Spirituality in Childhood

Christian belief has been a foundational aspect of my life since the moment I was born. My family went to church together each week, rarely missing a Sunday service. In fact, the first Sunday after I was born, my parents placed me in the Windsor Road Christian Church nursery, and I have grown up in the congregation ever since. My earliest recollections of faith are memories of sitting in Sunday school, listening to Bible stories, memorizing verses, and completing a coloring page to take home and put on the refrigerator. At the age of three, I began preschool at Judah Christian School. My endearing preschool teachers taught the young, eager pupils how to pray, be kind to one another, obey their parents, and read the Bible.

At home, my parents, John and Kim, have always cultivated a stable environment built on Christian values and abounding with God’s love. I am overwhelmingly blessed to have been raised in a place where I am unconditionally loved and constantly encouraged to pursue my dreams. The peace of God rules over our household. I cannot remember even once when my parents argued with each other. They have always spoken words of love and affirmation and calmed family disputes with gentleness and wisdom. As a family, we combated conflict with prayer and praise. Even when we endured intense trials, they only strengthened and increased our family’s unity. The deep roots of faith planted by my parents at the beginning of their marriage kept us grounded even in life’s most severe storms.

I have been surrounded by a Christian worldview in nearly every area of life from an early age. Believing in God and knowing that Jesus is my savior has been second nature to me. These ideas were simply woven into the fabric of my being. However, only through trials did my faith become more than simply another daily ritual. During hardships, when I was forced to cling to my faith to survive, I was able to test its validity and realize its necessity in my life. Though my faith is what gave me hope and courage to persevere through turmoil, it also became a overflowing wellspring of joy in times of peace and rest. It is when my belief in God was put in the furnace of affliction and refined by fire that I developed a personal relationship with Jesus separate from my parent’s faith. My journey with Christ has traveled along many treacherous, unforgiving paths during my lifetime, yet it has also brought me to awakening mountaintop experiences of boundless joy. Most incredibly, my journey with Christ has brought me to Taylor University, a place filled with other young believers whose hearts are ignited with passion for Jesus. I am thrilled to see how God will use my past as training for His future purposes for me at Taylor and beyond.

The intimate relationship I hold with my Creator today would not be possible without periods of intense affliction in my past. At eight years old, I was forced to question God’s existence for the first time when my 19-year-old brother passed away in a tragic canoeing accident. I was overwhelmed with feelings of fear and confusion as my innocent heart cried out to God, “Why did you have to take my big brother away from me?” As I observed my family grieve over my brother’s death, I felt utterly alone and misunderstood. I chose to rely solely on God for all strength and comfort, because I knew my parents were not capable of offering me the emotional support I desperately needed at that time. God used my small leap of faith to reveal Himself to me in astounding ways. I could no longer doubt the presence of God, because His presence was often more real to me than my physical surroundings during this time of tragedy.

Another tremendous time of growth in my faith occurred during my freshman year of high school when I battled a serious eating disorder. The new responsibilities of high school, along the added pressure of my excessive perfectionism, resulted in me feeling as though I could never be good enough, no matter how hard I tried. To regain some sense of stability, I looked to food as one area of life I could always control. It did not take long, however, before I realized that the food was really controlling me. My health rapidly declined as I lost nearly 30 pounds in less than six months and could not seem to end the vicious cycle. I did not want anyone to know the aggressive addiction I battled, so I isolated myself from others and was often tormented by my own thoughts. As I cried out to God to rescue me from this disease, He drew me closer into His arms than ever before. As I listened to His gentle whisper of comfort and guidance, I realized that the consuming thoughts of worthlessness were lies planted in my mind by Satan himself. He was using the eating disorder as his weapon to seize my health, steal my joy, and destroy my faith.

It was during this season of immense loneliness, suffering, and darkness that I could most clearly sense the spiritual warfare occurring all around me. As I succumbed physically to the eating disorder, I struggled to free my spirit from Satan’s control without avail. It was only when I made the terrifying choice to surrender myself to God and remain completely still that He was finally able to free my spirit from the devil’s iron grip. Moments before yielding to Satan’s lies, God rescued me from the brink of death. It was only by His triumphant grace, and the overwhelming support of my friends and family, that I was able to completely overcome the eating disorder and regain a healthy lifestyle. This trial again drew me closer to God’s heart and reinforced my faith in His power. I am now unceasingly aware of the devil’s presence and equipped to recognize his evil schemes and destroy them with God’s truth before they can overtake me. Today, I praise God for blessing me with these periods of heartache, fear, and loss. Without these tribulations, I am assured that my faith in God would not be as strong as it is today. The darkness of my trials has only exemplified God’s magnificent light.