I was raised in a catholic home, so God and Jesus were never really absent in my life. People liked me because I had a great personality and I was a good girl. As long as I can remember, I never felt like I quite fit in with the rest of my family, partially because of that and partially because of other obscure things in my life, I always wanted a boyfriend who would love me exactly how I was. I found a guy that liked me my sophomore year so I said hey, why not give him a shot? He turned out to just want a date for the homecoming dance and ended up being a jerk. And last I heard he was in jail. But even in that I learned a lesson: be careful whom you pick as your boyfriend and make sure you know him and at least think you can trust him first. Ideally he should be your friend first.
Even though I didn�t learn that ideally he should be your friend first part until my sophomore year in college. Remember, ideal isn�t always the only way.
My senior year in high school was the most special year of my life, I had somehow found enough faith to ask God for a boyfriend for Christmas (as if I deserved to ask for a Christmas present from God) and oddly enough I got him. A few days late, but hey, Jesus just says ask and you shall receive, he says nothing about the delivery date� maybe I should explain that.
At my high school, the band went on a trip to Florida every 4 years just after Christmas. We marched in the citrus bowl parade (the name has been changed several times in the last 6 or so years and I have no idea what it�s actually called anymore) and we also marched in one or two of the parades at Disney world. One of my friends knew one of the freshman guys pretty well and actually had a crush on him at the time and she invited me to walk around the theme park with the two of them one of our free days, so I did. I ended up getting to know Drew really well, and when we got back to Ohio I asked if he wanted to catch a movie. Eventually, we ended up dating. All details between the two seem to be lost to memory at this point.
We got really close really fast. Probably too fast because we ended up doing lots of stuff that most teenagers want to do and got into lots of trouble for it. Through it all, his mom and his dad, who is by the way the pastor at a local church, kept showing us love and trying so hard to get me to listen to the story of Jesus and his holy sacrifice. I kept thinking to myself �I know these stories, I grew up hearing about it, I don�t need to hear it again.� It took his mom (whom I had gotten very attached to and thus respected greatly) asking me about my catholic faith. Being clueless about how to answer her and knowing that she wouldn�t accept church doctrine as an acceptable answer, I began reading my bible to look for answers that would be acceptable to her.
I found so much more than I bargained for. I realized that I had been taught wrong concerning some issues, that their church doctrine lined up so much more with scripture and I found answers to some of my own questions. Since my parents are not well versed in the bible, I began coming to his parents for answers to my questions and thus grew in knowledge of faith.
While this was still going on, I graduated and started college. This meant moving to Toledo to attend a university two hours away from my boyfriend who had become pretty much everything to me by this point. Being away from Drew meant that I had time to do things I wouldn�t normally do, like read my bible. Which became my storybook before bedtime.
The next big thing came 3 days after I got home from college for the summer. Drew broke up with me. I spent pretty much a week in my room crying to my pillow. I didn�t take it very well. By this point though, I had realized that God was the only one who could heal the pain. So, not knowing any other way to be near God, I read for 3 or 4 hours a day sometimes. It helped me to keep my mind off of Drew. I didn�t realize it at the time, but I got so much closer to God during that first couple of weeks.
Eventually I realized that I had more in Drew than I knew I did. I wanted so badly to get him back, that I came to visit his mom and tried to begin to forge a semi-relationship with him again. That eventually grew and flourished into an awesome friendship that I wouldn�t trade for the world. But realize that getting off the ground, or rather out of the basement was one of the most difficult things I�d had to do. But we soon discovered that we were meant to be friends even though it would take almost a full year for me to realize that �just friends� was what we both needed. I found that through apologizing for all the crap we went through while we were dating, all the stuff we did that we shouldn�t have done, and asking forgiveness for pretty much begging him to go back out with me. His reply: I don�t know what to say, I never held it against you and I forgave you a long time ago. Talk about the perfect lesson in forgiveness. The only difference with God is that he knows exactly what to say, and that�s usually along the lines of �I forgive you and I still love you.�
The next big thing was my freshman year. I was at Toledo for chemical engineering. I hated it. So I decided I needed a new major. Then God told me to be a teacher. And I�m like �what?� but now that I like the idea of being a teacher, I feel like he�s calling me to change the entire public school system so that He is allowed inside. He can only change the system from the inside; he�s called me, so I have to be on the inside and probably become an influential part of the system in order to make a difference. Am I scared? Oh yeah. Am I going to be obedient? Yup.
Backtracking just a little bit to spring break 2005. Well Spring break 2005 was the next big event. I had to tell my parents. I had sent my mom an email telling her everything and that was obviously not how I was supposed to do it because it didn�t work very well. I said some things that made my parents think I was calling them pagans and I made them wonder if I was going to come home. Break was a LONG one because of the constant tension between my parents and I. Saturday morning my dad woke me up at 7:00 in the morning telling me that I had to tell my grandparents about my decision and be back by noon to talk to him about it. Then he left. I lay there for 45 minutes and cried and prayed for strength. Then I got up and went to town to tell my grandma, and then I went to my other grandma�s house and told her. Then I went to Drew�s parents for advice and his mom sat me down and asked me questions concerning what I didn�t like and what I didn�t believe about the Catholic faith; she asked me about what I believed and Pastor Ron reminded me to Honor my father and mother. When I got home, my dad just hugged me and apologized for making me do that. He said that in doing that I proved to him that I was both determined and �grown up.� My parents still urged me to try to get my questions answered so I decided to sit down with some pamphlets that mom had on the catholic beliefs and also with Mom�s catholic bible and my own bible and compared passages and prayed for answers. When my family came back from their trip to town, my dad took a nap, which left my mom to sit with me and try to answer my questions. The spirit of God was really with me that day in a way that I had never felt before. In my heated discussion with mom, I was reminded of passages of scripture that I didn�t realize why they stuck out at me when I read them, that I didn�t realize I knew them, let alone where they were. And I Had her backed into a corner (figuratively speaking) that she couldn�t get out of for somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. Before she decided to try to find answers on the Internet.
