14-19
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

This camp changed my life. I truly surrendered my life to Jesus for the first time at Asbury. I recognized how lost I was without Him. I wish I could say that I stopped going to church and doing things for my own glory. I didn’t. I continued to live my life at school as though I deserved everything I received and all the glory I was given. The Holy Spirit began to change my heart. He gave me the ability to understand Scripture. At first I attributed this to my own abilities. Now, however, I can see that the Holy Spirit has been working through me and giving me blessing upon blessing.

Throughout high school I wanted to go to one college: Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN. I wanted to go there because it was a Christian school. In my selfishness and thinking that God thinks like I do, I thought that God wanted me to go there too. Why wouldn’t he want me to go to a Christian school? This plan of mine came crashing in May of my Senior year of high school. I got the bill and my parents said it would be very difficult to afford it. So I went to the only other place I applied for: North Dakota State University.

I began school at NDSU with a really bad attitude. I did not want to be here. However, I had heard of Cru before so I started to attend the meetings. I also started attending a Bible study in Reed Hall. Through the leaders and my fellow members of this Bible study, God began to shape who I am and will become some day. I learned that God wants every little piece of me. Jesus didn’t die so that I could just keep living my life like before. He died so I could surrender everything I am and have to him. He wanted my pride too. This was and still is a huge struggle in my life. I am not perfect and I probably won’t be while on this earth. I do know that God is continually working in me to become the man He wants me to be (more like Him). Living the Christian is the most difficult thing in the world to do on my own. I know that the Holy Spirit is in me and helping me though. The God who created the Universe, who said “Let there be light.” and it happened, is living inside me helping me live a Christ-centered life. It isn’t easy but living a completely surrendered and humble life for Christ is truly ETERNALLY REWARDING!