Get Your Fight On

I have had the honor to serve, love on, and be a part of Wave Church for 10 years. Through a decade you learn, see, and experience more than you can even comprehend at times. I can say with no hesitation every day I fall more in love with God and the church. Through the Church and God, you find your passions, desires, and even weaknesses.

Let’s get the lovey gushy stuff out of the way first and talk about how good God is. My parents like to share a story with their friends, our family, random people in the checkout lines at our local grocery store…… My mom & dad are obviously very proud of me. But when I was 9 years old, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like parents that have a 9-year-old, they were expecting a Disney actress or a famous singer like Brittney Spears. (When I was younger she was very sane…how times have changed). I took them by surprise when I said: “ When I grow up I only want to be a person that holds the door open for people to enter heaven.” I can say now 21 years YOUNG nothing has changed, my love for people has only grown.

Anyone that knows me knows that I love to talk, I am not quiet and sometimes it can come off as “extra”. God has given me a voice (a loud voice) to use and if I shut myself down because of what people thought or said, I would be dishonoring God. I must remind myself daily I serve God and NOT people. This reminds me of the passage in the Bible in Matthew 4. I tend to forget how ‘human’ Jesus was. He had to get baptized and then even after that He went through the test in the wilderness and then only after being tested, He was trusted to preach. God gave me a voice whether that is preaching or leading a community group for the rest of my life. Whatever it is, I am going to be tested and I am going to have to fight for what I believe in.

Now to be vulnerable, all of this sounds good because God is good, but everything I have written above is not a revelation I had overnight. It has taken me 21 years and it doesn’t end there. Thank God we never fully arrive but we must keep fighting daily. Typing that sentence was so hard, fighting is not fun at all but when you know what you are fighting for your fight becomes a passionate battle. You have to have faith daily and boy is that the hardest thing ever! For some that know, my family and I are still walking through a season of complete faith. Back in November my mom got a sharp pain on her left side and thought she could sleep it off. My dad had to force her to go to the hospital, they ran tests, and everything looked fine until they did one last test and the nurse came rushing in. Long story short this started a 3-month battle of her fighting for her life. The artery to her heart was failing and they had limited time to repair this artery. They took her to Norfolk General Heart Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia and rushed her straight into an operating room. This operation is the most strategic surgery they perform as doctors and only 3% make it out of this surgery. She made it out fine but had so many complications. Do you know how hard it was to preach to my CG girls in youth that through this all I still have faith? It was not easy and there were days I had to say I had faith when I didn’t. I am thankful I have parents that have always set the bar high! My mom had faith laying pretty much on her death bed and my dad had faith when it didn’t make sense.

Through this all I realized how much we have to fight for what we believe in. Through it all God sends people to fight with you. That’s something I’m now passionate about – fighting TOGETHER not against each other!