I had the privilege of interviewing a handful of women who opened up and shared their stories with me on how Christianity has changed their lives. Before I move on to mormonism, I would like to share some of those stories with you. These ladies have given me permission to use their information and have allowed me to give them a voice to speak to the world about their relationship with God, for which I am very grateful. These stories are in their own words.
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This is April's story.
When I was younger, I grew up in a Methodist church. I was baptized as a baby, so I wasn’t aware of what was going on or anything like that, my parents raised me in the Methodist church. I had a lot of fun writing notes back and forth to my friends during the service. I wasn’t really engaging at all. I tried to listen to the sermons, but it was just not my thing at all, even when I got older.
As soon as my folks allowed me to not go to church, I stopped going to church. It wasn’t because I stopped believing in God – there hasn’t been a moment in my life where I didn’t believe in God. I know that that sounds weird to some people, but my parents introduced me to him at such a young age, that out of the gates, I believed in God. Most of that had to do with my mother and how she raised me, how she treated me, and how she had that hopefulness all the time, happiness seemingly all the time.
When I was 13, I started drinking. I was really good at it. I think one of the reasons I drank was that I was nervous around people or wanted to feel more comfortable and loose and not worry about anything, and so I drank until I was about 23. When I was 23, some really bad stuff happened, and I quit drinking cold turkey on December 27th. I was playing in bands as a drummer, so I couldn’t just avoid alcohol or the places where alcohol would be because I was in the scene all the time. I had to learn right away that I needed to figure out how be in that scene if I wanted to keep playing drums and playing at clubs.
So I kept my New Years Eve plans and everything – everyone came over and was drinking, and I did not drink a drop. I haven’t drank in 18 years now. I can still taste what tequila tastes like, and its not that it hasn’t been hard, but I decided in that moment 18 years ago that if I wanted to stay alive and if I didn’t want to hurt someone else, driving or whatever it was, I had to stop drinking. And if I ever drank again, that meant that I was ready to die. And I wasn’t. I’m not ready to die, at least not in that form or fashion.
Several years later, I met someone and we started dating. It was a very physically and emotionally abusive relationship. I wasn’t strong enough at that time, for whatever reason, to get out of it. Before that, I would look at people and think “oh, you’re an idiot. Why would you stay in that situation? You’re just as much at fault for staying in that relationship.” I never understood how someone would stay in a relationship like that until I was there.
What people don’t understand about abusive relationships is that it doesn’t just happen overnight – it’s a slow progression. They get away with one thing, and the first time you freak out and then eventually you forgive them because they are so sorry, and it just starts this cycle of emotional or physical abuse, then apologies, then more abuse… and the apologies aren’t real.
One thing I will always regret about that relationship is that I wasn’t the one who left. She left me. I begged her to come back for six months before I realized that it wasn’t at all what I needed, and I would never let it happen again. I wish that I could have been the one to be strong and leave. In those six months, I wasn’t going to church, or involved with any of my church friends – and I think those six months could have been condensed with the support from a church family. I didn’t spend much time talking to God or praying through all those years until I found Whosoever through a band I was playing with.
October 2010, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When people say I’m courageous and an inspiration, its surprises me because I don’t think I’ve been all that. God set all this up – it wasn’t an accident that I was just involved in the Whosoever Church to this extent when all this happened. My dad said “Yeah, you were diagnosed with breast cancer, and suddenly Dawn (the pastor of Whosoever) appeared, and she was everywhere all the time – where did she come from?”
The outpour of support from the church and my parents church, and all that support has made it where, in retrospect, it wasn’t nearly as hard as you think it would have been. There have been times when it’s been really hard, and I get depressed… but it has only been days, not weeks. I think there’s a lot of people who go through this and they are depressed the entire time, but staying involved with people and getting that support throughout has been invaluable.
I’ve gotten depressed a couple of times this week. People say “Hey, but you’re at your last chemo, why would you be depressed? Wouldn’t you be excited?”
But the thing is, I’ve been able to simplify my life because of breast cancer. I was able to say “nothing else matters right now, I’m just going to focus on this.”
Now I’m about to be let loose on my own to deal with my own life all over again. It’s kind of scary. Before breast cancer, it felt like I was in this giant snow ball coming down a mountain and everything was just piling up on top. There were times when I would get so busy, I would say, “I wish I would just have some terrible disease happen to me so that everything would stop.” And then I got cancer. And it did, it made everything stop. It made me take inventory. It made me look at my life and figure out what was important, and start over. I’m scared because I don’t know if I’m ready.
I wasn’t ready to be diagnosed with breast cancer either. But now, things are coming back into my life. My simple life for the past 3 months is opening up to more possibilities. People want me to play with them in their band, and I want to do all of it because it’s such a huge honor. I enjoy it, its what I do, but I can’t do all of it again. I can’t get my life completely cluttered again with things that don’t matter.
When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I realized there were a lot of things I was doing that really didn’t matter. It’s a struggle for me between what I want to do and what I need to do, except the choices aren’t as clear here. When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, it was clear what I needed to do, and saving my life was my top priority. But now the world is open to me again and I’m struggling to make sure that I make the right choice.
Two years ago, when I came to Whosoever, it was through a band I was playing with. Coming to Whosoever and coming back to God means that I am talking to God a lot more. I find myself talking to God more often throughout the day, and things that never interested me before, like sermons and Bible Study, are what I'm involved with. I want to stay consistent with that, and I hope to do more of it – its one of my big goals after all this breast cancer stuff is behind me.
Q: What do you love about being a Christian?
A: For me, it’s just the Hope... You know, the constant hope.
Q: Is there anything you don’t love about Christianity?
A: I would say the thing I don’t love about Christians - not the religion, but what people do with it – people beat you over the head with it, they tell you that you must follow all these rules, and they judge you. I’ve seen so many people who - I hate to say, CLAIM to be Christians, because I think they think they ARE Christian - but who judge you. So I hate that about what people do with the Christian religion. I can’t think of anything I hate about the truth, or true Christianity. I guess it’s a constant work in progress – something you’re always working towards that really will never be finished, it will always be us working on what God wants, or following our path – its not finished until you get their – until you get the prize.
Q: What one word describes the feeling that your relationship with God gives you?
A: HOPE! I always say hope, it's tattooed on my back.
Q: If you had a moment a voice to tell the whole world something about what you believe and the God that you know, the God that you’re in relationship with – if you had a chance and everyone in the world’s ear, what would you say?
A: I think I would say “I’m alive in so many ways today because of God, and you can be too!”
Q: Do you feel like God has a purpose for your life? What is it?
A: I feel like there are going to be different purposes throughout my walk with God and I feel like I’ve always been looking for it in the wrong places. Until all this happened with me with the breast cancer, I didn’t feel like I had something that was an obvious purpose, I think right now, the things right in front of me that I feel are my purpose is to share my story about the breast cancer through the video. I feel like I’ve been given a gift. I want to write a book about it, I want to share my story.
Through this whole thing, everyone was like “you’re so brave and courageous and inspiring” and I’m saying “What are they talking about?"
Because I don’t feel like I’m all that. God is! Its not me, and that’s why I don’t feel like I deserve those statements – because I don’t feel like its me doing that. I don’t have strength by myself, its God. Its like a lot of this journey, I’ve been faced with things I didn’t want to do, but I knew I should do them – I am scared of this, but I know I have to do it.
Daniela, who was sitting on the interview shared her thoughts on April's journey:
"For me, watching your video – I wasn’t expecting that – I wasn’t prepared. You hear the word breast cancer and its terrifying. What you’ve done for me is you’ve taken away that: I’m not scared of it anymore. For me, it took away that scariness and it put a face on it and that face was hope, and that face was your face."
View April's video story here.
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| Photo by Mark Cornwell |
When I was younger, I grew up in a Methodist church. I was baptized as a baby, so I wasn’t aware of what was going on or anything like that, my parents raised me in the Methodist church. I had a lot of fun writing notes back and forth to my friends during the service. I wasn’t really engaging at all. I tried to listen to the sermons, but it was just not my thing at all, even when I got older.
As soon as my folks allowed me to not go to church, I stopped going to church. It wasn’t because I stopped believing in God – there hasn’t been a moment in my life where I didn’t believe in God. I know that that sounds weird to some people, but my parents introduced me to him at such a young age, that out of the gates, I believed in God. Most of that had to do with my mother and how she raised me, how she treated me, and how she had that hopefulness all the time, happiness seemingly all the time.
When I was 13, I started drinking. I was really good at it. I think one of the reasons I drank was that I was nervous around people or wanted to feel more comfortable and loose and not worry about anything, and so I drank until I was about 23. When I was 23, some really bad stuff happened, and I quit drinking cold turkey on December 27th. I was playing in bands as a drummer, so I couldn’t just avoid alcohol or the places where alcohol would be because I was in the scene all the time. I had to learn right away that I needed to figure out how be in that scene if I wanted to keep playing drums and playing at clubs.
So I kept my New Years Eve plans and everything – everyone came over and was drinking, and I did not drink a drop. I haven’t drank in 18 years now. I can still taste what tequila tastes like, and its not that it hasn’t been hard, but I decided in that moment 18 years ago that if I wanted to stay alive and if I didn’t want to hurt someone else, driving or whatever it was, I had to stop drinking. And if I ever drank again, that meant that I was ready to die. And I wasn’t. I’m not ready to die, at least not in that form or fashion.
Several years later, I met someone and we started dating. It was a very physically and emotionally abusive relationship. I wasn’t strong enough at that time, for whatever reason, to get out of it. Before that, I would look at people and think “oh, you’re an idiot. Why would you stay in that situation? You’re just as much at fault for staying in that relationship.” I never understood how someone would stay in a relationship like that until I was there.
What people don’t understand about abusive relationships is that it doesn’t just happen overnight – it’s a slow progression. They get away with one thing, and the first time you freak out and then eventually you forgive them because they are so sorry, and it just starts this cycle of emotional or physical abuse, then apologies, then more abuse… and the apologies aren’t real.
One thing I will always regret about that relationship is that I wasn’t the one who left. She left me. I begged her to come back for six months before I realized that it wasn’t at all what I needed, and I would never let it happen again. I wish that I could have been the one to be strong and leave. In those six months, I wasn’t going to church, or involved with any of my church friends – and I think those six months could have been condensed with the support from a church family. I didn’t spend much time talking to God or praying through all those years until I found Whosoever through a band I was playing with.
October 2010, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When people say I’m courageous and an inspiration, its surprises me because I don’t think I’ve been all that. God set all this up – it wasn’t an accident that I was just involved in the Whosoever Church to this extent when all this happened. My dad said “Yeah, you were diagnosed with breast cancer, and suddenly Dawn (the pastor of Whosoever) appeared, and she was everywhere all the time – where did she come from?”
The outpour of support from the church and my parents church, and all that support has made it where, in retrospect, it wasn’t nearly as hard as you think it would have been. There have been times when it’s been really hard, and I get depressed… but it has only been days, not weeks. I think there’s a lot of people who go through this and they are depressed the entire time, but staying involved with people and getting that support throughout has been invaluable.
I’ve gotten depressed a couple of times this week. People say “Hey, but you’re at your last chemo, why would you be depressed? Wouldn’t you be excited?”
But the thing is, I’ve been able to simplify my life because of breast cancer. I was able to say “nothing else matters right now, I’m just going to focus on this.”
Now I’m about to be let loose on my own to deal with my own life all over again. It’s kind of scary. Before breast cancer, it felt like I was in this giant snow ball coming down a mountain and everything was just piling up on top. There were times when I would get so busy, I would say, “I wish I would just have some terrible disease happen to me so that everything would stop.” And then I got cancer. And it did, it made everything stop. It made me take inventory. It made me look at my life and figure out what was important, and start over. I’m scared because I don’t know if I’m ready.
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| April after losing her hair to chemo |
When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I realized there were a lot of things I was doing that really didn’t matter. It’s a struggle for me between what I want to do and what I need to do, except the choices aren’t as clear here. When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, it was clear what I needed to do, and saving my life was my top priority. But now the world is open to me again and I’m struggling to make sure that I make the right choice.
Two years ago, when I came to Whosoever, it was through a band I was playing with. Coming to Whosoever and coming back to God means that I am talking to God a lot more. I find myself talking to God more often throughout the day, and things that never interested me before, like sermons and Bible Study, are what I'm involved with. I want to stay consistent with that, and I hope to do more of it – its one of my big goals after all this breast cancer stuff is behind me.
Q: What do you love about being a Christian?
A: For me, it’s just the Hope... You know, the constant hope.
Q: Is there anything you don’t love about Christianity?
A: I would say the thing I don’t love about Christians - not the religion, but what people do with it – people beat you over the head with it, they tell you that you must follow all these rules, and they judge you. I’ve seen so many people who - I hate to say, CLAIM to be Christians, because I think they think they ARE Christian - but who judge you. So I hate that about what people do with the Christian religion. I can’t think of anything I hate about the truth, or true Christianity. I guess it’s a constant work in progress – something you’re always working towards that really will never be finished, it will always be us working on what God wants, or following our path – its not finished until you get their – until you get the prize.
Q: What one word describes the feeling that your relationship with God gives you?
A: HOPE! I always say hope, it's tattooed on my back.
Q: If you had a moment a voice to tell the whole world something about what you believe and the God that you know, the God that you’re in relationship with – if you had a chance and everyone in the world’s ear, what would you say?
A: I think I would say “I’m alive in so many ways today because of God, and you can be too!”
Q: Do you feel like God has a purpose for your life? What is it?
A: I feel like there are going to be different purposes throughout my walk with God and I feel like I’ve always been looking for it in the wrong places. Until all this happened with me with the breast cancer, I didn’t feel like I had something that was an obvious purpose, I think right now, the things right in front of me that I feel are my purpose is to share my story about the breast cancer through the video. I feel like I’ve been given a gift. I want to write a book about it, I want to share my story.
Through this whole thing, everyone was like “you’re so brave and courageous and inspiring” and I’m saying “What are they talking about?"
Because I don’t feel like I’m all that. God is! Its not me, and that’s why I don’t feel like I deserve those statements – because I don’t feel like its me doing that. I don’t have strength by myself, its God. Its like a lot of this journey, I’ve been faced with things I didn’t want to do, but I knew I should do them – I am scared of this, but I know I have to do it.
Daniela, who was sitting on the interview shared her thoughts on April's journey:
"For me, watching your video – I wasn’t expecting that – I wasn’t prepared. You hear the word breast cancer and its terrifying. What you’ve done for me is you’ve taken away that: I’m not scared of it anymore. For me, it took away that scariness and it put a face on it and that face was hope, and that face was your face."
View April's video story here.
This is beautiful Joni. You have such a gift <3 April you are amazing, thank you for sharing part of your soul. This is so inspiring. Love you both. ~Jess
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this beautiful way to tell April's story. April continues to inspire and move me beyond words. Love you April!!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Joni!