Testimonies and I have had a contentious relationship ever since I learned what a testimony was. Specifically, I thought that mine was nothing special, and I have even felt shame because I have not gone through some sort of harrowing transformation to get to where I am at in my faith now. However, I also truly believe that every person’s story matters. It matters to me, and it matters to God. When we each have the bravery to look at our life and write our own story, we open a door for, not everyone, but maybe somebody to feel a little less alone in the world. So, here’s my story.

I can’t remember a time when God was not a part of my life. I grew up as a pastor’s daughter, and I saw God like a friend, a best friend really. Learning about Him filled any missing pieces in my heart, and I poured out all my little girl wishes to Him (mainly that my puppies would be happy and healthy forever). Early on, God was also the church I grew up going to. He was the Saturday nights playing tag with other kids while my parents turned their “it will just be five minutes” into hours of extended fellowship. God was piling into the car after evening service to go out to dinner and ending the night asleep in the nearest restaurant booth. God was the moments watching my dad prepare his sermon on our porch and seeing it come alive just hours later on stage. God was the families in our church who made up what felt like 20 different parents and a dozen of bonus cousins to grow up with.

All of this changed when my dad chose to leave his role as a pastor and pursue a new direction that God was calling him to. I was about ten years old, and I had not seen it coming. So much of what I associated with my experience of God was no longer in my life, and I felt grief for what I had lost. We eventually began the journey of “church shopping” and, to this day, I still have not found a church that feels like home the way my first church did. Even now, when I feel lost and disconnected from God, I close my eyes and picture my younger self sitting in the sanctuary and feeling the purest love and joy for a God that I knew was there with me.

After this shift in our lives, I spent most of middle and high school trying to figure out what my faith was individually, separate from the church. I tried youth groups, and we went to a few different churches while I was still at home, but it all felt fake, and I felt alone. I had no Christian community. Most of my friends, if they went to church at all, went out of obligation. I somehow held onto my own faith and decided very early on that I wasn’t going to conform to what was normal for everyone else just to make my life easier. My parents were a huge source of strength and a great example, without them my story would be very different. This choice made me different from my peers in many ways. I was well-liked, but I floated between friend groups, and I never had a true best friend to do life with. I was seen as the goodie-two-shoes, the kill joy, and people assumed I had it all together all the time. I felt respected, but resented, which left me living on the outskirts.

When the time came, I was overwhelmed by the prospect of a fresh start with college and a chance at real community. In many ways I have found that. I prayed and prayed for God to help me connect with people that would stick around to get to know me fully. I found an answered prayer in a friend I met my first few days on campus who lived across the hall, and together we went to church and got plugged into a Christian organization on campus. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t quick, but I learned that half the battle is choosing to keep showing up. If you take the risk to let people in and get to know you, and also continue to trust in God through prayer, He can truly do amazing things. I faced many challenges my freshman year of college; however, some of the same people I met in those first few months are the same people by my side today. Making the decision to follow Jesus when I was younger, even when it was the harder path, didn’t mean I always knew my next step – I still don’t. What I do know is that, if I trust God with my life, He will provide a way that is worth taking. The beauty of any testimony is that it is always an unfinished story, and I trust God as the ultimate author. I still feel the nostalgia of my life as a pastor’s daughter, but more and more I have embraced my most true identity as a daughter of the King.