I have always loved written language. In high school I gobbled up stories like Ethan Frome, Of Mice and Men, and Cyrano de Bergeac. I scribbled cheesy poems in my journal about really important things like finding my identity and the cute boy that sat next to me in Geometry.
In college I started reading more of the “self help” genre and gravitated towards book titles like Be the Best Version of You, or Live the Life You Want Now. I was curious about the world around me, and wanted to be shrewd.
Well, and have that whole “best life” thing of course. ;)
Since a lot of these self-help books quoted parts of the Bible, I found myself digging up my childhood copy and reading a few select verses for motivation.
I spent the summers of college working long hours in a sales internship, and spent time each morning searching to unlock the key of my “best life” in my Bible.
I tended to skipped over the verses that didn’t seem relevant and focused on the, “I can do all things,” or the “He’ll give me the desires of my heart” ones. If I am being honest, I didn’t really care about the context or the real meaning, as long as I felt inspired and motivated. After all, I had sales goals to hit, and I had to make that cheddar!
Thankfully despite my off-kilter motives, the Lord used His Word to move me from a place of cherry-picking verses, to a place of truly wanting to understanding the message of the Bible. I shifted from playing the open-up-your-bible-and-put-your-finger-on-a-verse-to-read approach, to realizing the Bible was a book was written with a particular intent.
I wasn’t fully sure what that was, but God gave me the curiosity to keep digging.
As a born-and-raised Southern girl from Alabama, I decided after college to leave the land of sweet tea and SEC football, and try out the big city. So I packed everything I own in my tiny two-door Honda Accord and moved to Washington, DC to be a full-time nanny. I wanted to take some time to figure out my next step, which I presumed was landing a sweet corporate job or grad school.
But rather than fanning my ambition for success, the Lord used this time to grow my affection for His Word. I found an amazing women’s small group, and began to really read (and study) God’s word in depth for the first time. God slowly began to deconstruct my genie-in-a-bottle approach to Scripture.
I gobbled up everything I was learning. It was through His Word, and incredibly Godly counsel from my mentors—I began see Him for who He really is, my Savior. And slowly during this season, I started to lay down the little "g" gods that I had been worshipping before: my own capabilities, relationships, and perfectionism.
Now almost 10 years later, I have a completely different view of Scripture. If you know me, then you know that I am a HUGE fan of inductive Bible study. This method taught me to focus on pulling the meaning out of the text, rather than putting meaning into the text. (Which I am prone to do because of my early Bible-reading tendencies!)
If I am studying the Word, it is rare that I don’t have my pack of colored pencils handy.
Here is the part of my story that matters most—God did give my my best life. He rescued me from having to be perfect to find my value. He rescued me from believing that a man or any earthly relationship could fully satisfy me.
All of this is why I am passionate about empowering people to understand more about the Bible, and also to know and love the God of the Bible.
The God who decided to take a broken, messy person like me and invited me on a journey to know Him more fully.
