From third grade until about seventh grade it was normal for me and my family to go to church on Sundays. When I was in fourth grade, I accepted God into my heart, and I got baptized. During that time, I knew what was right from what was wrong, and I believed in God, but I never had a close relationship with Him. When I moved up into the youth group at my church there was a glaring issue. There was no youth pastor so during services the youth would sit and gossip rather than grow with God. My mom was not happy about the lack of supervision, so we stopped attending church and I really got into competitive dancing.
From 7th grade until 12th grade, I basically danced every day of my life. I prioritized dance over God and eventually I completely forgot about what life was like with God as the center. To all of my friends I seemed like the best follower of Christ, but that was only because I didn’t fall into the average teenage temptations. I wasn’t close to God and I was actually the furthest away from Him during my time dancing. I lived my life like this for a long time, but during my senior year of high school I met a boy that invited me to church. I went to church with him for a while and I noticed that God was moving my heart away from dance and bringing me back to him. During that January of my senior year I went to a conference called TCTC where there was worship and speakers that spoke on how amazing God is. I officially came back to God in this moment and I remember coming home and asking my mom to take me to buy a Bible. While I began to read my Bible, it was something that I thought God wanted me to do for me, but later I realized it was something I was doing for the sake of our relationship.
I spent to my summer before college done with dancing and ready to jump into a fun Christian organization. So, when I got to Radford and found Chi Alpha my whole world changed. My heart was so ready to lay down my wants and I was ready to fully pick up the cross daily. Since joining Chi Alpha, I have grown with God and have found the weaknesses in my faith. I struggled with letting God control all aspects of my life, I previously thought I could control the aspects I wanted to but now I have a relationship with Him and I know that through Him I can let all the things of this earth go and focus on Him. I have taken huge strides with my faith as I learned that God wants us to spend time with Him every single day, no matter if we’re broken, if we’re sad, if we’re excited, if we're happy, all He wants is to mold us and move our hearts to becoming more like Christ. During spring semester I went on a spring break missions trip and got to grow so much with my brothers and sisters in Christ as well as grow personally to see how God yearns for us to build His kingdom. Currently, God has led me on a path to become a student leader and I couldn’t be happier to be learning how to build disciples that will build disciples.
