When I was seventeen, my mom and I did not get along whatsoever. It was a constant battle between us.
I decided to move out myself, at seventeen. I was working at Sonic, two different Sonics, at minimum wage, and worked my way up. So I was nineteen at this point, still going to college and working two jobs, working three jobs, working four jobs at some points. I was fighting with not having peace in my day-to-day. I felt like I had to do everything myself.
My dad committed suicide when I was eight. That’s partially why I didn’t become a Christian at all because every time I would talk about suicide the Christians that I personally knew would tell me that he is in hell and there’s nothing you can do. For an eight-year-old and above that definitely stems from that.
He and my mom fought one night. This is the only part of my childhood that I remember. I blanked everything else out. The next day the cop came to our house and told us that he had killed himself in the field behind our house. That’s essentially all that I remember in that aspect of it. It brought me into survival mode when it comes to dealing with it by myself.
He is the start of me doing it by myself completely for sure.
He was the best. I was a daddy’s girl, hands down.
I had a couple of friends when I was in college and a little bit after. I met them through friends and stuff like that but they would always tell me, “I’m praying for you. You’ll find the Father eventually. I’m praying for you.” I was like, “I don’t care if you’re praying for me. I don’t understand what you are praying for me about. I’m fine. I’m doing it on my own. I’m fine.”
Nick and I met when I worked at Trust Federal Credit Union. One of my really good co-workers told me about him. I had just gotten out of a bad relationship two weeks prior, not long at all. She said, “I have this guy. You need to meet him. He’s a good Christian man. He’s funny. He’s outgoing. He’s just like you. You need to meet him.”
I was like absolutely not. Noway. I am not meeting this guy. I turned him down two times and almost turned him down the third time but something told me to give him a chance. Me being the provider that I have always been for myself, I told him we could go to cheap taco night at Amigos.
When we first met we asked those typical questions. Do you believe in anything? Are you a Christian? Stuff like that. I just simply told him absolutely not. I don’t believe. There’s not a particular thing that I believe in. I’m just kind of complacent in what I believe. His exact words to me were, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll find him eventually.” He would ask me every so often, “Hey, do you want to go to church?” I would turn him down up until about a year and a half later I finally decided to go to church with him one Sunday morning and it changed my life.
We wrote whoever you did not trust on a paint stirrer and you stood up, prayed about it, and broke it in half. That put a lot of things into perspective for me.
I think the most that I felt Him was when I started tithing. The first moment I went to church we tithed. One day when COVID happened, I lost my job and all things came to a head. My friend had moved, she is a traveling nurse so she had moved away trying to help out and things like that. She called me one day and we face timed for two-plus hours. Then all of a sudden we got off the phone and she Venmo’d me six hundred dollars. She said, “God told me you needed this.” I said, “What are you talking about? We are fine. I have money in savings. Everything is fine.” She said, “Something told me to give you six hundred dollars.” Those six hundred dollars covered my rent the next month.
I tithed and that’s when the financial peace started coming but then the trust came from that sermon at church.
The trust in finances, finances come, and go. You don’t have to rely on that so much. Yes, you are going to struggle sometimes. Yes, you are going to worry about it. That’s just natural but if you give back to Him or give the percentage that you are supposed to give to Him in the first place it comes back and then some.
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