If you’re like me, you love exercising. Exercising is one of my favorite things to do and, believe it or not, it greatly influenced my choice for picking a college to attend. Exercising takes dedication, commitment, and faith in your body to improve itself over time. Faith is difficult, not only in exercising or lifting, but in life as well. My life changed forever when I figured out what it means to truly have faith. This is my story.

Throughout high school, I never really needed to lean on God. Whenever I prayed, it was always about trivial things such as “God, please let this girl like me.” or “God, please help me do well on this test”. Don’t get me wrong, God cares about every detail of your life. My point is just that I never really had trying times up to that point. All that changed once I graduated and went to college. Picking a college that was six hours away seemed like a great idea at the time. It would show independence and how I could make it on my own without the help of my family or friends. I could pave my own path and become my own person. However, once I got on campus and all those thoughts went away and were replaced with fears. I went through one of the most difficult times in my life within the first month and a half of my freshman year in college. People sometimes talk about something called the “freshman blues”; there was nothing blue about my situation, only black. Darkness seemed to be everywhere I looked whether it be my classrooms, my dorm room, or even the beautiful campus sidewalks and trees. Many a time, I would set up a hammock and listen to sad music through my headphones until I drifted off to sleep. I separated myself from God because I thought that he separated Himself from me. I felt outcast and alone. I didn’t go to church, I pushed away from reading the Bible or even praying. In my mind, it was better to just carry the burden than try and give it up to a God who didn’t want to take it. My faith was nonexistent, the devil was whispering lies into my ear day and night and I was starting to believe him.

The only time I ever felt any sort of satisfaction was when I was lifting weights. It was almost like a getaway from all the hardships and struggles of the outside world. It was just me and my weights. Me and my goals. It’s difficult to realize how I had so much faith in my body to perform the exercises I asked of it and yet I had no faith in the God who sent His only Son to save me. There were multiple times that I just fell to my knees in my dorm room, crying, and asking God where He was in these dark times.

I then started to notice things that I had previously overlooked. I started to see the blatant blessings that God showered upon me that I chose to hide from my sight. I saw how God had blessed me with a Christian roommate and how He helped blessed me with a gym only 3 minutes away. He allowed a dorm to become available right next to a dining hall so that I could be at ease when it came to my diet. I realized that God had not ever left me and He was blessing me while I was trying to distance myself from Him. I realized that God has a plan, I do not. I have the ability to either live in sadness over what may be occurring or live in excitement over what God has planned for me. All I had to do was trust in the One who loved me enough to let His Son die for me. Everything then began to improve, I started to be comfortable and felt like a large burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Everything that happened, good or bad, was God’s plan and I was able to learn from it and move on. He showed me how my faith was just like a muscle in my body. It will be tested, but only during the times of trial and hardship will it flourish and become stronger.

Just like any other body part, there will be days when you feel weaker. You will feel like you’re losing hold of everything you had just a day or two ago. But then you remember a Bible verse that talks about how much the Lord loves you or how much He cares for you, and you suddenly become reinvigorated with confidence in your Savior.

A moment like this happened to me a month or two ago. I was lifting and I was feeling downcast. I was lacking in faith, lacking in trust in God. I was finishing a workout when a wireless earbud came rolling right to my feet. I picked it up and a guy in a tank top came running over. He had a cross necklace hanging around his neck and he thanked me for not stepping on his earbud. I gave the earbud back to him and as he turned around, I saw a tattoo he had on his back. The tattoo read, “Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness”. That stuck with me for the rest of that day, the rest of that month, and all the way up until today.

The bottom line is, God knows where we are at. He knows when we are struggling, when we are flourishing, and when we are anywhere in between. He will always be there for us no matter how dark the world seems around us. All we have to do is have faith. Trust in the one who made the heavens and the earth. The one who sent His Son to die for us. Now, I know that wherever I end up, whether it be a college campus, a different state, a different country, God will be there with me. I won’t need to worry about anything because He will have everything under control. All I will need is just me and my faith. Me and my God.