Forward into His beautiful arms: My walk through the darkness to find the light

I do not know the time I was saved nor the place nor the day but I know it was the summer of 2010. I fell in love with my heavenly Father. A good friend of mine put it in a beautiful way: When you are married to a person, you love them. You do not know what day you fell in love with them but you know there was a day you did not love them and now you do. And that is what is important you love them now and you can not fall out of this love.

I have been in church all of my life. I grew up in a very small church, which is not even a mile from my house. My brother and I use to walk there sometimes for youth or Sundays when our parents could not make it for some reason. We would walk straight through our pasture and there it was, the little brick church that had around two hundred members but only around one hundred went. My great uncle had the keys of the church, which was passed down from my great grandpa. Half of the decons of the church were in my family, but everyone, one way or another was related. The small church did not believe in healing and many other things I believe in now. They did not push the importance of reading and studying your Bible everyday. So I feel very young in my walk with Christ.

My junior year of high school I fell in love with a boy that mentally abused me. He had very bad anger issues. When I told him something he did not like he would yell and would literally push me into a corner. He made me feel beautiful but helpless. I gave myself to him scared what he would say or do if I said no. I was never really taught how to say no. It was not something my mom had to deal with in her day, and had no idea that I would need to know how. I finally had enough and broke up with him. He went into depression, started doing drugs, and quit coming to school. His friends would come up to me in the hallways at school and tell me it was all my fault and I needed to go back out with him. I could not do that.

After that I was taken advantage of many times, scared to say no. I felt dirty and unworthy of any love. I had no confidence at all at that point so I would sleep with someone just to hear I was beautiful. I would also smoke pot and get drunk as much as possible so I did not have to deal with my problems. It made me happy and everyone else around me happy too, but inside I was tarring a huge hole in my heart. I would never feel pretty enough or smart enough on this road. I needed a way out.

Not feeling the power in our home church my mom and I started going to Free Chapel. I looked in the church bulletin I saw an advertisement for the Turn. After getting up the guts to go by myself I went. I ended up going at the end of the month so it was a big party. They had circus people and balloon animals. It was amazing. My second time I saw a guy that I had met before, Caleb Hecox. Caleb asked me on a date . He, the church, and my mom has pushed me to have a daily devotional. I have grown, through the Bible, other books, and other resources, and found out that I am a beautiful and pure in Gods eyes. He thinks of me more than the grains of sand on the sea shore, and that itself makes me full of joy. Soon I was going to the Turn regularly and went to School of Discipleship, which is a school Free Chapel does that is four classes long. Also the Turn started Small Groups. Small Groups is a group of girls, or guys, that get together to go over what was preached that week at the Turn, but they go more into it making the messages more personal. There I opened up about my past and grew the most. So my schedule would go as fallowed: Sunday: Worship and preaching by Pastor Jentezen Franklin; Monday: School of Discipleship by Pastor Jeremy DeBord; Tuesday: off; Wednesday: High School and Middle School Ministry with worship and preaching by Pastor Jeremy DeBord; Thursday: the Turn with Worship and preaching by Pastor Craig Mosgrove; Friday and Saturday: off; Sunday: same and every other Sunday Small Group with some beautiful girls. Also Free Chapel had a conference called Forward, that was amazing Needless to say I was like a Christian on steroids, which I am oh so very thankful for, because I have the strongest foundation. It will be very close to imposable to move me.

Forward Conference was so great there were people from everywhere coming just to worship and listen to the amazing speakers. One night I was very into the worship and I could feel my friend Stacy put her hand on me to pray. Stacy is my spiritual sister, we feed off each other amazingly and we get so excited talking about our Lord together. Well I did not know it at the time but she prayed for me to have an awesome experience with the Lord, and that He just show Himself to me in a meritorious way. Well he did. He spoke to me in a very soft still voice. I had to have complete silence in my head. He told me I would have a double major in theatre and some kind of business. I told him I am not smart enough to do that, He said don't you think that I will be with you, and if I am with you don't you believe you can do this? WOW! Then He told me I was going to marry Caleb (idk about this one) I told Him that had to be me talking and not Him, so He told me again. So I asked Him how many kids we would have and He told me this was His time to tell me what He wanted to tell me not time for me to ask questions. WOW! Lastly He made a numb tingling feeling in my stomach come up to my mouth and told me I was going to use this to sing and speak for the glory of Him. I have had so many signs pointing me in the directions of these things. I am skeptical but I have a major peace about it.

Before I was saved God was already showing me His love and grace by healing me. I had shin splints so bad I could not drive. My mom asked me if I wanted to go to healing school with her and I decided to go. It was amazing! I was healed of my shin splints like that. I just knew that God had the power to heal me and he wanted to very badly and, well, I was. I was diagnosed with mono for the third time just recently and went again. I walked in not having any energy or color in my face and on the first prayer before they even laid hands on me I was healed my mom looked at me and told me I was because all the color was back in my face. I have the faith of a babe. I know God can do all things and I know that because of my mother. She actually wrote a book on healing but sometimes because she is a saint in God and I a little girl, she over thinks. I love my mom she knows everything about me and she keeps me in my Bible I am so glad God put me with her.

My goal and what God has called me to do is to be a speaker for girls of all ages and teach them their worth in our heavenly Father so they can be confident and beautiful and also to educate them on the real definition of rape and also speak on sex trafficking. I am so excited to get started with that because I have so much scripture for making any girl feel beautiful, and I think I am very good at giving advice that would go with Gods word. All I need to do now is to through myself into the word and get through school. Maybe I will start before I graduate, only God knows.