I grew up in a loving and encouraging Christian family. We would go to church on Sundays and pray before dinner. Honesty, integrity, and kindness were instilled in me from the beginning. No doubt, my parents laid the foundation on which I would build my faith, and I am incredibly thankful for that. Who knows what kind of trouble I would be causing without them.

In middle school, I didn’t doubt God’s presence in my life. I knew that that Jesus was my Savior and that my sins were forgiven, yet I didn’t understand the gravity of what that meant. I got along with everyone and had a good group of friends, but I got caught up in seeking approval from others.

Going into high school, some of my friends started to get into partying and making questionable choices. Thankfully, God surrounded me with a great group of people, new and old, who encouraged me to make sound decisions. My older sister introduced me into FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, where she was a senior leader. FCA was an invaluable outlet; it was genuine christian community. My FCA was incredibly blessed to be advised by the most caring and bold Christian teacher you would ever meet. He was a light to our school. One thing that I learned from him was to do it all for Christ because, at the end of the day, He is the ballgame. Another very influential role model was my confirmation mentor, a close family friend. I learned a great deal from him about how to have a intimate relationship with God. My mentor had suffered through intense trials and tribulations, but what struck out to me was how God used those moments to show his provision, and to strengthen my mentor’s trust in God’s ultimate plan, that one day every tear will wipe away.

Even with the tremendous spiritual assets that I had, I fell into the temptations of lust. This plagued me for the majority of high school, but the summer before my senior year of high school, I started to realize that my sin was hampering my relationship with God. At a FCA leadership camp, God showed me that I had to remove this vice from my life. Since then, I have experienced a peaceful freedom from the sexual sins that I had normalized in high school.

After graduating high school, I started casually drinking with my friends. I knew that it was not conducive to spiritual growth, but I repressed those feelings because almost all of my friends were doing it. I rationalized that it wasn’t a big deal because I was just doing it to have fun, and it wasn’t hurting anybody. Before going to college, I told myself that I wouldn’t compromise my core Christian beliefs; I would just social drink.

Before classes even started, I jumped right into Madison’s favorite extracurricular. I was living life, so I thought. I met tons of people at parties, and my dreams of college life were crystallizing. My parting advice from my FCA advisor was told to get plugged into a good Christian organization, so I joined Cru. I went to all of the Thursday night meetings and got into a bible study. Everybody was welcoming, and the talks were so relevant and relatable to me.

The more I got invested in Cru, the worse I felt about the double life I was living. Drinking had become an idol in my life, and I knew that I had to let it go, but I was afraid of how quitting might alter some of my relationships. I had been thinking a lot about what it means to be all in for Christ, and I realized that I simply wasn’t. In my room, about a month into school, I decided to lay down my life for Christ. I surrendered all that was me, and asked the Holy Spirit to live through me. Not counting the first time I decided to originally accept Christ as a kid, this was the single best decision that I had ever made.

Since making this decision, I have grown leaps and bounds in my relationship with God. Cru has been instrumental in this, and I am also now part of the most supportive Christian community that I didn’t even know existed on a secular campus like Madison. Although I am still far from perfect, I now live for an audience of One. Luke 9:23 is now my motto for what following Christ should look like, which says “whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”