I Gave My Life to Jesus and Everything Changed
I don’t know the exact date I gave my life to Jesus. I could probably find it in my journal from 2010. It didn’t happen at church or with anyone else present. There was no one to lead me into the prayer of salvation, I simply found myself broken and hurting beyond anything I could handle, and it’s there at the end of myself that I knew I couldn’t do it alone or my way anymore. I knew that if I kept on living, I needed Jesus. I gave Him my life and invited Him into it.
As I mentioned in the last post, I was listening to Dr. Charles Stanley and Joyce Meyer, so I continued listening to them. I purchased a New Testament and at some point, I started to say I was Baptist because that’s what Dr. Stanley was. I didn’t know much about what I was supposed to do except that now that I was born again, I was supposed to “die to self” and make God the center of my life.
The Darkness Lifted and Relationships Restored
As soon as I had given my life to Jesus and invited Him into it, the darkness that had taken root in my soul was gone. The hopelessness and heaviness lifted and I began to believe that things would get better.
(I’ll share more in upcoming posts about how these battles with darkness resurfaced at times, but ultimately, through Christ, I overcame the enemy’s strongholds.)
What I didn’t anticipate or expect was that God would move to reconcile my relationships with my family. At this point in my life, I was harboring a lot of hurt, pain, and anger towards some members of my family. My heart had been hardened towards them, and I felt some of them had done me wrong. I was, for the most part, estranged from my family.
God moved through one of my sisters to open lines of communication and that year, for the first time in ten years, I spent Christmas with my family.
My heart posture had changed, and so did that of everyone involved. The forgiveness and letting go was immediate and ongoing.
Through God’s healing process of the last three years, I’ve had to face wounds and unresolved feelings concerning my family, but in that moment, I felt accepted, welcomed, and once again part of my family. I was so grateful and impressed by how quickly God had taken care of what seemed impossible to restore.
God Taught Me About Love
A big part of what made the reconciliation possible was God teaching me about love. Through reading His Word in the New Testament and other scripturally sound books, I learned that God is love and that my heavenly Father loves me unconditionally and beyond anything I could imagine. I began experiencing His love, and that started to soften my heart. Understanding that God so loved me (the world), He gave His only begotten Son, and Jesus loved me so much He gave His life for the forgiveness of my sins–it gave me the heart to walk in forgiveness.
Letting Go of My Identity as an Entrepreneur
Dying to myself was not easy at all. This is when I began to come against my self-reliance, strong will, and independence. As I was learning what it meant to surrender fully to God, I sensed Him telling me to let go of my identity as an entrepreneur. I didn’t want to do that, but I knew making Jesus Lord of my life meant obeying Him.
It took me two years to let that identity go. I would wake up at night, asking, “If I’m not an entrepreneur, who am I?” God would answer, “You’re a child of God.” I would say back to Him, “What does that mean?” And He never replied, so I stopped asking. It’s taken me a lot to learn it, but I now know what it means to be a child of God.
As I was letting go of my identity as an entrepreneur, I was back in uniform in the Marine Corps, where God taught me other lessons. I’ll cover them in teaching and testimony posts.
He Gave me the Desires of my Heart
One of my repeated conversations with God these last few years as He’s been healing, renewing, and maturing me has been about how easy it was when I first gave my life to Him! He moved delivering my heart’s desires and blessed me beyond what I could ask or imagine.
Besides restoring all of my relationships, God healed my physical body which allowed me to pursue my heart’s desire to step on stage and compete in bodybuilding. I ended up shedding 50 lbs and became the first NPC Women’s Physique winner for the state of Louisiana.
I returned to school, finally finished my bachelor’s degree, and got promoted to Major.
I ended up mobilized at Marine Forces Europe and Africa, living in Germany, and traveling all over Europe. After I returned to the U.S., I continued to travel, including an epic three-month trip across Canada.
My first six years as a Christian weren’t without challenges and struggles, but they paled in comparison to the tremendous blessings and favors God bestowed on me.