Ever since I was a kid, I have always been drawn to stories and storytelling, whether it was through books, plays, music, TV shows, or, as I would ultimately end up dedicating my career to, movies.

Unlike a lot of young Christians, I did not grow up in a Christian home. I was baptized Catholic to appease my grandparents but my parents said they wanted me to decide for myself what I believed spiritually. Despite that, I did always find myself drawn to Christianity as a kid, whether it was through going to Catholic Mass with my grandparents whenever I would spend the weekend with them, going to Vacation Bible School at a local Methodist church so I could socialize with other kids my age over the summer, or even acting as Young Abel in a community theater production of the Genesis-based musical Children of Eden. In all of these places, I heard stories from the Bible that played directly into my own love of and passion for storytelling.

The real turning point in this journey of searching came when I was 14 and my parents decided to move me to a new school district following a particularly dark four-year period of bullying and social isolation at my previous school. At that point, anxiety and self-hatred had overtaken my mental state and the only real source of comfort I had was watching movies and writing screenplays – once again, escaping through stories and storytelling. At this new high school, I was able to get a fresh start both academically and socially, and my Mom, who was a teacher there, encouraged me to befriend a group of students she knew in the FCA club, who she knew would be nice and welcoming to me. Toward the end of my sophomore year, once I was fully comfortable socially, I did begin making friends with the students in that group, and many of them went to a local church called Bethel. Inspired by them, I attended Bethel Church for the first time on June 2, 2013, and it was there that Christianity was presented to me in a way that I hadn’t ever fully experienced. The pastor was someone who spoke in a conversational style that allowed me to hear the Gospel in a completely new way, and the worship was fiery, upbeat, and played by a band that was clearly on fire for Jesus (side-note: I had basically no exposure to worship music growing up). I volunteered at their VBS that summer, got involved with their youth group that fall, and before long, God had softened my heart to the point where I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

This last decade has certainly been full of many struggles, challenges, and as many periods of dry seasons as there are seasons of growth. In particular, the deep-seeded self-hatred I had developed in my preteen years took years to unroot, but I ended up being able to overcome it thanks to understanding the reality of Psalm 139:13-14, that every single human being, from conception to death, is made in the image of God. This verse not only helped me to learn to love myself, it also helped ignite a passion that led to me engaging in pro-life activism as a college undergrad, an experience that helped me become fully confident in who I am and what I believe and that, as Galatians 1:10 says, we are to always seek to please God rather than man.

And while I do still love to watch movies and write screenplays and, now, direct movies, I can find my true joy and comfort in the Greatest Story of All Time, the one in which Jesus Christ paid the full penalty of every sin I’ve ever committed and will ever commit on the Cross so that through Him, I can live forever in Eternity.