Ashley
In May 2009 I was about to graduate college and I was lonely and confused about the future. I had spent the last four years isolating myself and wondering what was wrong with me. I noticed that I would walk around campus with a frown on my face all the time. This bothered me because when I was younger people would always ask me why I was always smiling. I was lost and broken and I didn’t know how to put myself back together. I had no joy in living anymore. I was merely just existing.
My mother and sister came to my college graduation and they told me that they started going to church. I was skeptical and concerned about what kind of church they were going to so I had to check it out for myself. When I walked into the small storefront church there were only two or three people in the church and the pastor, David Murphy, and his wife, Dasia. Dave told me how he gave his life to Jesus through the murder of his friend Spencer. I left that first service with a ton of questions and came back on and off to church for the next 7 months. Dave and Dasia were not the hypocrites that I thought they would be. They were genuinely concerned about people and they were just very real. Finally on December 13th, 2009 my mom nudged my hand up at the altar call and I went up and prayed for salvation. I didn’t pray with my whole heart but I stopped listening to the radio on my way to work and I started singing church songs to myself and talking to God. If God was real I wanted to know him for myself. I saw the change in my sister who went from being a very unstable, very angry, and depressed person to a person full of joy and peace. The change was very tangible! I knew that I didn’t want my heart to turn to stone and that’s what I felt like was happening to it.
It has been two years and one month since I asked Jesus Christ into my life and I have had to make some very tough decisions for God, like moving to Cape Cod and breaking up with a boyfriend but God has blessed my decisions tenfold. God provided me with a job on the Cape a few weeks after I moved here and he has blessed me with many new friends. I am no longer lonely. The decisions were tough at the time but I do not regret them and I know now more than ever that what God has in store for each of our lives is better than anything we could ever imagine for ourselves. God’s unfailing love and mercy can restore the lost and the broken. I am so excited for all that God has in store for my life. I am finally living again!