This life really stinks sometimes, but God is the greatest and the most faithful!  Here's how he's moved throughout my life.

    I was born to two church going parents, but God was never a really active part of our lives.  I knew who He was, and I knew that I was supposed to talk to Him and keep his laws, but beyond that and the basic Bible stories God was the guy at church.  In my later elementary years, my parents divorced, which is the story of so many of our lives these days.  My sister and I were angry and confused, but we were good kids, so we behaved.  In my sixth grade year, my mother remarried a recovering alcoholic/drug addict.  He had a year or so of being sober before she married him.  We now know that that isn't the greatest time to enter into a long term relationship with an addict, but we were oblivious to the problems this would cause later.
    My seventh grade year, I went to this Christian music festival called Ichthus.  I didn't know squat about Christian music, I just figured that Amy Grant might be there.  She wasn't but this tiny band called D C Talk was.... and I was in heaven.  I also got my ticket to heaven.  Right at that little tabernacle in Wilmore KY I accepted Christ into my life.  (curious about this Christ? Click here )  I began to live for God and seek his way of doing things.  Not a moment too soon, either.
    Soon after that Ichthus the other side of my stepfather came out.  For some reason he liked to pick on me.  He said not little lovingly teasing things, but things that really hurt.  I thought I was crazy because Mom did nothing to stop it and acted as if there was nothing really wrong.  I was never yelled at or physically hit, but my step dad would find tiny ways to make me feel stupid and crazy.  Anger started rising up in me that I didn't know what to do with or how to control.  So I did what every good little kid does: I shoved it inside and refused to deal with it.
    I continued going to Ichthus and my freshman year in high school I met the greatest guy I had ever known.  He was a year older than me and he was into all the same music I was.  *swoon, enter cupid, etc.*  We wrote back and forth throughout the year and he asked me to his prom.  Joel lived in Indiana, I lived in Tennessee.  My parents, in the ultimate act of coolness) agreed to drive me the four hours to be with him.  The next Ichthus I was so pumped!  Joel was there, and we went everywhere together (hand in hand, of course).  Prom was the week after, and I had a blast!
    That was the last of the cool years, however.  My junior year in high school began the series of nightmares that made my life seem like a really bad after school special.  Things had gotten so bad with my step dad that I avoided him.  Christmas was coming up, and he was on what they call in 12 Step programs a "dry drunk"  He had left all the teachings that helped him keep his sobriety behind and was acting like an addict, without the drugs.  That Christmas Day he was playing with my guitar and my effects processor that I'd gotten that morning.  I finally got up the guts to call him on his crap.  He got mad, called me stupid and stormed out.  He just left.  On Christmas Day he left in a screech of tires and called to say he didn't know when, if at all, he was coming back.  That really sucked.
    In February it came out (after he came back, left, came back, and got kicked out by mom) that he had relapsed into cocaine.  Off he goes to treatment and stays until the day before Ichthus.  Of course he comes back all apologies and is sweet and quiet, for a while.  At Ichthus,  I went to find Joel.  He wasn't there.  He wasn't allowed to go with his church because they didn't want him to bring drugs.  Double shot to the heart.  I cried, but Whiteheart played that night, and when Rick spoke before singing "Even the Hardest Heart," he was talking straight to me.  Big time crying-snot fest.
    That May we found out that my step dad was back into drugs, so mom began the cycle of kicking him out, he begs his way back, he leaves, etc.  That was the summer I stayed home all but three weeks because of all my summer activities.  I attended Governor's School for International Studies that year, focusing on the Middle East.
When your faith is already weak, it's not a good idea to spend intensive study in the Muslim faith.  After all that had been going on, I was at the point where I said "God, most of us agree you're up there, show me how!"  He super glued me to Christ, and I'm still serving him! :o)
    School started and it was pretty clear mom was headed for her second divorce.  She told my step dad of this and he left. (not surprisingly)  He came back the Sunday after that Friday to get his precious jet ski.  He went out on that thing and never came back.  They found his body in the river that Tuesday morning.  Talk about turning your world upside down!  Every one of us had had thoughts similar to "it would be easier if he'd just die."  We were wrong.  Again, God's faithfulness came through and he held my hand through all this.
    We had just started to get our lives as close to normal as we could, when my mother was in an accident.  It wasn't very serious, but she was in the hospital for a day and was out of work for three weeks.  It was horrifying to come home from school to hear "Girls, your mother's been hurt, go to the hospital" on the answering machine.    Again, the Grace and presence of God kept me from going insane.  My sister was not so fortunate.
    Three months after this, my sister swallowed a lot of pills and was sent to the same treatment center my step dad had been in only a year ago.  It was at this point I lost it.  I sat down in the living room and cried.  I didn't think I could handle it, but God took care of me.  He always has and always will.  I took a stress test at school and scored over 300.  People with scores of 180 have a 50% chance of being mentally ill.  My mom laughs when I say this, but I'm the only member of my family that hasn't had counseling or anti-depressants.  (mom says I'm undiagnosed).
    Through this, God has given me a heart for teenagers.  He has called me into music and I know I'm supposed to reach other kids that are hurting and need love so badly.  Prayer and faith can do so much with God, and each increases the other!  I still struggle with things, mainly guys (pray for me!), but I know that HE's always there for me!  This summer I applied for a scholarship worth $1000.  That's a lot of money.  This summer I also had to have some car work done.  I had to dip into my tithe bank to pay for it, so when I got a hundred dollars in the mail from my mother, I bit my lip and put it into the tithe box.  I could have used that for so many earthly things!  The next week, I got word that I'd gotten the scholarship!  In the Bible it says that those who sacrifice to the Lord will receive TEN FOLD what they gave.  God is so cool!

(11-26-98)       I finally found a church I like in Nashville....it's the Vineyard Church here.  Everything you just read about was pretty tough, and I did a good job of coping when it happened But instead of dealing with stuff, I did what most of us do.  I shoved it inside.  There are a lot of feelings loaded in the story I just told....Anger, guilt, resentment, fear, yadda yadda...All of that was internalized.  I was carrying some pretty heavy crap inside of me.  When I went to the Vineyard, I found people who weren't scared of the fact I came from a shakey family.  They prayed with me and God pulled out all of that stuff and pushed it (very gently and in small doses) in my face.  Oh my goodness, whomsoever the Son sets free is FREE INDEED!  I am not totally healed yet, but God has restored to me the ability to cry.  That is such a release if you haven't been able to do that.  I have joy like I haven't known in a couple of years!  God is so good!  Jehovah Rapha!  :o)

(12-29-99)  I'm still at the church in Nashville, and God has been really blessing me.  One of the areas that needed the most healing was my ability to relate to men.  The Lord has me in practice with a relationship with a wonderful guy (Kevin) that I met there.  It's not all roses and ladybugs, but we're both learning a lot.  Like how not to be selfish, or how to trust God's timing.  It's really wonderful.  God can do so much for us if we'd just accept it!

The moral of the story is there is NOTHING that God can't help you handle.  Life isn't easy, but he can always handle things if you'll let him.  It has been said He never gives you more than you can handle, but sometimes we wish he didn't have such a high opinion of us!  ;o)