“When I was nine years old, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and 18 months later, she passed away.
“I remember praying every night when she was sick for God to heal her, and I never doubted He would. Because God was part of my family’s everyday life, I knew I could rely on Him whenever I needed. I learned that God heals people, so after she passed, I was very angry at Him for not healing my mom. For about ten years after that, my family situation was very difficult for me. My dad got remarried, and I felt out of place with my family. This is when I first started distancing myself from my feelings. Life felt easier without feelings and emotions.
“Eventually, the foundation of faith my parents raised me with kept coming to the surface. I realized how much I needed the Lord, so I decided to return to Him. A year or two later, I accepted Christ at church camp, but inside, I still wasn’t quite ready to surrender full control of my life. I don’t think I fully understood what it meant to give everything to God.
“After a wonderful time in college with great Christian friends, I moved to Dallas by myself and started my first corporate job and online grad school all in the same week. All my friends were still in college, so by the time COVID hit a few months later, I became very lonely.
“In loneliness and isolation, I entered into an affair. Our relationship continued after his divorce, but the conviction of the Holy Spirit began to feel suffocating. I knew it was wrong and destructive. I kept our relationship secret from most people in my life, which just added to my feelings of isolation. It was the furthest I’d ever felt from God in my entire life.
“After ending the relationship because of my convictions, I realized that if I did not immerse myself fully in a biblical community, I wouldn’t be able to fight my sinful patterns on my own. I reached out to a friend and asked her if she’d consider membership at Watermark with me. I knew that community and serving would help me keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. And, by God’s grace, that’s exactly what happened. Through confession, time in the Word, help from community, and membership at this local church, I have experienced the fruit and joy of a life completely surrendered to the Lord.
“Through this time of growth and repentance, my community director told me some hard truths that really opened my eyes to my sin. She said, ‘When you teach yourself not to feel things, it is easy to sin without feeling conviction.’
“This stunned me. For a long time, it was hard for me to even fathom how I had been capable of the sin I committed. But I realized that for over ten years of my life, I had conditioned myself to be separate from my emotions to protect myself. I was able to dismiss my feelings of conviction for a long time because I had tried so hard to separate and compartmentalize my life. But that conversation helped me understand both the depth and extent of my sin and the magnitude of God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus.
“It was not that I didn’t know God or that I didn’t know I needed a relationship with God. This was a period of actively choosing to sin and choosing what I wanted over God. I pursued what I thought would bring me contentment over the only One who can truly provide contentment. Choosing what I wanted only brought anxiety and pain, but choosing Christ brought peace.
“For the past year, I have been unpacking all of this and prioritizing growing in my faith as the most important thing in my life. I have had to really learn what I say I believe to be true. I’ve had to learn, read, and pray in depth to fully rely on my faith in Christ.
“Now, I have learned that if I truly surrender control over my life to the Lord and walk with His Spirit, there is no longer pressure on my decision-making. I am simply asking the Lord for strength and discernment of what the next obedient step forward is, and the peace that has resulted from that is immeasurable.”