My Story

 By: Todd     Pads were cracking, as one hundred grown men practiced beating the tar out of each other trying to get a piece of pigskin across a chalk line……..Yes, I’m talking about the most coveted sport in America, football.     As I stood there and watched, something inside of me missed it so much, even to the point of me becoming teary eyed. Why, I asked myself did this matter so much to me? Why did I miss something that I knew I didn’t want to play in college?     That afternoon was when I realized that my identity was in something that had little value in my life in college, yes sports. That was what my life had revolved around in high school. That was what I felt I was known for. That is where I sought meaning and attention from others. Here I had created an idol in my life that became my identity. How did it get to this point I wondered?     After realizing what was wrong I began thinking about what my real life purp...

By: Casey Run, John, and work, the law commands, Yet finds me neither feet nor hands; But sweeter news the gospel brings, It bids me fly and lends me wings.      I read this old poem the other day by John Berridge and it resonated with me. You see, I am a typical firstborn child-hard working, driven, and motivated by achievement and success. I can remember getting a “B” on my 6 th grade Australia report and hated how that felt so I committed to never getting a “B” again. I hated sitting on the bench for so many basketball games in 7 th and 8 th grade so I spent a great deal of time over the summer trying to improve and in 9 th grade I made the Junior Varsity. I always seemed to find the drive to work hard.     I am blessed to have been raised in a family that went to church and prayed to God. However, as I got older, it became more of a tradition to me than a serious part of my life. As I got into high school, three things became of u...

By: Lexie      Beginning in middle school, I would obsessively dwell on my ideas about what my future would look like.  I imagined that I would be happy if I could just achieve certain goals.  I was extremely anxious about the future.  This insecurity added to my tendency to look for fulfillment in relationships with friends and family skewed my perception of the true purpose God has for my life.  I wanted my plans for the future to line up with society’s expectations of status and success.  All my plans revolved around getting a job in order to have the type of car, house, and lifestyle I wanted.  I believed if I stayed connected in relationships and achieved my career goals, I would be satisfied.  My identity was based on fulfilling expectations I had created for myself.       I began to realize my dreams were not filling me with excitement and passion.   As long as I was doing things for mysel...

By: Katie            In high school I felt like I was one of those people who had it all. Labeled a “good” girl, I was second in my class, had a great group of friends, and was over-involved with every organization that my small town had to offer. I had a family that loved me, and I grew up going to church and learning all about the love of God. Life was so good! After graduation, I could only imagine what college had in store for me. As with most freshmen, I wasn’t really sure of what to expect upon coming to college.  I was looking to make new friends, succeed in school, but most of all have a good time. I couldn’t wait!      It was weird when I found out the freedom I was longing for didn’t exactly meet my expectations. I thought I had everything I wanted, and easily found my value in so many new things- friends, partying, grades, and boys. I was having fun right? I was finally finding my place in college, but for some rea...

By: Jordan         I'm Jordan Slavin, I am a senior at the University of North Dakota and I play on the women’s hockey team. My ultimate goal has always been to play in the Olympics. I was selected to play on the USA U18 world team. I know it’s not the Olympics but this was one step closer to my goal. I was so proud of my self and what I had accomplished. I was finally getting the success I had always dreamed of.      Little did I know, my whole world was about to change. After the World Championship I was training and completely tore my ACL and meniscus in my knee and was told I needed surgery and I would be out of hockey skates for 6 months! Could this really be true? I was devastated. Everything I had just achieved, boom, gone. Down the drain.      I told myself, “Everything happens for a reason, it’s going to be ok, you’re going to be stronger, God has a plan” He did have a plan indeed. After I was cleared, I caught a...

By: Emily Blumer          My life has been a constant game of ‘hide-and-seek’. Not the kids’ game, but a real life version.  I was painfully shy as a child, and I never really learned how to share important things with people.  I would keep anything hard bottled up inside.  I didn’t know how to ask for help with the little things so they would get harder and harder to deal with as the pain inside kept growing.   This led me into a deep and dark hole of depression. By freshman year of high school, I was at an all-time low. I couldn’t take it anymore. Finally after building up a lot of courage to talk to my mom, I started going to counseling and soon enough got anti-depressant medication. Things seemed to be getting a lot better, but that hole still wasn’t completely filled.      I had recognized how much I had been hiding from everyone with how I was feeling, and yet, like the game, I was still seeking hard for ...

By: Anna Huss             I ran into the bathroom crying.  I didn’t care who saw me run across the lunchroom.  I didn’t care that what she said was true.  I just cried.  This time and many times before when I could not handle the truth that I, good student, Christian girl, goody-goody, quiet child, was… imperfect.              That day in the fifth grade, I was sitting at the lunch table with the girls that I had known forever.  We decided to play a “game”.  To begin the “game” one of my friends went around and said one thing about each of us that we needed to, as she worded it, “work on”.  She got to me and I was sweating.  My imperfection was about to be revealed.  I felt vulnerable.  She stood up and looked at me from across the table.             “Anna,...

By: Becca      In the world of today it is very easy to get wrapped up in yourself and all of your problems. “What major to pick?”“What should I do with my life?” “What if I...?” All these things are constant in your mind, just making you feel anxious and worried. In my life I have had several doubts about what should I do with my life. I moved from Brazil to the U.S. when I was 16, and while deciding what to do when I got here, I had this constant worry about what were the right things to do: “Was it right to move? “Should I stay here?”  I just wanted to do the right thing for me, and have the perfect life. I was allowing the worries of my life be what defined me and not really living life. Going from test to test wondering what if I get a bad grade and can’t get into Med School? All these things seemed like huge problems, but I couldn’t really control any of them. What was I going to do if I couldn’t  have control over my life? I was the Captain of my l...

By: Rachel       I am a people-pleaser. I naturally like to go with the flow and just do what I think other people expect of me. I used to feel that only when I live up to other people’s expectations can I have value. I believed that I should not show my true self to people, because then they may not accept who I really am underneath the mask I wore.      This attitude also affected my walk with God. I wanted to please Him, too, and I thought if I worked a little harder I could maybe live up to His expectations. This need to please people and please God by my own self-effort created a roller-coaster of highs and lows, of success and failure.      I hit an extreme low at the end of my freshman year of college. One of my closest friends suddenly seemed to lose interest in being my friend. With no explanation, this friendship was suddenly over. I felt like I had done something wrong to deserve rejection and I felt a sense of insecuri...

By: Tammy           I have a big 10 lb Yorkie … He was only supposed to be 6 lbs., but he just kept growing … maybe because I named him, Thor.  He certainly has the ego of a super hero.   The other day, on one of our many walks, he started barking and pulling on the leash trying to attack a man walking toward us.  I pulled him into the grass to let the man pass us.  The guy laughed as he passed and commented, “You sure have a protector there!”   “Yes, I do,” I replied as I smiled to myself. I have always wanted a protector.      I have known what it is to be torn apart by the words of others.  One of my earliest memories of a friend is being dragged around by my scarf on the playground in kindergarten.   At other times, it’s the cruel words said in anger or pain … words that stuck and unfortunately became words that defined my worth and identity.  Perhaps even greater pain...

  By:  Nao mi     I’ve always felt like everything will be ok as long as I have people around me that love and support me. Because of my need to feel loved or supported, my whole life was always focused on getting people to like me or think highly of me. That way of life came crashing down in a way when I could not get this one person to like me. I tried everything to get this person to like me, and for whatever reason we just didn’t click. Before when someone didn’t really like me, I would always just say to myself, “its ok, they just don’t know me, or don’t understand me,” but this person knew me. They knew me pretty well, and they still did not like me. Around this same time, for whatever reason my room had a little bit of a stank to it. In hindsight it was probably because I hadn’t done laundry in a few weeks. My mom bought me a Scentsy for my room to make it smell a little bit better. I brought it back, plugged it in and I was so excited. Finally, my room ...

By: Ashley     Who am I? It’s not a question I pondered often.  I always thought I knew exactly who I was.  I was the oldest child from a loving, Christian home.  I was definitely an over-achiever.  Everything in my life was running smoothly.  I had good grades, ran varsity cross-country, and had great friends.  I knew where I was heading in life and how I was going to get there.  But once those things were ripped from me one by one I realized how much I found my identity in those things.  Over the course of three years I had worked my way from the slowest member of the girls cross-country team to one of the top varsity runners.  I was so excited to be leading the pack during workouts.  I continued to improve that season of my junior year.  But my hopes of running the state meet that season disappeared without warning.  My coach made a poor decision, in my opinion, by giving my spot on the team to a younger, i...

By: Kamaya     During my childhood and teenage years my life really was all about pleasing myself and doing things that made me happy.  One of the things that made me happy was being surrounded by friends.  My life revolved around hanging out with friends.  As a child I spent every waking minute playing with friends, as a teenager I spent about four hours each night chatting with friends online.  Friends were my life and I began to find my security and happiness in them and the time that I got to spend with them.  Over and over these friends that I found my happiness and security in began to let me down.  They would do things I didn’t agree with or decide they no longer wanted to be friends with me, which led to no phone calls or invitations to do things with them.  I was crushed, unhappy, and had no one to turn to.     One summer while I was in high school I attended a church camp for a week.  During that week I was ...

By: Alisha      One of the first cars I drove after getting my driver’s license had a manual transmission. I was horrible at driving stick. I’d try to reverse slowly and carefully, but would end up jerking back and forth until I gave up and gunned it, once leading to the loss of a tail light and rear view mirror... I would stall multiple times in the middle of intersections at green lights so that the light would have turned red again before I could get moving. It was miserable, I hated driving and my friends didn’t want to ride with me. Finally, my mom gave me a piece of advice that made all the difference in the world. She told me to let the clutch out most of the way before putting the gas on. It all clicked right then. From then on out, I had little trouble getting my car moving in the way it was meant to move.     I feel like there is a lot of correlation between me learning to drive stick and my life as a Christian. I always believed in God and had p...