God took a self-conscious, stubborn, and scared young adult and let her life be torn down to shreds, so that he could build her into a beautiful creation for His use. I don't claim perfection. I'm still worried about what others think of me and I am extremely opinionated, but when I think of where God brought me from I can see I'm clearly not the same girl I was.
My story has so much to tell, but I'm just going to share a snippet. The beginning of my life in college began revolved around a guy and running track. I wanted to get good grades, make friends, have fun, and become popular. I was a good student, but had no real ambition or life goal. The first two years were tumultuous to say the least. My relationship was drama filled, I struggled with D-I track, and I just wasn't in a good place in life. I was attending our campus FCA and Campus Crusade for Christ, but I rarely attended Church and God was vacant from my relationship. My heart yearned for more, but my pride and doubt didn't know how to get there. God broke me slowly, but it was up to me to say, "Yes, Lord, I hear you, please help me and make my life new."
The end of my sophomore year I was beginning to see glimpses of what God wanted, but my life looked no different. Our FCA chapter held a meeting for people interested in becoming leaders the next year, and something told me to go. I left the meeting and told my boyfriend my intentions for becoming a leader, and I knew that meant that God was to be first and not him. That conversation was the beginning of the end for my 5 year relationship. By the end of summer, I had enough courage to tell him it was over. Only through God's strength was I able to make the decision. The following months were full of tears and a heart trying to hold on to the past, but through God's provision I survived. It was an awful semester. By September I was making a C in organic chemistry and up and decided I needed to quit cross country and track and focus on school. My entire identity had been stripped from me, and there is no description for the pain I felt those few months.
I can remember sitting in the FCA meetings being such a baby in my intimate relationship with Christ that I couldn't pray in public. I asked my team for prayer and patience and poured out my heart of brokenness to them. I'm not a big crier, but those few months I was more real with people than I ever had before. I felt inadequate and undeserving of God's presence and grace for all of my mistakes. I felt like I was not nice or deserving of the friendships God provided me. I felt too mean and opinionated to be a leader in FCA. It was the most humble and humiliating time in my life.
God was so faithful, placing amazing Christian women around me who dealt with me through all the crazy and continued to be faithful and pray with me as I continued to grow. The beginning of the next semester God introduced me to a dear friend Rachel who had gone through a similar situation, and our relationship truly taught me the importance of honesty and openness with my Christian sisters. I would never have matured without her going on prayer walks, sharing the dark places of our hearts, learning scripture, and speaking truth into my life. I have so many wonderful friends from college and afterwards that have added to my journey of honesty, but I truly think it is one of the only ways to work through some of the darkness in our lives. It's scary to be authentic with someone and to let them see your imperfections, but it brings so much freedom to say, "This is me. I desperately need God's grace and forgiveness for so much. Here I am, I am nothing else but a person in need of a savior."
I encourage each of you to let at least one person in to the darkest parts of your soul to help you become more and see the worth you have in Christ. I will leave you with a poem I wrote during the semester I gave my life back to God:
Pleasure from her pain,
Smiles from her fall;
Makes no sense,
She's guiltiest of them all.
So quick to judge,
But slow to love;
Not the heart of Jesus, Lord and Savior from Above.
Rain your Mercy, Lord,
on your lost bride below;
Erase her guilt and shame,
in place your love to show.
Release the shackles of impurity,
the weight of discontent;
Loosen the grip of deceit,
and show her what you meant.
Replace Satan's lies,
they consume her thoughts each day;
Give her whispers of encouragement,
from the One who had to pay.
Hold her when she's lonely,
embrace her through her tears;
Shout to her you've love her,
through her prostituted years.
Your bride walks the aisle,
dreams shattered and in despair;
Her dress is stained and torn,
Leaving her unfaithfulness bare.
Cover her with forgiveness,
Kiss her forehead with grace;
Remind her of the joy,
her commitment brought to your face.
A new creation she becomes,
by the ring of salvation;
No longer will she weep,
from the lost hope of temptation.
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