We finally got my medications under control, and I was pretty stable for a while. In August of 2007, I noticed an ad on Facebook for a Christian sorority that had just formed at UNF. Rush week was the first week of school, and completely against my nature, I responded to the ad and made plans to attend the first event the following week. I wasn’t practicing my faith at all at this point, but I firmly believe that God drew me there to overcome my fear of meeting new people. That first week was a lot of socializing, fellowship and prayer. Most of the girls were practicing Evangelicals. I was honest with them that I wasn’t really sure where I fit in, but that I believed in God and in Jesus Christ as my Savior, and that I wanted to deepen this relationship. I spent almost every day of that semester learning about my faith and spirituality. I learned how to pray, I learned about the beauty of the Gospels, and I learned that I was a sinner.
I knew that I hadn’t been living my life right, but it was just a vague sense of disobeying my parents and not living up to some sort of moral code. I had never really looked at my life in terms of obedience and sin. I became heavily involved in my sorority that semester, and also in a small church that a lot of my sisters attended. We had small group meetings each week, Bible Studies, and retreats. It was the first time I’d ever met a group of people my age that loved the Lord and seemed unashamed of it. They cared for each other like family, and I felt so blessed to be brought into their flock.
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.
Acts 2:42
Although I was no longer having manic episodes or dealing with the reckless behavior associated with it, I found myself with a big mess that I had to figure out how to clean up. I was thousands of dollars in debt and had no way to pay a penny of it back. Creditors began calling, I dreaded going to the mailbox each day. I finally had to change my phone number just to escape that anxiety that raced throughout my body every time my phone rang. I remember getting down on my knees in my walk-in closet, shaking and sobbing, and I begged God to make it all just go away. I began reading lots of Christian self-help books – everything from prayer to relationships. In October of 2008, after reading a particularly moving book about relationships and having a deeper relationship with the Lord, I had one of those aha moments that people sometimes talk about. I wasn’t sure that I believed in the Evangelical idea of being born-again, but if it was true – that was the closest I was going to get to it. I spent a lot of time in prayer and made a promise to God to stop living my life for myself and to start living it for Him. I asked Him to come into my heart and to cleanse me of all my past sins and to guide my every step from there on out.
Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide. I said, “I confess my faults to the Lord, and you took away the guilt of my sin.
Psalm 32:5
