I already know that this might be one of the hardest posts I have written but stay with me on this. 2018 has been remarkably hard in many different ways. There has been grief, sorrow, joy, but also transformation along the way.

March 7th

On March 7th, my grandmother lost her short battle with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was diagnosed December of 2017. It started with a mass behind her eye then quickly spread to the rest of her body. Honestly, when she first was diagnosed I was afraid but I also wasn’t concerned. She is such a strong woman and a part of me didn’t think that lymphoma was going to be the thing that took her life. It was no surprise that she was diagnosed with it though. Back in the early 2000’s, she had a heart transplant which made her susceptible to developing conditions such as lymphoma.

Once I started to accept it, I wanted to find a counselor to help me process it before she passed but it happened so quickly. No one in my family had time to prepare for it.

I remember the night she passed away so clearly. She was in the hospital at The James at OSU. She was in a deep sleep when I got there. I stayed for a few hours with my entire family. We were all there. I left and I went home. I sat down in my living room and all of my housemates came down stairs. They knew what was going on and were there for me. About five minutes later, I got a call from my grandpa and I knew why. He told me my grandma passed away. I went back into the living room and they were all there for me. The Lord knew I needed community.

I knew before she even got diagnosed that her death would be one of the hardest, if not the hardest I would ever have to go through. With my grandmother passing, I quickly realized that there is no recipe to handling grief. Everyone handles it differently.

March 26th 

On March 26th, I was proposed to by my boyfriend of two years. Don’t get me wrong, I was deeply in love with Cameron. But, there were some problems between us that we were very bad at communicating with each other. I said yes and I was excited. I know that I should have been more excited though. He proposed three weeks after the biggest influence in my life passed away… of course I wasn’t as joyful as someone should be when they get engaged. After we got engaged and the months to follow, I felt an immense amount of pressure. Pressure to plan a wedding and pressure to do well in school all while I was trying to wrap my head around my grandma being gone.

June 7th-11th

This was the few days where Cam and I went to Wilmington, North Carolina. That trip was hard. It was so hard. We just kept arguing and I honestly just wanted to come home. The first conversation we had about taking a break came up while sitting on Kure Beach. That conversation happened a few more times after that. I remember on the car ride home we thought we made a break through and we wanted to fight for each other. But.. a part of me deep down wanted it to be done. I just wanted it to end.

June 13th

I didn’t really speak to Cam that much during the two days we were back home in Ohio. He picked me up the night of June 13th and that is when we decided we were going to take a month-long break from each other. Cam and I had issues that could have been fixed with time and patience and love. But I was so overwhelmed. I didn’t even know how to grieve my grandmother and couldn’t handle fixing a relationship on top of that.

After I returned home, I was a hot mess honestly. I ended up calling him at 2am while sobbing not knowing if I could handle losing my grandma and now him. After that call, it was honestly a blur. I ended up drinking five craft beers that had a high alcohol content. I am a very small human so I was honestly gone after the fourth. While I was drunk, I did something that I still get deeply upset about. I self-harmed for the first time in almost two years. I was one month away from being able to go sky driving as a way of celebrating two years free of self harm. I don’t even remember cutting myself. I just remember waking up and wondering why my leg hurt so bad. My housemate had found me sobbing on the floor downstairs at 6am and took care of me the rest of the morning. I am incredibly thankful for that.

June 17th

On June 17th, I broke up with him. I honestly needed to for myself. With everything with my grandma, I didn’t have the energy to fight for him. And with what happened on June 13th, I was deeply ashamed. After we broke up, I would definitely say I felt a lot of pressure lift off of me. The weeks following were hard to say the least. I was seeing a counselor to help me through things and I also had an amazing group of friends helping me as well. I just had a lot of grief that I didn’t know what to do with.

July 4th

I honestly hate thinking about this day so much. I just absolutely hate it. A week prior to the 4th, I made a dumb*** decision to stop taking my antidepressants cold turkey. I knew the withdrawal would be hard but I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was. I began to get super depressed, hopeless, and anxious. July 4th was the peak. I remember I woke up that day with a plan in the back of my mind. It was a plan to swallow a bottle of pills that night. I did a few different things to distract myself from the pain that day but that plan still remained. I had a bottle of Vistral which I use to calm me down if I am having a bad anxiety attack. I took about 20 of them and sat there for about half an hour. That is when I started to get really scared. I told my housemate and she called 911 and they took me to OSU Medical Center. After being there for about 12 hours, they released me. (I wrote more in-depth about this in my blog, “I shouldn’t have flushed them“).

I honestly think that was a wake up call for me. I literally attempted suicide which I absolutely hate to admit. I have probably only said that out loud once. That honestly should have killed me but it only caused constipation. If it was any other medication, I could have been gone. Here’s the thing, God wasn’t finished with me. He wasn’t going to let me die on my own terms. I was still alive and breathing after that. I soon realized why.

July 17th-22nd

I signed up to be a leader at Momentum which is a conference held for high schoolers. I went when I was senior in high school as a student. I’ll just say it is an exceptional conference. Here is the thing… in the days leading up to it, I did not want to go. I was going through so much and I didn’t think I had the ability to pursue those girls effectively. I had eight girls in my group and I did not know any of them.

That was spiritual warfare at its finest.

(For the privacy of the girls who were in my group, I changed each of their names in the stories that I will be telling)

DAY ONE

On Tuesday, July 17th, we left from the church and headed to Indiana Wesleyan University. When we got there, I already felt a little discouraged. I had very low expectations for the week. In the weeks leading up to Momentum, I was contemplating leaving that church for a few different reasons. So, my thought process was what is the point in me being here. I was trying to remind myself that this wasn’t about me. It was about showing these girls Christ to the best of my ability. The nighttime session was fine and then afterwards we had our small group time to end the night. I led this group with a girl named Rachel and she did an excellent job at allowing a space for these girls to be vulnerable. Day one was fine. There was nothing over the top about it.

DAY TWO

On day two, I wanted to start having one on ones with my girls. I started with a girl named Katie. The previous night during small group time she had opened up about a few things so I wanted to hangout with her so I could follow-up with those things. The more I talked to her, the more she opened up about her life and her past. It turned out she has issues with depression, self harm, and at one point she wanted to commit suicide. In that moment, I thought to myself… “okay God, what are you doing here?” (For those of you that don’t know, I have had a very rough history with depression, anxiety, self harm, and various suicide attempts. Mental health is hands down my holy discontent.) I was able to open up to her about my past and use my testimony to encourage her in the fact that it does get better. Towards the end of our conversation, she asked me to disciple/mentor her. I felt so honored so of course I said yes.

Later on in the night, we had our session and we went back to the dorm to have our small group time. As I said, Rachel did such a great job at getting these girls to be vulnerable. We went around in a circle and everyone said what they were struggling with. We get to this one girl. This is Abby. She starts talking and she opens up about how she feels suicidal. Those first two nights for her turned out to be the hardest for her. She wanted to die. After she said she was suicidal, a few people said some things and then I went. I was able to speak truth into her heart about how I had attempted suicide when I was junior in high school and that I get it. After small group time was over, I sent her a text saying how much I loved her, I needed her here, and that I wasn’t going anywhere.

DAY THREE

I woke up and wanted to make sure that I spent time with Abby. I ended up only being able to hangout with her for about 20 minutes. During that 20 minutes, I was able to share a little bit of my life with her and she was able to open up more about her own.

I was very excited for that night. That night was when Louie Giglio was speaking. I’ll just say that he killed it. Towards the end of his talk, he began to talk about suicide. He said that he felt that there was a 17-year-old girl in the crowd that had a plan and a note ready to leave this Earth. He kept talking and I looked over and one of my girls was sobbing. This was Anna and she was a girl who did not want to be vulnerable about anything during small group time. So, I was able to go over and rub her back. Towards the end of Louie’s talk, he had everyone bow their head and close their eyes. He asked, “if anyone here has a note on their laptop or in their journal ready to leave us, I want you to raise your hand.” I looked up to see if any of my girls were raising their hands and three of them were. There were a few thousand people in this room and there had to be a few hundred raising their hands. After he was done speaking and after worship was over, I went up to three of my girls who I knew was suicidal and as they were crying I was able to hug them and say to them, “I love you, I need you here.” As I said that to each of them individually, each one hugged me tighter.

I pulled Anna aside right after so we could go and chat. She was very hesitant on talking to me so I had to be very patient with her. She was able to tell me that she was suicidal and extremely depressed. That was the most that she was able to tell me but I was able to pray with her. We then went back to be with the rest of our group for small group time.

After small group time, I was able to talk to another girl who had raised her hand. Kayla. She was a girl who was very distant throughout the week and kept herself distant from everyone. She was able to be very open with me and I am very thankful for that. She explained how she felt as if no one wanted to be around her, she was depressed, and she self-harmed. She honestly broke my heart. She is a beloved daughter of God and has so much worth and value.

I went to bed that night in awe of God. In awe of how He was using my past to speak truth into the lives of these girls. I knew in that moment why I was at Momentum. The Lord had equipped me to handle those situations.

DAY FOUR

I was able to hangout with Kayla during the day. I loved being able to get to know her more because she is a girl who is very misunderstood because of her hard exterior. After I hung out with her, I got a text from Anna saying that she wanted to talk. So, I was able to talk with her after the nighttime session.

Before the nighttime session started, they played this video of Clayton King who is a well-known pastor, author, and speaker. He was talking about full-time ministry. For some reason, when he talking about that… it stirred something deep inside of me and I didn’t know why. I have struggled with school immensely over the past two years and every once in a while I’ll have the idea of full-time ministry pop into my head but I usually ignore it. So, I thought it was so strange that I felt something so deeply. That is something I continued to pray about the rest of the night.

After the session, I was able to talk to Anna. She was able to open up to me a little bit more. She explained that she was in a very confusing place with her faith. She went on to explain that her brother has a court date soon for the possession of some kind of illegal drug. Her brother was the one who brought her to church so when he fell away from the Lord and into drugs, that really confused her. When she told me that her brother was going through all of that, I was able to make an incredible connection. My brother is currently serving a prison sentence for aggravated robbery and possession. So, I get it. I could tell in that moment, she felt so understood. I am so thankful that I was able to make that connection with her. I continued to talk with her through that. I eventually was able to ask her if she had a note and a plan to end her life. She nodded her head yes. I told her, “We can rewrite your story right now. We can go and destroy that note.” She didn’t want to. Nothing else really came out of our conversation but I made sure she knew how loved she was and that I was here for her.

DAY FIVE

Day five was our last full day at Momentum and it turned out to be the best. We spent the afternoon serving at a local nursing home. We were able to be the hands and feet of Jesus and it was an amazing feeling watching all of these high schoolers spend time with the residents there.

It was time for our nighttime session and Jeff Bogue was the speaker for that night. His talk was so raw. There was no feeling about it what so ever. A lot of it he spent talking about how hard being a pastor is. Nothing he said about it was attractive. At the end of his talk, he asked a few different questions and for each of these questions, he didn’t want anyone to make a sound. He didn’t want there to be any applause. The first one was him asking if anyone wants to accept Jesus, to come down and stand in front of the stage. There were probably around 20 kids who did that. I have never seen something like that. I have chills sitting here writing about it. It was probably the boldest thing I have ever witnessed. The second one was him asking if there is any sin that anyone wants to surrender to the Lord, stand up. So, hundreds of kids stood up. Now… this next question was a moment where I can say that I have never experienced the Holy Spirit as much as I did in that moment. This was a call for people who feel called to full-time ministry, to come up to the stage. He started talking about it and my heart began to race so rapidly. My heart has never raced that fast even in the moments where I have had panic attacks. Nothing compared to that moment. It was racing so fast that I almost began to hyperventilate. Then he said to come down to the stage. I got up and started walking. It didn’t feel like I had control over my legs as I was walking down to that stage. The Holy Spirit had taken over my body in those 5-10 minutes. After the session, I went back to where our church was meeting and I was able to debrief what had happened with a few leaders. I do not know what this is going to look like and quite frankly, I am terrified. But… I know that the Lord will use me.

We had our last small group time that night and it was just me leading it. Rachel had left a few hours prior. We were able to talk about our weeks and how God has moved. It was a very good time spent debriefing. Afterwards, we all hung out in the room and Kayla was a girl who would never hang out with us after our small group times. She would just retreat to her room. But, not that night. She stayed and spent time with everyone. You could see the joy she had on her face. That is just not something that would have happened earlier in the week. The Lord moved in her heart and opened her up to be able to connect with the other girls.

Around 1AM, I was able to talk with Abby more. She opened up more about her life and how she felt earlier in the week compared to now. That girl did a complete 180 in the matter of a few days. She wanted to live. She didn’t want to leave this world anymore. She wanted to fight. I was so overjoyed but I knew that once she left Momentum, the enemy would be right after her. I knew she needed to fight and I would be right there alongside of her.

Towards the end of my talk with Abby, I got a text from Anna. The text said a few things but all I really read from it was, “I want to get rid of the note. I just don’t know how.” When I read that, I almost started sobbing. After Abby and I were done talking, I found Anna and we went and talked it all through. She had her note with her so we got some matches. Then we went outside of the dorm and sat on the sidewalk and lit that suicide note to blaze. The smoke went straight up to heaven and I know that in that moment, Jesus was smiling down on her. I asked her how she felt and she said, “good”. So I looked at her and said, “I cannot wait till the day you can stand in front of a crowd of people and tell them your testimony. You will say ‘at 4AM on July 22, 2018, I lit my suicide note on fire at Indiana Wesleyan University and that is when everything changed.’” I walked her back to her room and as she hugged me she said, “thank you for coming to Momentum” and I said, “no, thank you for coming to Momentum.” As I walked back to my room, I entered the stairwell and I about fell to my knees and started screaming at how good God is.

DAY SIX

On Sunday we left and headed back to Pickerington. I did not want to say goodbye to these girls. Each one of them holds such a special place in my heart.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Momentum wrecked me. It completely wrecked my soul. The Lord revealed himself in such a new and surreal way to me. My past is filled with many awful things. I have endured a lot but that doesn’t define me. The Lord used my past to equip me to handle four out of eight of my girls struggling with depression. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I hadn’t had experienced those things myself. I am so thankful for my past. I truly am. I am able to be a testament to the fact that it does get better and that God can rewrite your story. It is hard but it does get better. When I was in high school, I desperately wanted to hear someone say to me that they understood what I was going through but I never did. I know how much it means to those girls that I understood them.

I was honestly very worried that I would be triggered by what these girls were telling me but I wasn’t triggered at all. The more they told me, the more I wanted to help them and be in their lives. That is how I know that this is what I am meant to be doing.

Mental health is so important. It is an epidemic and it needs to be talked about. I am so thankful for how much it was talked about at Momentum. It tends to go un-talked about in churches. This is why I want to be involved in high school girls lives. I went through hell and back in high school so I know how hard it is. I am so incredibly thankful that I went to Momentum and met these eight girls. Each one of them is so valued and worthy and loved. I cannot wait to see how God continues to use me in their lives and also in the lives of any other girls who cross my path who think that this world would be better without them.

As you can see, Momentum change a lot of things for me and the rest of my year will show that.

July 30th

This was the day that things with Bloom-Carroll started to align. There was a girl in my group at Momentum who goes to Bloom-Carroll High School. While we were at Momentum, she had mention how she wished Young Life was at her high school. I told her I was surprised that it wasn’t then I forgot about it. I picked her up from her house on July 30th to hangout. While I was at her house, I met her dad and we had a conversation about how he has wanted Young Life or some type of ministry to start-up at the school. After he told me that, I decided to look more into it and reach out to various members of YL staff in Columbus. I didn’t end up getting much feedback from it. About a week later, I was back at her house. I met her younger sister who is a freshman along with two of her friends. They said they played soccer so I asked who the high school coach was. The coach ended up being a guy I coached with at Pride SC. I decided to reach out to him and he took me on ASAP as a JV assistant coach. That is when I began to think to myself, “God, where are you going with this?”.

August 15th

I began coaching on August 15th and I honestly fell in love with those girls and that school. After that I tried to pursue YL staff more and try to get something out of it. I started to think about how I felt the urge that I need to be a ministry presence whether or not Young Life is there. Because ultimately, Young Life is a tool. You don’t need YL to get students to Christ. There is a guy who goes to my church who found out what I was trying to do and he wanted in.

August 26th

I met with Kaleb Blevins at a Starbucks in Bexley and we began to throw some ideas out. We decided to name it Catalyst, which means an event or person causing a change. We made an Instagram for it to introduce ourselves and explain what we were doing. Within 24 hours, we had over 100 Bloom-Carroll High School students following the account. There are only 600 in the school. We had 18% of the school following that account. I was absolutely blown away by that. Kaleb and I wanted to do a bonfire to kick things off. I remember the soccer girls telling me that news of the bonfire kept spreading. That is when I felt as if there was about to be a revival sweeping through the halls of that high school.

September 3rd

We had the bonfire at the house where we continued to have bible studies for the rest of the semester. I was very unsure as to how many students would show up to this thing. My range was literally 8-100. There ended up being around 40-50 students there and I was honestly baffled. After that, we continued to have bible studies on Monday nights. Kaleb and I were fortunate enough to add another guy to help us, Matt Prinzler. It was just me with two guys but I desperately needed a girl to help me. I had 32 girls on my radar and it was just me. Overwhelmed is an understatement of how I felt.

I dove so deep into those students lives. Between coaching soccer, trying to hangout with girls from Bloom-Carroll, trying to hang out with girls from Momentum, and being a full-time student I was quickly digging myself into a grave. I didn’t make boundaries for myself and I was spreading myself too thin. It definitely showed in the month of November. (I will get there soon).

September 28th

This day honestly threw me for a loop. I got coffee with Cameron. (Shocking. I know.) It was needed. It really was. The way we ended things was very similar to ripping a band-aid off. There was a lot that was left unsaid. Those things were able to come out when we met for coffee that day. Cam and I have had many conversations since that day about what our friendship/relationship looks like. It is the most complicated relationship I have ever had and a lot of it doesn’t make sense. The part of it that does make sense, feels right and that terrifies me. It terrifies me wondering if he is able to lead me and it terrifies me not knowing if he has changed in the ways he says he has. Now that I am writing about this, I realize how hard it is for me put all of this into words. I think the biggest thing we are trying to figure out is if it is a God-ordained thing or not. That will come in time but as of now I have no idea.

October-November

These two months were my decline. Decline that resulted in an abundance of introspection with the Lord. It almost felt like a mid-life crisis. I felt like I didn’t know myself. It felt as if I was trying to find myself and find my identity. If I am being 100% honest, I was really depressed and anxious and I had some suicidal thoughts that would come and go. My close friends knew I wasn’t doing okay and people could sense it when they were with me but the thoughts I had about myself and my life were darker than I wanted to admit. I lost my best friend and my caregiver in March and I honestly never let myself grieve. That is something I knew I had to do. I have been doing a lot of research on the Enneagram which is an ancient typology that connects to spirituality. The Enneagram has been able to connect me back to the One. The One who loves me, the One who takes me in, and the One who identifies me as His daughter. It has been able to bring things about myself to the surface. Things that really cut deep within me. I also did a lot of reflecting on a parable laid out in Luke 15.

Verses 4-7, “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

I am that sheep… I am that lost sheep that the Lord searched long and hard for. Every single time I have wanted to run or kill myself or even the times when I tied to kill myself, He found me. He found me scared and alone. He lifted me up and carried me home. He cleaned me up and fed me until I was able to do those things for myself. Then He sent me on my way to spread His kingdom. But the times where I would get lost again. He did the same thing. EVERY SINGLE TIME. He never quit. He never gave up. He didn’t see me as a burden. He didn’t see me as a lost cause. He saw me as His clean, pure, and beautiful lost sheep. He saw me as HIS daughter.

December 

It is now December. It is cold outside and that is just how I like it. That is the Lord romancing me after a hard year.

I have a lot of thoughts but I am narrowing it down to the three that I think are the most important.

1.) Satan is real. He was after me this year. Here is the pathetic thing about Satan though… he went after me when I was weak, when I was vulnerable in a pit of grief. That is because he knows I am untouchable when I am in the absolute, complete presence of God.

2.) Introspection is a good thing but you must have the courage to do it. I was at a point where I needed to have that courage. I needed to reevaluate my life. I need to set boundaries. I need to re-center my focus on the Lord and completely and fully enter his arms.

3.) I love high school girls. I am thankful for a church that allows me to live that out and I am thankful that I listened to a calling on my heart to go after a random high school along with two amazing men of God. And I am thankful for those two to merge in the future. When it comes to loving high schoolers, the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15 is a perfect example. One thing about me is that I love hard. The Lord has set my heart on fire for others and I am incredibly thankful for that. I live for loving others as Christ loves me.

This year was hard, challenging, but oh so good. The blessings that came out of hurt were so abundant. I am grateful for 2018.