My life is a grand adventure.
I’ve been spoiled for the ordinary.
I’m in love with my husband.
I delight in my children.
I feel strongly and speak passionately.
I relish beautiful music.
I thrive on planning and organization.
I smile when it’s warm and sunny outside.
I get excited about mentoring young women.
I am an aspiring orphan advocate.
Jesus is my all in all.
And now, here’s a little longer version. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to create and lead. As a kid, I was always the one coming up with new games or imaginary scenarios, and organizing everyone around my ideas. In fact, you probably wouldn’t guess it now, but in elementary school I was the bossiest kid on the playground. I used to force my younger brothers to perform endless plays, concerts and puppet shows for my parents and their friends from church – who were kind enough to sit through all of them and act impressed. Once I even organized a “circus” for the entire neighborhood, in which my friends and I performed our amazing stunts on the monkey bars for about two hours in 100-degree heat as all our moms and dads politely endured the whole thing.
In second grade I was addicted to Nancy Drew mystery books. Pretty soon I started inventing real-life mysteries to solve with my friends. We had a regular clubhouse detective thing going – complete with walkie-talkies, trench coats, derby caps and dark sunglasses. We held secret meetings and kept a shoebox full of evidence we collected. For a while it looked like the case of the neighbor’s missing cat Misty was about to break wide open, but then we lost our star witness when his family suddenly moved to a different neighborhood. So that was the end of my detective career. But it wasn’t the end of my love for drama and adventure!
I started writing short stories (usually mysteries that were strangely similar to Nancy Drew) and music when I was seven or eight years old – and found great pleasure in cultivating creativity. I was comfortable on stage, and used to get a huge thrill from singing solos in church musicals or performing at piano recitals. I had accepted Christ into my heart at the age of five, and had a genuine relationship with Him from a young age. I knew I wanted to do something significant with my life, and I had a real heart for evangelism. I even made some hand-illustrated “tracts” that said “Jesus Loves You” (in red crayon) and handed them out to random strangers in the grocery store.
My childhood was pretty carefree and fun, and I really have nothing but great memories from when I was young. I had a loving family and wonderful friends – and was privilege to have the kind of home life and nurturing love that makes childhood innocent and sweet. But in middle school and high school, my life took a downward turn. I started feeling the intense pressure to conform to the culture, wear the right clothes, act the right way, and become appealing to the opposite sex. And in order to do that, I had to compromise the values I’d grown up with. So I went through some very dark years in which I exchanged my vibrant relationship with God and closeness to my family for the pursuit of popularity and worldly approval. This path led me into a life of sin, selfishness, and intense heartache.
Then, at sixteen, God faithfully and lovingly wooed me back. I understood for the first time what it meant to be redeemed by His blood – that I was bought with a price, that my life was not my own, and that Jesus didn’t just want to be my Savior, but the Lord of my life and the Lover of my soul. That’s when everything changed. I walked away from all the things that had been leading me to compromise and focus on selfish pursuits – and I offered my entire existence to the King of all kings. I left high school, left my friends, left the dating scene, and laid down my career ambitions. I lost everything – but I gained everything. Jesus became my all in all. And I’ve never looked back. It’s been one big, exciting adventure ever since. (Yes, there have been plenty of difficulties and struggles along the way. But He has been faithful in every single storm.)
A few years after giving my life fully to Christ, He began to teach me about God-written love stories. I’d left the dating scene and was basically just trusting Him to bring my husband along in His own time and way. Believe me, this was not an easy thing to live out, especially when most of the other girls my age were pairing up with guy after guy. There were many moments when I had the disturbing thought that by the time God wanted me to get married, all of the “good” guys would already be taken. But He continually challenged me to trust Him and leave it in His hands.
Eric came into my life in a very unusual way. We didn’t date. We didn’t flirt. We never even thought we’d ever end up together. But God scripted a story for us more beautiful and amazing than anything I could have concocted on my own. And He remained at the center – which was the key to everything working the way it did.
About a year after we were married, word was getting around about us –about our unusual love story and how we let God write our story and how we didn’t even kiss until our wedding day. And people started asking us to come tell our story at their Bible studies, youth groups and even conferences. We weren’t too excited about doing it. We didn’t want our story to lose its beauty from rehashing it ad nauseam. Eric was headed to medical school and we planned on going into medical missions. But God had different plans. In our spare time, we had decided to capture our love story in a little booklet that we could give to anyone who wanted to know how God had brought us together. A publisher got a hold of the booklet and said he’d like to publish our story. Once the book got out there, invitations to come and speak started pouring in. We were hesitant to accept them. I didn’t want to become “one of those Christian relationships speakers”. Most of the relationship speakers I’d encountered were old, stodgy, stiff and legalistic. Plus, I didn’t think anyone would really respond to our message. But when we began challenging our generation to give the pen of their lives to the Author of romance – something amazing happened. Their hearts were gripped and they responded by surrendering everything to Christ – consecrating their lives fully to Him. Instead of speaking on relationships being the burden I expected it to be, it became thrilling to travel the country and the world and see so many lives powerfully impacted by His Spirit. It was a privilege to be a part of His work. Through the ministry doors He’s opened I’ve had the opportunity to use the creative gifts I love to cultivate – writing, music, speaking, and leading – but for His purposes and not my own glory. What a joy. I haven’t had this much fun since the days of Nancy Drew mystery stories and puppet shows in the backyard!
And here we are, nearly thirteen years later. It’s been an incredible adventure, and there has never been a dull moment. The lifestyle of ministry we’ve chosen has ushered in lots of challenges and trials. Despite our fairy-tale love story and amazing family backgrounds, we have not had a struggle-free life. (I’m not talking about marriage struggles – in fact, our marriage has thrived through all the ups and downs of ministry life and continues to get more beautiful with time.) There have been spiritual attacks, harsh criticism from outsiders, betrayal from people we trusted – and a myriad of other things behind the scenes that have kept us on our knees and dependent upon our Savior every step along the way. And though ministry has been hard, it has also been fulfilling and rewarding in a way we never could have dreamed or imagined.
We are excited about the future and everything that God has in store! The last couple of years He has been working in our hearts, re-directing our focus and challenging us into even greater lives of sacrifice for His kingdom. One thing I can say without question is that when God holds the pen, the story only gets more beautiful with time.
Okay, so this is a video montage Eric put together from some clips we collected throughout our love story and from our wedding video. If you have read our book When Dreams Come True you’ll recognize a lot of the moments – the Christmas play when Eric first saw me, the first time we shared our love story with family and friends, Krissy and I speaking to a group of girls, and clips from our wedding day. Major disclaimer – please overlook our clothing and hairstyles! It’s rather embarrassing. Some of this footage was taken nearly fifteen years ago, in a different era! We never expected other people to be watching this stuff – we just made this for our own memory collection. However, if you have followed our love story you might find it fun to watch! *
