Since I may not get around to telling my life story for quite a while (since I am busy with work, running, church activities, and daily chores), I have decided to write a summary so that those of you reading the beginnings of my memoir aren’t like “I have no idea what she’s talking about in this part of the story.”

I grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, with three brothers–two older, one younger. I went to a private Lutheran school (which had about 200 kids total K-9) until 8th. In 9th grade, I went to the public high school on the south side of Rochester, Mayo High School. Growing up, I had no exposure to drugs, alcohol, bad language. I lived in a bubble. When I got to high school, that bubble surprisingly didn’t pop.

I was a cheerleader my freshman year and then on danceline every year after that. I dated one main boy in high school, Rabi, starting the fall of my sophomore year. We got along really well and he understood me. We slept together after dating for a little more than a year. But we had this habit of fighting, breaking up, and getting back together. At first, it happened maybe 2 times a year. But after a while, it happened every other week. He cheated on me twice, once sleeping with another girl. My heart was broken and then shoddily mended.

A few of our breakups lasted months. I dated other boys in the meantime to fill the void. I didn’t think that life was worth living without a boyfriend. I slept with another boy the summer before my senior year of college, after I had remarked that I didn’t think I could ever sleep with a boy that quickly. It was after that happened that I started looking at sex as not a big deal but rather something you could do with anyone.

Rabi got me started on smoking weed and taking shots of vodka to get drunk. I didn’t do it much my senior year, maybe once every one or two weeks. But soon high school was over. Rabi went away for the summer to be a camp counselor up north. It was a long, lonely summer without him. I turned to exercise and counting calories to distract me and pass the time. I also smoked weed more often.

Rabi got home from camp and was more disappointed over having to leave early than he was excited to see me. I finally realized that I wasn’t–and never would be–his #1 priority, like he was mine. So we broke up.

I went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. I still saw Rabi a couple times (he went there too) but after the first couple weeks, we went our separate ways. My roommate, Hope, was a big partier so we got drunk and smoked weed a lot. By Thanksgiving time, I was smoking weed everyday, all day long. I never went to bed sober. I’m anal enough about academics that I still got good grades but I did gain the freshman 20 from getting the munchies so much. I started sleeping around more.

On spring break in Rochester, I met a boy from Venezuela who was studying abroad. We kicked it off right away and dated until he went back in July. We slept together the first week we knew each other. I thought I loved him but I was just deceiving myself. We stayed in contact over the next year, however.

The summer after my freshman year, I worked at a department store. When I came home in the evenings, there were always parties at our house. My friends would hand me a drink as I walked in the door and I would pound shots to try to catch up with them. That summer, I had my first one night stand. The boy left immediately afterwards. When I realized he was gone, I went into the bathroom and stared at my naked body. I didn’t feel a thing. I knew that I should be bothered, I should feel something because I had just been used. But I felt nothing. I began to sense that something was wrong with me.

My sophomore year I tend to think of as the “year of boys.” I didn’t really date anyone but I had sex with a few more guys, putting my total up to 6, and made out with literally countless others. After spring break my sophomore year (which me and my friend Kelly Meeker spent in Miami Beach), it became a game to see how many guys I could make out with. I would pick out the guy at a party and then see if I could make him want me. I can’t remember it not working.

My desire for attention from guys and for physical pleasure ruled my life. I kissed and slept with guys that I knew my friends liked with complete disregard for how they would feel if (and when) they found out. I starved myself and punished my weed binges with exercise. I spent hours upon hours in front of the mirror, looking at my body and trying to convince myself that I was as sexy as Jessica Simpson and Brittany Spears. All I cared about was being desired. I wanted to be sexy. I wanted to be wanted.

But I knew that my life was missing something. I couldn’t believe that this was all there was to life–living for the weekends and then drinking so much that I couldn’t remember anything. My life felt empty and pointless.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, Rabi came back into my life. We spent time together as friends but he was going to be a counselor again that summer and I was going to study abroad in Venezuela so nothing happened between us. I was also still in contact with German, the boy from Venezuela, and planned on seeing him when I was abroad.

When I first got to Venezuela, I was very homesick. I was staying with a host family and my friend Melody from the States. She was a Christian; I obviously was not. I had gone to Venezuela expecting crazy party times. But what ended up actually happening was much different.

Melody was talking to our host mom one day about God and what it meant to believe in Him. I was sitting in my bedroom, which was kitty corner to Melody’s, so I overheard their conversation. It intrigued me. So I asked if I could join. Melody reluctantly let me join, thinking I was going to ruin her opportunity to share the gospel with our host mom. She continued on about how believing in God means living with Jesus as the center of your life. As I sat there and listened to Melody, the lightbulb went on in my head. I had always said I believed in God but I surely didn’t have Jesus at the center of my life. When she finished, I said, “I don’t live like that.”

My desire for God had been awakened. Melody lent me her extra Bible and Desiring God by John Piper, both of which I just soaked up over the next month. I talked to Melody about God and spiritual things everyday. We stuck together a lot because we were the only 2 people out of our United States group (it seemed) that didn’t want to drink and let loose (although I still did a couple times…change isn’t overnight!)

I did see German while I was over there. I tried explaining the gospel to him and how I didn’t want to have sex anymore. I had been very convicted about my habit of sleeping around by 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. He didn’t understand at all. He called me after I had gotten back to the States and I had to tell him in a not-so-friendly way to not call me again, unless I called him.

When I got back to the States, I knew that my new lifestyle and desire for God would be challenged by my old lifestyle and friends. And it was a challenge that I didn’t entirely win. My 21st birthday was about a week after I got back. I got hammered at the bars. When we were leaving, I felt so angry that I threw my phone on the ground (and it shattered) and started crying. Back at my apartment that I shared with Jenny, I cried to my friend Kelly about how “This wasn’t who I am anymore.” Things still didn’t change.

In fact, they got worse. Because my heart and spirit had been changed through God’s grace, I hated the party scene. I had always disliked it; I would have much preferred to sit at home with my good friends. But now I really hated it. So I drank more. That way, I wouldn’t have to really be aware of how much I hated it.

But all the booze made me a very angry person. I cursed and yelled often; I broke things; I blacked out. I once walked home all by myself in a fit of rage from downtown Minneapolis to my apartment (about 5 miles away). The scariest part? I didn’t remember a single thing the next day about leaving or walking home.

The turning point came one night when I was especially angry at my roommate Jenny. I was yelling at her like usual but this night, I threatened to kill her and even attempted to strangle her. Other people were there and stopped me but after that night, I realized that I was becoming a person I didn’t want to be.

So I stopped drinking so much. I cut it back to 2-3 shots a night, down from the 10-12 I had been taking. But being at bars and parties sober enough to be conscious of what it was like, I hated it again. I realized that I couldn’t keep kidding myself. I had changed and that was that. I wanted a new life, one with God. I couldn’t have a new life if I held on to my old life.

So I stopped drinking and going to parties. It was a wonderful feeling–of going to bed sober and waking up without a hangover. Of being productive. Of doing what I wanted on the weekends and not what I thought I should do to be cool. I started spending more and more time with students and staff of Campus Outreach. They welcomed me into their circle with open arms and I felt very blessed to have them during that transition time.

But I became very aware of the truth in Matthew 10:34 over the next months. I really did lose my old life. All my friends, habits, lifestyle. The night that it really hit home was when my friend Kelly was coming down from St. Cloud to visit me. Instead of coming straight over, she went over to Jenny’s friend’s house to smoke some weed. Since I didn’t smoke anymore (or at least was trying not to), they didn’t invite me. So I was sitting all alone in my apartment while my best friend and roommate hung out without me. After I talked to Kelly on the phone and found out where she was, I hung up the phone and burst into tears.

It was hard to let go of my old lifestyle–the biggest reason being that I lost a huge part of who I had come to be: the girl at the party that every guy wanted. I lost that attention from guys. But my new life in Christ had infinite payoffs and I was reading the Bible for an hour and a half every day, soaking up truth and knowledge like a sponge.

I went to Atlanta New Year Conference the winter of my junior year. It was there that I heard that Jesus was everything I ever needed and that he satisfied every desire. I had been smoking weed before I went, trying to escape from life and its trials. But at the conference, I realized that Jesus could be my escape too. I haven’t smoked weed since.

I had been dating/hanging out with Rabi that fall after becoming a Christian. But after repeated spiritual conversations and realizing that Rabi was not in a place or willing to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior, we stopped hanging out as much. After telling him my thoughts on homosexuality over the phone one night (before remembering that his mom was a lesbian), our relationship was over. We never talked to each other again. Another piece of my life lost.

But I gave up that and much more for the life I have now–a life full of eternal hope and earthly purpose. And in the words of David Livingstone, the great African missionary, “I never made a sacrifice.”

Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?-Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which HE made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.