At a high school church retreat in 2001 near Los Angeles, I remember crying when they were playing music. All us teens were in this big room, the lights were dim. It was a cleansing cry. Like a big ocean wave slowly falling on me without drowning me, washing away heartache and guilt I was carrying, which in hindsight was a lot. 

My dorm was across a church and I would just go there and cry. After I accepted the fact that I had to come up with a new plan, I started by spending time to find myself and help others. When I came home for the summer, I was in a summer internship in downtown LA’s financial district. I would spend my lunch break spending time with homeless people on the bridge, getting to know them, and providing for their needs and wants like a compact CD player and other things. I just wanted to get over myself and see the bigger picture.

In 2008, I attended a Joyce Meyer conference in San Jose after receiving a great deal of help from her book Battlefield of the Mind. The one thing that stood out 16 years later is this prayer she prayed over us for total healing. That phrase “total healing” was huge for me. To even think that was possible. But that day, I started to believe it was possible. 

In 2012 in Chicago, I wasn’t living a moral life and my bank account hit zero. I think it reflected the condition of my heart. I became physically weak, felt ashamed, and was poor. I was laying on my yoga mat and I literally reached my hand up to heaven and whispered “help me.”

Later in 2012 that help came through my Christian friend who knew I was struggling. She invited me to her church near Chicago where I lived at that time. This day was significant because there was this crazy storm that created a power outage during the service. It was a mess when we all came out. I don’t remember what happened at church, but that storm made me forever remember going to church that day and being amazed at what the storm could do. 

In 2013 I moved to Kalamazoo and my life continued in this new direction. I spent my time fasting, praying, being in church and helping strangers. I would help anyone: buy and bring many bottles of car oil to a random car broken down on the freeway, help a homeless person for several months: pay for lodging and food, drive him around. I would have coffee dates with homeless people. Sit next to and pray for this man barely responsive due to the substance he was using which was scattered on the sidewalk next to him.

In 2015 in Milwaukee, my husband and I couldn’t get pregnant. We’ve been trying for 3 years. At that time, I liked to go on long drives with no destination. I ended up driving by a church which I decided to go in. I went in and there happened to be a table with a sign up sheet for women who wanted prayers for getting pregnant. I put my name in. I didn’t think much about it, then one day I was sitting at another church. I went in during the weekday, sat, and opened one of their books. This is what I read:

“Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." – Genesis 18:10

Reading this made me laugh out loud. I believed I was meant to read it. A year later, I was pregnant with my now seven year old son. 

Some things that have happened since moving to San Luis Obispo in 2018:

In 2020, I still struggled a lot with depression and this was the worse one yet. I drove because that’s one of the things I like to do when I need insight. I ended up not too far at the Pismo Beach Outlets. I parked and stayed in my parking spot for 3 hours. Eventually I noticed a sign in front of me that said find employment opportunities you love. This was an ad to get people to apply to work at the Pismo Beach Outlets, but this spoke to me loudly on finding a job I love. Also, an interesting thing to me was a van also parked for a while that I can see from my rear view mirror. The words on the van were Redemption Plumbing. I knew the word redemption had something to do with God, but I didn’t really know exactly what it meant yet at that time. And regarding the job sign, I applied for jobs I loved, got hired, and my energy and personality almost immediately returned. My husband was stunned.