Testimony Cont'd

Part Two

The Spiritual "Slide"
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. Most people laugh when I say this and ask if I hated it and if I was forced to go there. To which i boldly proclaim: I LOVED every STINKIN' moment of my days at dear ole' SHA! I made some of the best friendships of my life there. Four women who will forever be in my life affectionately known as the Ya Ya's are the closest thing i have to sisters. Even though its been over 10 years since we all met and who's lives are on radically different paths, we still pick up just where we left off. If it hadn't been for the comfort, vulnerability and love that Sacred Heart Academy's walls encouraged, I do not know if I would have ever found such great girl friends.

I learned many "valuable" (and i use that term with much sarcasm) things at SHA. Many not related to school! Like how to re-invent myself, as i did several times over the years. With different color hair, peircings and stories about my past that painted a facade of who i wanted others to see me as. In addition to this I learned my alcohol limit, drinking games, party scenes, what second and third base were like and that I was completely empty by all the things i attempted to fill my life with. I had wins and loses, successes and failures, broken hearts and mended relationships...yada yada yada. So the saga of high school goes for most of us. But one thing I am so thankful for that did come out of my time at SHA was God's every present pursuit of my soul. He sent His holy spirit to bend me towards a desire for Godly things versus the things I tried to find myself in. Things like the death of my Grandfather and my brothers brain injury helped to guide me in the search for answers.

By my senior year I was very eager to "know" God and because I was not Catholic my religion teacher took my questions and enquiries to mean that I need to be converted to Catholicisim. Which I attempted my senior year and summer before my freshman year in college. I led a double life. I had overwhelming desires to have a relationship with God, but my relationship with the world took first priority because no one truly explained what it meant to know and be known by God.

Freshman year, first semester in college were some of the lowest and highest times of my life, literally. I again began to reinvent myself by experimenting with drugs and began sliding down a path of alcohol induced fun. Class was for over achievers, which I was not! I joined a sorority to remain connected to a feminine bond that I loved so much at SHA; it was comforting, but not the same. I had friends that loved me, I was popular and well liked by all and I was on top of the world with a drink in each hand. I was also deep in the valleys of the consequences of such a lifestyle. I was dependent on alcohol to have fun, failing at school and utterly faced with feeling very much alone.

Thats when i met my "twin". Her name is Lindsay and she sounded like me, looked like me had a personality like me....but was a Christian. In fact, she was on staff with a Christian, non-denominational organization called Campus Crusade for Christ. She spent her days at Starbucks meeting with college women talking about God. I thought she was interesting, but weird. One thing I will never forget is her asking me this question:

"If you were to die tonight on a scale of 0 to 100% how sure are you that you'd go to heaven?"

A question for which I immediately answered "80%". Feeling pretty satisfied with myself I explained that it was because I was going through RCIA classes to become a Catholic, and because I am a good person; I can attain such good standings. Little did I know that was the beginning of many conversations that led to my discovery that God was not as concerned with the things that I did, than with the condition of my heart. Currently, my heart was living a lie and being torn in a thousand different places which made the things that I did separate me from fully knowing a holy God.