My story begins in a Christian home, rooted in an early and sincere love for Jesus…

At the age of 6, I gave my heart to Jesus during Vacation Bible School. I will never forget that moment. My parents were attending a seminar put on by Christ for the Nations. The college students ran a VBS program that week for all of the kids. I can still close my eyes and hear the prayer that a young college girl led me in that day. I also remember she had a perm and big hair!

At such a young age, there were many things I didn’t understand, but my commitment that day was full of childlike faith, and I meant it with all my heart.

But as I grew older, that faith became tangled in a church experience that slowly pulled my eyes away from the heart of the gospel.

As a family, we found ourselves in a church environment that used legalism to administer a gospel of works-based religion and what felt like endless striving to do all of the right things to earn entrance into heaven.

Over time, faith stopped feeling like a relationship and began to feel like a responsibility. I learned how to try harder, do better, and measure myself by rules I could never fully keep.

You see, when faith becomes something we carry in our own strength, apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, it loses its life. It becomes knowledge in the head, not freedom in the heart.

Growing up in this space, I was taught to imagine God as someone constantly watching—keeping score, recording every mistake, every failure—waiting for the day it would all be brought into the light. Instead of learning how to rest in His love, I learned how to fear disappointing Him. That fear followed me through my teenage years and eventually settled into anxiety and depression.

Somewhere along the way, my true identity became blurred. I had lost sight of the truth that I was a daughter of the King—deeply known, deeply loved, and fully cared for, even in my brokenness. I knew how to speak the language of faith, but grace and freedom felt far away.

Everything came to a breaking point during my freshman year of college. Burned out on church and confused by religion, I made a deliberate choice to walk away from God. I was carrying wounds I didn’t know how to name and questions I didn’t know how to answer. I decided that college would be about living life on my own terms.

But the Lord, in His kindness, was not finished with me.

In that season, God placed people in my life who embodied the gospel in a way I had never seen before. They were humble, authentic, and full of love. They didn’t pressure me. They didn’t perform religion. They simply lived what they believed. And through them, God gently drew my heart back to Him and reminded me of who He truly is.

Not a distant judge,
but a loving Father.
Not a taskmaster,
but a Redeemer who restores.

That season marked the beginning of real healing—learning to trust again, learning to rest in grace, and rediscovering the beauty of the gospel. And it is a story God is still writing in my life today.

If you’d like to hear more, please watch this short video.