Hm Personal Journal

am, trying to figure out where to go from here in my life.I began looking into continuing my education

prayed about something in my life, and felt like God had answered that prayer, and then the way

telling me the things I was doing was wrong. Until I gave my heart to the Lord.

So I continued on this course, and after high school got a part time job working with CIS (Communities In Schools) in Brunswick County. I worked there part time as an after school teacher. The program was designed to help at risk kids stay on track by connecting with resources from the community and extra academic guidance to help them learn. I loved this job and the children so much, so during the day I was attending the community college to try and start pursuing my goal.

After completion of high school, I moved on to Barry University where I majored in the premedical sciences in pursuit of my ultimate goal of becoming a medical doctor. A career in medicine is the only goal I have had as a child since my dad handed me an anatomy atlas while in primary school. The task was daunting, but with hard work and many late nights I persevered. The experience of college developed my communication skills, exposed me to several cultures and helped me to mature as a leader.

hurt, allowed the cycle to continue. In hopes of escaping the violence I married and

attending classes for a short time to have a baby boy in September 2004, then returned to finish college.

parent, I finally decided to finish my college education and enrolled online at Bethel University in 2011.

As a young child I had not realized what he had to go through to give us the things we had. As i became older i started

Everything in my life occurred backwards. I married at age 17 and started a family. My children were my motivation. Postsecondary education seemed impossible. Guidance and a support system were absent from my life. The process for attaining an education seemed so complicated. Postsecondary education seemed so foreign to me. I struggled through paying for one class at a time due to the absence of knowledge about financial aid. Unfortunately, I did not have a counselor that mentored me throughout the process. Nine years later through aspirations for my children, I finally achieved my Associates’ Degree from a community college. Unfortunately, at this time, I never acknowledged my success of receiving a degree.

I had a baby after shortly after I graduated high school. I attended a university-- before I withdrew to focus

In 2012, I married the love of my life and a few months later, my first “extenuating circumstance” (and my greatest adventure yet) arrived at a whopping 7 lbs. and 6 oz. Our son has been the most wonderful thing that could’ve happened to my husband and me, and he is the main reason that I want to pursue a degree. Although balancing a job, school, child has been no small feat, it is important to me that when he grows up, he can look at my example and see that it is never to late to accomplish your goals.

At one point in my life, God also blessed me with a wonderful husband in whom I started a family with. We were married for 6 years and courted a year before our marriage. Unfortunately, my husband was unfaithful and left me for another woman, leaving me heartbroken and to be a single mother. Both before and after our marriage, we were both involved in the church and loved the Lord very much, however as things tend to happen, our divorce was one of them. Throughout this, I stayed strong in my faith and begun a new life with just me and my boy’s. Now I live for God and my children with the help and strength that comes from Him above.

Back in October of 2016, I would say my faith in God was scratched and grew in a way that has made me who I am today. I was faced with a tough time in my life where I encountered a situation I was not expecting. My heart was hurt and I was in a place of being statement because my spirt was feeling empty. I was confused at The Lord and constantly wondering why he would put me through this time. I felt at times that my dreams were crushed and my life was falling apart. But that was an emotion not the truth.

My personal experience of God is based on my life experiences and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I have experienced God’s presence in my life and I have felt the Holy Spirit guiding me. I first felt God’s call as a teenager and prayed that one day I would become a pastor. But my new Christian faith was not strong enough and I soon succumbed to the desires of this world. I refused to recognize God’s call and it took decades for God’s prevenient grace to bring me back into fellowship with God’s Son. More than a decade ago I felt God’s call again but this time in a completely different way. This time my faith was strong and I had that personal relationship with God’s Son. During my Emmaus Pilgrim Walk in 2007 my teenage prayers came back to me. Calmness overcame me like none I had ever experienced and for the first time in my life I knew that God had set me aside for this purpose. I felt God’s call in a way I had never felt before and I knew that the Spirit had been preparing me all these years to become a pastor. I realize now that God saw me as I could be, not what I was at that time! God never gave up on me and I now believe that God answered my prayers so that everyone else would know that only God could have changed my heart and the direction of my life.