Part 1: Discovery

 There is one thing you should know about me: I love people. People give me energy and purpose. When people do not love me back, I am devastated. When people encourage me, I do my best to succeed in order to please them. In my spiritual journey, I have interacted with a great number of people. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my spiritual journey revolves around the relationships I have built (or unbuilt) with people throughout my life. These relationships have all, in some way or another, fed into the greatest relationship of all: mine with Jesus.

 So let’s start at the beginning.  I grew up in a Christian home. My first significant relationships were with my parents, who were involved in ministry, living in Turkey. To say the least, I was always surrounded by Jesus-followers. My whole life, my parents have been a great example of God’s unconditional love for me. When I was very young and got in trouble, my parents would put me in time-out. After I had thought about what I did, my dad would come into my bedroom, and we would talk about it. At the end, he would say, “How much do I love you? This much?” and he would hold his hands a few inches apart. “No!” I would say. “You love me BIG much!” And we would open our arms as wide as they would go and tumble into a great big hug. What I saw through this was that God loves me no matter what I do. I learned that saying sorry makes people feel better. I learned that sometimes you don’t need proper grammar to tell someone how much you love them, especially when you are telling God.

 As I moved into adolescence, I began to see God as a real being rather than an idea that my parents shared with me growing up. However, I was doubtful of his true existence. I did a great job of getting A’s in Bible class and memorizing verses. But it was hard for me to feel God’s real presence. Especially when my relationships with my friends were not doing so well. I had the typical hellish middle school experience, full of boy-drama and catty girls and climactic bathroom interventions. In the midst of that, I also had some God experiences. I remember one specific instance when a friend of mine was extremely nervous before a performance of our middle school play. I sat down with her and we prayed. That was a very significant moment for me, because for probably the first time I had shared God with someone else.

 Even so, I was far from truly discovering God. I was in an atmosphere saturated with knowledge about the Bible, catechism, and worship songs. Nothing was my own. This is the root of my problem. I struggle with discerning the line between what is my actual relationship with God and what is my relationship with the environment around me. As I have learned: they are not the same thing.

 This has never been more obvious than in my relationship with my high school boyfriend. To some, this may seem silly. Who has a significant relationship when they’re an underclassman in high school?

 Well, me.

 My life revolved around my boyfriend. I would fantasize about him constantly, I would tell him all my secrets, and I would spend a majority of my time at school with him. When things with us were going well, my relationship with God was going well. When things with my boyfriend were going badly, my relationship with God was going badly. My boyfriend was my idol—it was not God I worshiped. Eventually, though, the ups and downs took their toll. My boyfriend and I broke up at the end of the summer before my junior year.

 When we broke up, I felt like the world around me crumbled, even though I had been the one who broke it off. I had no desire to pray or read the Bible. The words in the Bible were like ashes in my 

mouth- dry, dusty, and gross. I did not want to talk to anyone in my family—I hardly even talked to my friends. This period in my life could be known as “relationship-less.” And that may explain why it was such a dark time. Because I found all my worth in my boyfriend, when he was taken out of the picture I had nothing left. Because he has been my god, I no longer had any meaning in my life. And one thing I did know: I had absolutely no desire to turn to the God that I had learned about my whole life. 

 Ironically, during this time I was a part of my high school youth group’s leadership team. The only reason was because my youth pastor wanted me to be. We had our first meeting of the year, before school started. We had to go around the room and share why we were excited to be on leadership. I honestly could not think of a single reason. People were sharing things like, “I’m passionate about youth group!” “I want to learn more about God!” But all I said was, “I respect the leaders and want to spend more time with them.” Translation: I was forced to be here today.

 Even though I had the worst attitude possible, God managed to work through others to get to me. We had a speaker that day that encouraged us to recognize a change we had to make in our life, set a goal to change it, and to get an accountability partner to help us make that change. For a long time, I stared at the paper he gave us to write down our thoughts. I did not want to make a real change. I knew I could pray more, read my Bible more, and generally love God more. So I scribbled down “pray more” and “read the Bible more.” I knew I wasn't going to do them, though. I did not take the exercise seriously at all. Since I had to, I wrote down my math teacher, Michele, as an accountability partner because she was my favorite teacher. We left the meeting and I was fully expecting this inspiring talk to be like all other inspiring talks—they affect you for about a day or so, but then you carry on with your life and forget about them. But I could not shake this talk, no matter how hard I tried. My math teacher’s face kept popping up in my head. Every time I would see her, my heart would squirm. For two weeks, the thought that I had to talk to her would not leave my head. So I finally decided to talk to her. I rationalized with myself, saying I didn't even have to talk to her about God. I could just talk to her about the boy drama I was currently experiencing (because, long story short, my ex-boyfriend and I were having some drama). So after a few failed attempts, I finally went up to her and said, “Can we talk sometime?”

 “Sure!” she said. “What about?”

 “Oh, just… boy stuff. And… God stuff.” Oops! It came out! I admitted I wanted to talk about God to her! She smiled and said, “Okay, how about next week Thursday after school?” So I nodded my head and left her classroom. The tension in my stomach eased. When we went out for coffee, we talked for hours. First, we covered drama, of course. And she gave me some sound advice. But then we got to the real stuff. I took a deep breath. “Why do you believe in God?” I asked her.

 Fortunately, Michele had the words ready. I don’t even remember all of them now, but I do remember that I was struggling to pay attention. A lot of it went over my head. It didn't matter that I had all this Bible education before; I just did not get it. But I saw her joy in talking about God. How could someone so intelligent like Michele have such enthusiasm in talking about a being that she could not see? If she believed, it had to be true. She gave me a tool to read the Bible that she thought would help me. It is known as SOAP (you can do your own research on that). I went home that night, somewhat skeptical, but ready to try it. The verse was about God hiding his people from evil. Regarding the boyfriend drama I was experiencing, that was exactly what I needed to read. I saw that God was going to protect me. So I continued to read the Bible. As the weeks and months went on, I would see patterns in my readings, and I began to see how I was being changed. I saw how Scripture was living and active. No longer were the words of the Bible old and dry. They were full and rich with meaning. They were being gently whispered to me by my loving Savior. I was utterly transformed through the Word of God, all by itself.

 I continued meeting with Michele. She kept me accountable and encouraged me. I still had questions about faith.  But I stuck with it, and God kept drawing me closer to himself.  Eventually, a few months after our initial coffee date, I said that I really wanted a way to act out my faith now. I finally knew it was real, and I needed to take the next step. She knew exactly that that was what I was going to say. She asked me if I would like to be a Discipleship leader at school. At my high school, we split off into small groups known as Discipleship groups after chapel. They are usually led by a faculty or staff member, a parent volunteer, or a senior class leader. I was only a junior, but Michele thought I was ready to be a leader for people younger than me. I was intimidated, but jumped at the opportunity.

 My first official day of being a discipleship leader was also my 17^th birthday. That morning, as part of the discipleship leader’s group, I helped lead devotions for the faculty and staff before school started. In this devotion session, I shared my testimony of how God had worked in my life. Needless to say, it was an amazing day of growth for me. It was probably the best birthday ever. In some ways, I regard it as my birth into God’s family because I was, for the first time, owning my identity as a child of God. However, God was not finished with me yet. 

Click here to read Part 2: Changing Plans