Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

Thanks for taking the time to get to know me! For anyone who may be interested, this is a snapshot of who I am, my testimony and how I came to start this blog. The short version is that God’s plans for my life are always better than my own and He is faithful to complete the good work begun in me (Philippians 1:6). 

He Calls Me

Like many testimonies, mine begins like this: I grew up in a Christian home… The truth is, I do not take this blessing for granted. I am who I am today largely because my parents instilled in me a love for God and the importance of His Word from my infancy. I clearly remember sitting in our family room feeling convicted of my sin and my need for a savior as my dad read the evening devotional. Afterward, I expressed this to him and he prayed with me to receive Jesus as my savior. I believe I was five years old.

I attended a Christian elementary school where I remember a missionary family coming to speak in chapel about their work for the Gospel. I went home that day and told my mom that I wanted to be a missionary.

In junior high, I went with a small group of youth from my church to the mountains of Kentucky on a “missions trip.” During one of the evening worship sessions, I told one of our group leaders that I had wanted to be a missionary since I was nine and that I wanted to really commit myself to that life goal. She prayed with me and encouraged me that though the process would be long and slow, God would be faithful to use my willingness in this field.

He Sanctifies Me

In high school, like probably every high-school student, I struggled to find my identity. I knew my identity was truly in Christ, but I was striving much harder to create an external identity for myself.  I had “spiritual highs” followed by dry lows and so I waited for the next “high” while neglecting my day in and day out relationship with my Savior. But God still had my heart and continued to pursue me when I was not pursuing Him.

Each summer, I went with my youth group on whatever missions trip they were doing. I remember feeling truly alive in Christ on these trips, like I was doing that for which I was created. But then I would return home and really struggle to live out my faith in the reality of everyday life. I especially struggled with showing my parents respect. My turning point was our church’s trip to Mexico. My parents would tell you that I came home from that trip a different person. God was at work sanctifying me.

My senior year, I had the unique opportunity to travel to Hungary for my senior project. I wanted to be a missionary teacher, so one of my teachers set me up to shadow some missionaries that ran a school in Budapest. This confirmed my life dream and when I heard about Moody Bible Institute, I knew that was the perfect place to pursue it. So I applied only to Moody, though I was warned of how unlikely it was I’d be accepted. But, I believe God had ordained it and so I was accepted.

My time at Moody was one of my absolute favorite seasons in my life. I grew immensely in my knowledge and understanding of the Bible and in my faith, made lifelong friends and had so much fun living in Chicago. But…I did not see my dream of becoming a missionary teacher realized. I spent three full years in the elementary education program before deciding I wasn’t cut out to be an elementary teacher. 

Nevertheless, the goal of being a missionary wasn’t out the door, so I finished my time at Moody as a Biblical Studies major, and connected with a missions agency in Swaziland for my internship. It was an incredible experience. I did not want to come home and decided I would return as soon as possible to be a single missionary.

He Is the God of Peace

Enter Kevin. About a month after I returned I met my now husband (who had no interest in overseas missions). As our relationship turned quickly from friendship to dating, I began to wrestle with my conflicting desires to be with him and to be a missionary. But God brought peace to my heart and mind rapidly, for seven months after we began dating, we were married. Kevin was still in college and struggling to determine his career path when he began to feel called to Moody and full-time ministry. Of course, I couldn’t recommend Moody highly enough and he decided that he would apply and pray that if it was God’s will, he would be accepted. And he was. So, back to Chicago I went.

This season at Moody proved to be very much different from my first and was almost unbelievably challenging for us. But there is peace in knowing you are where God wants you to be and we would never trade that time for how God worked through it to deepen our faith and marriage. (And oh yeah, we had two unplanned babies while we were there.) Kevin thought he would major in Theology with an Apologetics emphasis but he ended up doing Secondary Education and we moved back to our hometown where he completed his degree with a semester of student teaching.

Since then, he has been teaching at that same school, we have had two more children and have gotten much more involved in our church than we had ever been. We have learned that the more we pursue God and use our gifts for His kingdom, the more peace we have and the more we grow. On the flip side, the more we try to center our lives around our own interests, the less peace we have in our relationships with God and each other and the more our growth is halted. It was just after God pulled me out of one such dry time that the idea of blogging came to me.

He is Faithful

I was disappointed in the apparent lack of sound, deep children’s Bible resources and joked that maybe I would just write my own. Then I began thinking that if I wanted to really pour sound biblical truth into my kids, I needed to be first pursuing it in my own life. My increased studies in God’s Word led to an increased awareness of the lack of biblical literacy and consistency in the society around me. Beginning with myself and my own kids, I began to think that if more people were really rooted in the truth of God’s Word, they would be able to raise more biblically grounded children. And so my joking, unrealistic idea of writing children’s books became a (slightly) more realistic idea of starting a devotional blog for adults. (Not just for parents!)

“But wait!” you might say. “What happened to being a missionary?” Well, over the years, God has opened Kevin’s heart to the idea and we both believe that is a real possibility for us in the future. As we started becoming more involved in ministry, Kevin speculated to me that unless we were being faithful to serve God here, he would never take us overseas. We can, and must, be faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ wherever we are. And I believe starting this blog is one big way I can be faithful in this season (although admittedly, I’ve been kicking and screaming the whole way). I trust that my God is forever faithful to fulfill His promises. Wherever He leads us in whatever time frame, He is faithful and He is good. 

He Will Do It

So if there is one thing Kevin and I have learned since we met (and really, the repeating theme of my life’s story–have you been reading this thing?), it’s that the plans we make for ourselves are rarely the path God leads us down. In reality, His plans are always far better than our own. And sometimes, He lays a desire on our hearts and it takes a looong time to be brought to fruition or takes a completely different form than we had imagined. But He blesses our faithfulness and He desires to show us His faithfulness. We can always rest in the reality that He is sovereign and works all things for His glory and our good.  And in the end, however He uses us in this life, He will sanctify us completely and complete the good work He has begun. To conclude then, my prayer for you, my reader, is this: 

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)