My faith has always been a part of my life and it has always been important to me to live a life that honors God, however its role and my understanding of my faith varied at different times as I grew up. My family would regularly attend church, and I would go to youth group as well as go through the process of confirmation. For a time, I thought that because I did all of those things that it meant my faith was secure.

As I got older though, going to church services and confirmation began to feel like things that I had to do and weren’t things that I wanted to be doing. On top of conflicting feelings about church attendance, I struggled with self acceptance and desperately wanting the approval of others.

Towards the beginning of high school, my faith took a backseat in my life to basketball and friendships. Over the next four years how I was feeling depended completely upon those two things, which caused me to have many ups and downs. Most of all, it just left me frustrated and confused that my moods were fluctuating so much. Around my sophomore year I began to gain a better understanding of my faith and that what God desired was a personal relationship and that works had nothing to do with it; rather it is by grace, through faith, that I am saved. Even as I started to understand more and continued to want to honor God in how I lived, I still worried so much about the opinions of others, that I didn’t fully embrace my faith in all areas of my life.

It wasn’t until I came to college and had to leave the comfort of home that I recognized the need to depend only on God. I knew going into college what I wanted my time there to look like, and one of the things I knew for sure was that I wanted a Christian community to be a part of. The first couple of weeks were hard as I searched for the right place for me, but once I found Cru I immediately knew that this is what I had been looking for and fully believe that God led me right to it.

The last year and a half has been filled with so much personal growth, amazing people, and numerous new experiences. I’ve reached a place where I am able to fully embrace my faith and place my identity in Christ. While I know there have been and still will be ups and downs in my life, as long as I trust Him, He will see me through every time.