Life flies by in the blink of an
eye, a truth I am finding out more and more as my life continues. I will never be the same person I am today as
I will be tomorrow; I am constantly changing. The biggest change occurred at a
young age when I decided to accept Christ as my savior. Yet that change didn’t have many effects until
my freshman year of high school when God rocked my world again, and I fully
surrendered my life to him. Since that
moment, everyday there is something different, big or small because as Isaiah
43:8 says “O Lord, you are our Father; we
are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand”. I
am constantly changing, being shaped and molded into who I should be and want
to be come spiritually. Change has happened through the events of the past, and
those events will make me someone different in the future. Working towards the
goal of shaping me into who I am to become; God uses my strengths, my
weaknesses and his pull of resources to accomplish the task and it is by his
mercy that I am being transformed.
The past has molded me into who I am
spiritually through a few key events. Going to public school after being
homeschooled for a few years was a game changer, I was a loner. I wanted friends, I just did not know how to
make them and as result I was excluded and left out much of the time. This has
had a heavy impact on the way I interact with people, how I love people. I know
how it feels to be left on the outside, and I make it a point to make sure others
don’t. My freshman year of high school I
was informed that my family was switching churches. This event introduced me to
my next life event for spiritual change, Audrey and my girls. Audrey was my
high school small group leader and my girls were Monica (who I’ll mention more
later) Maisy, Tori, Emma, Abbi, and Giselle. I was finally able to grasp and
value the concept of accountability, what it meant to share life’s burdens,
joys, trials, and successes with a group of girls. I liked to be involved, I
did theater, choir, led a small group and I was a worship leader for my
churches youth group. Leading worship had always been a passion for me, and it
was there that I encountered another spiritual change. I’d been involved in it
since the beginning of high school, I even learned to play guitar for the
purpose of leading worship. I always viewed practice for Sunday morning as
practice, until one day when I was practicing in my room and I was thinking
about a phrase my choir teacher always said in the classroom, “Practice like
you are preforming”. As I pondered that
phrase I came to the conclusion that when I perform I am completely in it to
glorify God, and if I am to practice like I am performing, then I should seek
to glorify God at all times and not just for the show. My best friend Monica
brought about another big spiritual change in the way I view friendship. Senior
year was one of the hardest patches in our friendship. Life began to creep in
and although still close, I felt as if I had been replaced and that she’d moved
on. One night I broke; I pored my heart out to God and laid it as his
feet. The very next day without having
said a word of this to her she came up to me hugged me tightly and reassured me
almost word for word the fears that I’d been feeling were not true and our
friendship was still as valuable as ever. Then and there God showed me that
real friendship is a relationship dependent on God and not on the worldly
things. They say the people you are friends with in high school will become
nonexistent as life continues, but today we are closer then ever because even
though miles separate us, our hearts are close in Christ. College has been the
most recent tool for spiritual change. I used to be terrified and nervous about
coming to college, not to mention the workload; but my verse for the year Luke
1:37 says, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (ESV). Nothing! Life will
give me challenges, and obstacles, but I can do anything if I rely on God. It
applies to every aspect of my life at the moment and that verse contains the
hope I am clinging to as I pursue whatever life God allows me to dream up.
There are a couple more tools needed
for this clay pot to be complete, but it’s getting there. Grace and mercy are
my favorite gifts and it is on those that I live. I’m ready for the adventure God
has for me and after all he has done in my past, I can’t wait to see what the
future holds based on the talents and abilities he has gifted me with in the present.
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