Growing up as a child, the importance of accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior was always drilled into my head by my mom. My family went to church every Sunday and Wednesday night and I asked Jesus to come into my life when I was 4.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 7, a few days after my birthday. I remember sitting in the car as we were going somewhere, staring into a cornfield and thinking. “Is my mom going to die? Why would God do this to her?” I believe that everything happens for a reason, but what purpose could this have? Throughout her cancer, my mom remained strong in her faith. She made every effort to still go to all of our baseball games, talent shows, and parent teacher conferences. She’s one of the strongest people I know, and because of that I desired to have the strength and motivation that she had.

When 6th grade came along, a boy moved to my elementary school. He was on my baseball team and we were both pitchers, so we worked together a lot. Eventually we formed a relationship. He was very manipulative and I ended up falling into a lot of sexual sin with him. When my mom found out what was going on between us, she made me cut off all contact with him. I was relieved because I wasn’t comfortable with many of the things that were happening and I was left feeling very worthless and abused.

After that relationship, I got involved with a good group of Christian girls and I was on fire again. I made a commitment to not kiss until marriage because of my past relationship, and was very adamant about upholding that commitment. Although my new determination to maintain a pure life was great, my attitude towards myself was awful. I felt worthless and very insecure with myself, trying to perfect my appearance, meanwhile developing an eating disorder. I was so upset with myself and was becoming very depressed. My parents were fighting all the time and talking about divorce. I started having suicidal thoughts but could never actually follow through because something would always interfere with it.

Now that I look back, it was definitely God stepping in. Instead, I started self harming to rid myself of the pain. As you can probably tell, I was not walking with God at this point. Yet I lived behind a mask, participating as a Youth Alive leader (a Christian club at our high school), being actively involved in the worship team at my church, preaching the importance of being Christian, listening to people’s problems and giving them Godly advice when I couldn’t even take care of myself. Somewhere around the beginning of junior year, I decided I didn’t want to be unhappy anymore and wanted to change. I started praying again, reading my Bible more, and just becoming a better person in general.

At the beginning of senior year, I started dating a great guy. He was a new Christian and totally respected my choice to not kiss until marriage. My parents were very restrictive about my time with him, only allowing one date per month, etc. thus tempting me to become rebellious again. We became more and more tempted and eventually fell into sexual sin, though not nearly as bad as in my previous relationship. It wasn’t centered on God anymore, and we started to fight all of the time. Because of this, my depression came back and our relationship turned sour.

He broke up with me a week before our one year anniversary (September, 2017) and because he had basically become my idol, it felt like my whole world had fallen apart. During this time, I had also been tested for the BRCA2 cancer gene mutation and the results came back positive, which increases my chances of getting cancer by a lot. My parents and I were fighting a lot, I had to go home and work every weekend, putting in about 35-40 hours in a span of 2.5 days just to make my payments. My grades were suffering because I didn’t have any time to do homework or study for any tests. I was so depressed and just drained in every area of my life that I started drinking. I had finally hit rock bottom.

Then a girl on my floor named Rebecca invited me to go to Cru with her. I said yes and that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. When I walked into that room and felt the energy, it was overwhelming. I had never experienced a room full of so many strong Christians, raising their hands in worship and listening attentively to the amazing messages. After my first time at Cru, I felt excitement, energy, and happiness that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I started reading a book that was recommended in a Bible study called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. I read this book (about 500 pages?) in about 2 days, and reading is not something I do, even when it’s assigned for a class (oops). That just shows how amazing of a book it is!

God spoke to me and told me that He loves me the same way that Michael loved the prostitute Angel (the main characters) and that once I fall in love with God, He will bring the right man into my life. This was so inspiring and encouraging that I started becoming the closest to Him that I’ve ever been. My self image issues that I had been struggling with since 7th grade were completely gone. I didn’t see the need for a guy in my life because God is the love of my life! My parents and I don’t fight anymore, and I feel so much happier and content with my life. I strive to grow closer to Him, even if I mess up sometimes. I’m optimistic about my future, no matter how cancer filled or difficult it is and I know that no matter what happens, God has a plan for me. He’s going to love me, take care of me, and prove to me that I am worth it, because He’s been doing all of this throughout my whole life, even when I didn’t realize it.

Psalm 46:5- “God is within her, she will not fall.”