I grew up in Southern California to an incredible Christian family. My life consisted of going to church, attending school, dancing ballet, and playing piano. Although my life looked perfect on the outside, having a loving family, a wide circle of friends, and excelling in the activities I did, it was truly far from it.
When I hit my high school years, I realized that God was getting in the way of the things I wanted to do, so I turned away from the faith and sought out the world. This sent me in a spiral of anxiety, self hatred, and numbness. My escape became seeking out male attention, smoking, and drinking. Even though I enjoyed it while it lasted, I was left deeply hurt and apathetic.
Upon graduation, the decision was made to not attend college as I would have gone for all the wrong reasons. Instead, I chose to do a DTS with YWAM. What at the time was getting away to Hawaii for a fresh start turned into God radically saving me and transforming my life.
During my DTS, the Lord met me in more ways than I could have imagined. He taught me to be confident in my identity as a daughter of the King, receive healing from my brokenness, and abide in pure joy beyond comprehension! I was overflowing with His love and I couldn't keep it to myself.
Because of this overflowing love, I felt lead to return to YWAM to staff the same DTS I was a student of. Being able to lead my generation into the same freedom and transformation that I experienced was the calling that I felt the Lord place on my life.
The two years that I committed to staff were some of the most challenging, stretching, and refining years of my life. The Lord began to increase my capacity to love in a way that only He can and grow desperately dependent and surrendered to Him. During this time, I had the privilege of living with and discipling many girls as well as lead three month outreaches to both Puerto Rico and Colombia.
The past few years of walking with the Lord have made me so much more expectant and full of faith to see how He continues to use me and change the lives of others. My only desire is to fall further in love with my King and honor Him with my life simply because He is worthy of it.
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