How my new phase began

This weekend I came to realize that I will not be returning to live in Texas after I graduate next May. The strange thing is my Mom realized it too. When I left Texas this past January and headed to Virginia with a Uhual trailer attached to the back of my little Vibe I was sure I'd be back home when I finished Grad School. That was before Liberty University and before Oasis Church and a bunch of amazing people who I had never met all became part of who I am. A little over four months is all it took to change everything including part of who I am. I will forever be a Texas girl and I will always love Texas and it will always be home in my heart but at least for a while it will not be where I lie my head each night. I have written a few other blogs about things I have realized this past spring but I am going to really lay it out there now. It is not easy for me to be so honest about some of the things I will be sharing but I think it's important to share what we experience in life to help other's that are now experiencing those things. To tell this story properly I have to back track a but and give the back story of this journey. So we will begin with the basics.

Like I said I'm a Texas Girl straight to the core of my being. I have always loved Texas and been proud to call it home. I have amazing parents who are still madly in love with each other after 32 years of marriage. They are not in any way perfect but they do better than most, but this is not their story so that is all you need to know about them for now. I am the oldest and have two sisters and a brother and one nephew. I love my family very much and I would do almost anything for them. I grew up surrounded with lots of love and encouraged to follow my dreams. For so many many reasons when I was a senor in High School I let go of my dreams, in part I think that lose of my Pawpaw (Grandfather) to cancer hit hard. Then within a year I lost my Abuelito (Grandfather in Spanish) to cancer as well. Anyhow, I let my dreams go. My family moved to Costa Rica for When I returned because of complications I had to start my degree plan from the beginning and I was crushed. I am not normally one to give up on anything so I didn't. I started from the beginning and worked to pay for my International Business Bachelors Degree. While doing so I volunteered for Redeemed Ministries in Houston and was blessed with the opportunity to work with women who were trafficked into the sex industry and with survivors. Working as a volunteer there for three years made me a more compassionate person. Before Redeemed I had been guilty of thinking that women in the sex industry were there because they wanted to be but as I researched and met more and more women I learned that no health and fulfilled person would ever chose that life. My heart was broken for women everywhere that were suffering alone and judged by anyone that met them. I was forever changed by the work of Redeemed Ministries and I will never forget them or their work. Then a couple of years ago I finally did it. At 27 I received my Bachelors Degree and it was amazing to know I hadn't given up.

Earlier I said I gave up on my dreams and I did give up on some dreams but I loved business school and graduating was a dream come true. During my last semester of school I began looking for a job but unlike many of my classmates I did not apply to every opening I found. I wanted to be in God's will so I came up with a list of what I needed in a job and I did not apply if the job did not met the list. Six months after graduating I was called for an interview at the company I really wanted to get into, it had been my only interview in the year I had been looking. I had been praying for God to close every door He did  not want to to enter and He did just that. I got the job and started in Feb of 2011. In March I became a Youth leader, I loved the students more than I thought possible. I spent all my extra time with them or planning events or getting ready for the next service. My life changed, those students changed me and made me better in so many ways. I had never been around so many hurting youth. Most of the students came from broken families and many had a parent in prison. The Youth Pastor was an amazing man of God who loved those students and put them first in many cases. His wife became one of my closes friends, she is truly an example of a wife following her husband wherever God leads him. His mother is such an wonderful women of God and I clung to her, she reminded me so much of my own mother. Pressing on, this family impacted my life more than I think they know.

One day in November of 2011 I was speaking with the Youth Pastor and he asked me why I worked for a big business when I clearly have a heart for ministry. Before I could answer the question he asked what my dream job was, if money didn't matter. I told him I had always wanted to go to seminary and then going into ministry and he asked what was keeping me from doing so. I started listing everything that had always kept me from it but he interrupted and asked what was currently holding me back. I didn't have an answer and he had to hang up so we left it at that. But my mind could not escape his question. What was keeping me from my dreams? The more I thought of it the more the answer was clear... I was. I had allowed myself to uses other things as excuses to not take a chance on my dreams. He forced me, in a way that only a true friend can, to look inside myself and question my decision to give up on my dreams because it was going to be hard to reach. When I realized I was in the way of my dreams I applied to seminary that same day and when I received y acceptance a week later I told my parents I was leaving to Virginia to follow my dreams and attend seminary. They were floored and I was overjoyed. After so many years I had accepted that my dreams were gone and that they would never come true only to discover that when we put our trust in God it is never too late for our dreams to come true.

Shortly after I put in my notice at work and began preparing to move to Virginia with my youngest sister (her story is hers to tell). The saying good-bye, packing and drive up itself were difficult because we knew no one in the state of Virginia and had never even visited the university before. We were going on faith and dreams. It literally felt like we were dreaming and at any moment we would wake up in our parents house in Texas but we didn't. At first it was incredibly difficult to be so far from everyone we loved and to not know anyone but God blessed us richly by surrounding us with some of the most amazing people we have ever known. To call them friends now seems insufficient, they became family, the people who I call when something is going on. Again I have been changed by the people God has brought into my life and I am eternally thankful for it... but more on that later, this entry has already surpassed that I expected it would be.


Until next time, hold onto the dreams God has placed in you, they are there for a purpose; you will never feel as peaceful and whole as you will when you are following God's will for your life.