This is a little long so if you make it through the entire thing great! If not I understand, please understand that this is my story shared for the first time. I felt God has called me to share it, please be kind.
My God story started when I was really young, my parents were fantastic leaders and raised me to be a responsible member of the church. However, even with that I never truly had a relationship with God. Allow me to take you back several years to a Lutheran Youth Conference when I was 13. Our youth group had worked hard to raise money to go to Orlando Florida for the National Lutheran Youth Conference. This was supposed to be the moment that drew me even closer to God, unfortunately, it did the exact opposite. I no longer saw the need for God. I loved my parents very much and would never do anything to hurt them so I continued to attend church but I didn’t want to be there and used every excuse I could think of to be absent.
Fast forward a couple of years to college. Here I finally had the freedom to do what I wanted. In high school I was known as the shy kid who never did anything. In college however, I got to decide who I wanted to be and I wanted to be the girl who was not shy and went out and partied. So, started the underage drinking and flirting with guys I didn’t even know. Deep down I knew this was not the plan that God intended for me, but I just didn’t care. Then I got my first boyfriend a guy I honestly didn’t care about but was somebody for me to fool around with. I remember one particular moment in my dorm room where I wanted to have sex with him not because I loved him or anything remotely close to that but simply because that was what all my friend were doing. In that moment he said something that I will never forget “I just don’t feel this is what God wants me to do.” Fast forward a few months and I broke up with him – I broke his heart but I wasn’t ready for the commitment that he required, remember I just wanted someone to fool around with.
So, now a single women again I went back to the bars and the random guys. Then a friend introduced me to a different kind of guy, he was a Christian and he had something that intrigued me. So I started to pursue him, flirty Facebook messages and so forth. It worked we started to spend more time together. As we spent more time together I realized that he was different from any other guy I had ever met. I started to imagine our life together as husband and wife. I knew him well enough to know that to be a part of his life I had to be a part of his church. I started going to church with him and started asking him questions about his faith. He later admitted that he was praying for me during this whole process.
I remember the night sitting on my couch in my apartment with him, thinking about where God was in my life and where I wanted to God to be. I decided right then that God needed to be a part of my life I just didn’t know what that entailed yet. After giving my life to Jesus I expected everything to get even more serious between myself and this guy. It did for a while and I was on cloud nine just imagining the wedding we would have and life we would live. Little did I know that God had other plans.
Probably ten months later things started to get rocky between us, I didn’t know how to be the Christian he expected me to be, and I didn’t want to live with the standards he had set for himself. He decided he didn’t want to date me anymore and I was crushed. However, neither of us knew how to cut ties with the other and we started the same relationship, this time without the title, we still had the late night phone conversation, and the falling asleep on the couch etc. I was trying to get him to see how great we were together. In the process he started seeing other girls, while still maintaining the friendship with me.
Later in an argument I told him he needed to make a decision, because being just friends wasn’t good enough for me. He looked at me and said, “Well I guess I just lost my best friend then.” I was heartbroken here I was trying to push him to be my boyfriend again and he went the opposite direction. Later that week he announced that he was courting this other girl(they are now engaged), you can imagine what I was feeling. I remember at that moment I had a choice to make I could either run from God because things didn’t work out as I had pictured in my head or I could run toward God and know that he had a better plan for me. This was the first time that my faith apart from from this guy had ever been tested. I chose to run toward God but not without harboring some unforgiveness. Later in my walk with God I had to learn to forgive when that was the last thing I wanted to do.
I tried for a really long time to maintain my friendship with him, even after he started dating this other girl. Eventually however I realized that in order for me to complete the healing process I need to separate myself from him. I started going to a different church, to begin building a faith that was all my own. You see my faith in God had become so intertwined with his faith that I didn’t know where I stood. There was a career fair held at the University I was attending. I had no idea where I wanted to teach because I chose my town based on where he wanted to end up and I knew that was not what I needed. I entered that career fair with one pray in mind “God place me where you want me.”
I interviewed for several districts including the district I currently teach in. After the interview I had no intention of applying for a position. I actually thought that God was pointing me in a different direction. The next day though the school called me to set up a real interview, I decided to interview because it was a nice opportunity to practice my interviewing skills and have a three day weekend at home with my parents. I interviewed both for this school and another district. Before I could even finish filling out the entire application process, I was offered the job. I took this as a sign from God that this is where he wanted me. After graduating from college, with a new found faith I moved back to start my career as a teacher.
I knew moving back that I couldn’t let my faith die. I probably tried almost all of the churches in town trying to find just the right fit for me, determined this time that the church would be chosen for myself not based on a guy. I finally settled on a wonderful church. While, I realize it is not perfect it is right for me at this time.
I am still single and God has really started working on me to make my singleness, my ministry. As a result I am getting ready to kick off a single women’s group with the help of a wonderful lady in the church. I can’t wait to see where God leads this group. God has really been laying on my heart recently that I have a unique opportunity in my singleness to whole heartedly serve him, which is something that I am striving to do. 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 say that “an unmarried women is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But a married woman is anxious about worldly things how to please her husband.” As a single woman I need to be anxious about how to be everything that God has called me to be. To reach this point has not been an easy path but it is a path that I am so glad God has called me to walk. I pray for every single person reading this to know that God has a plan sometimes you have to take a step back and refocus on him.
My God story started when I was really young, my parents were fantastic leaders and raised me to be a responsible member of the church. However, even with that I never truly had a relationship with God. Allow me to take you back several years to a Lutheran Youth Conference when I was 13. Our youth group had worked hard to raise money to go to Orlando Florida for the National Lutheran Youth Conference. This was supposed to be the moment that drew me even closer to God, unfortunately, it did the exact opposite. I no longer saw the need for God. I loved my parents very much and would never do anything to hurt them so I continued to attend church but I didn’t want to be there and used every excuse I could think of to be absent.
Fast forward a couple of years to college. Here I finally had the freedom to do what I wanted. In high school I was known as the shy kid who never did anything. In college however, I got to decide who I wanted to be and I wanted to be the girl who was not shy and went out and partied. So, started the underage drinking and flirting with guys I didn’t even know. Deep down I knew this was not the plan that God intended for me, but I just didn’t care. Then I got my first boyfriend a guy I honestly didn’t care about but was somebody for me to fool around with. I remember one particular moment in my dorm room where I wanted to have sex with him not because I loved him or anything remotely close to that but simply because that was what all my friend were doing. In that moment he said something that I will never forget “I just don’t feel this is what God wants me to do.” Fast forward a few months and I broke up with him – I broke his heart but I wasn’t ready for the commitment that he required, remember I just wanted someone to fool around with.
So, now a single women again I went back to the bars and the random guys. Then a friend introduced me to a different kind of guy, he was a Christian and he had something that intrigued me. So I started to pursue him, flirty Facebook messages and so forth. It worked we started to spend more time together. As we spent more time together I realized that he was different from any other guy I had ever met. I started to imagine our life together as husband and wife. I knew him well enough to know that to be a part of his life I had to be a part of his church. I started going to church with him and started asking him questions about his faith. He later admitted that he was praying for me during this whole process.
I remember the night sitting on my couch in my apartment with him, thinking about where God was in my life and where I wanted to God to be. I decided right then that God needed to be a part of my life I just didn’t know what that entailed yet. After giving my life to Jesus I expected everything to get even more serious between myself and this guy. It did for a while and I was on cloud nine just imagining the wedding we would have and life we would live. Little did I know that God had other plans.
Probably ten months later things started to get rocky between us, I didn’t know how to be the Christian he expected me to be, and I didn’t want to live with the standards he had set for himself. He decided he didn’t want to date me anymore and I was crushed. However, neither of us knew how to cut ties with the other and we started the same relationship, this time without the title, we still had the late night phone conversation, and the falling asleep on the couch etc. I was trying to get him to see how great we were together. In the process he started seeing other girls, while still maintaining the friendship with me.
Later in an argument I told him he needed to make a decision, because being just friends wasn’t good enough for me. He looked at me and said, “Well I guess I just lost my best friend then.” I was heartbroken here I was trying to push him to be my boyfriend again and he went the opposite direction. Later that week he announced that he was courting this other girl(they are now engaged), you can imagine what I was feeling. I remember at that moment I had a choice to make I could either run from God because things didn’t work out as I had pictured in my head or I could run toward God and know that he had a better plan for me. This was the first time that my faith apart from from this guy had ever been tested. I chose to run toward God but not without harboring some unforgiveness. Later in my walk with God I had to learn to forgive when that was the last thing I wanted to do.
I tried for a really long time to maintain my friendship with him, even after he started dating this other girl. Eventually however I realized that in order for me to complete the healing process I need to separate myself from him. I started going to a different church, to begin building a faith that was all my own. You see my faith in God had become so intertwined with his faith that I didn’t know where I stood. There was a career fair held at the University I was attending. I had no idea where I wanted to teach because I chose my town based on where he wanted to end up and I knew that was not what I needed. I entered that career fair with one pray in mind “God place me where you want me.”
I interviewed for several districts including the district I currently teach in. After the interview I had no intention of applying for a position. I actually thought that God was pointing me in a different direction. The next day though the school called me to set up a real interview, I decided to interview because it was a nice opportunity to practice my interviewing skills and have a three day weekend at home with my parents. I interviewed both for this school and another district. Before I could even finish filling out the entire application process, I was offered the job. I took this as a sign from God that this is where he wanted me. After graduating from college, with a new found faith I moved back to start my career as a teacher.
I knew moving back that I couldn’t let my faith die. I probably tried almost all of the churches in town trying to find just the right fit for me, determined this time that the church would be chosen for myself not based on a guy. I finally settled on a wonderful church. While, I realize it is not perfect it is right for me at this time.
I am still single and God has really started working on me to make my singleness, my ministry. As a result I am getting ready to kick off a single women’s group with the help of a wonderful lady in the church. I can’t wait to see where God leads this group. God has really been laying on my heart recently that I have a unique opportunity in my singleness to whole heartedly serve him, which is something that I am striving to do. 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 say that “an unmarried women is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But a married woman is anxious about worldly things how to please her husband.” As a single woman I need to be anxious about how to be everything that God has called me to be. To reach this point has not been an easy path but it is a path that I am so glad God has called me to walk. I pray for every single person reading this to know that God has a plan sometimes you have to take a step back and refocus on him.
