My name is Shelbi and this is my story of finding myself and finding God. In order for you to understand why I made this decision, I must start from the beginning.
I’ve always believed in God and always considered myself a Christian, but I never really got into going to church or immersing myself in the Bible. As a young girl, I remember going to church with my grandparents whenever I would spend weekends with them. As I got older, I stopped spending the night and stopped going to church.
Even though I didn’t go to church or practice reading the bible like I should have been doing, I always believed that I should wait until I got married before I had sex with anyone. In the first semester of college I got my first boyfriend. He told me he loved me, through text message, after we had only been dating for a week. Even though I had never dated anyone before, it felt strange. But, I was young and dumb. I did not know better. Of course, I cared for him but I was never in love with him. We hadn’t been dating for very long when the subject of sex came about and I had told him that I wanted to wait until I was married. He basically told me that if I didn’t have sex with him that he would break up with me. What I didn’t know then was that someone who truly loves you would not give you an ultimatum like that. But, again, I was young and dumb and I went against everything that I stood for. And, of course, the relationship didn’t last very long after that. He ignored me for a month before finally telling me that he wanted to break up because he found someone “prettier.” Something inside of me broke.
Over the next ten years, I found myself searching for someone to love and for someone to love me back. But in that search, I gave pieces of myself to people that did not deserve it. In the back of my mind I thought, “If I do this, maybe he’ll love me,” even though I didn’t love them. I spent so many years trying to find someone that would love me. I spent a lot of time being depressed because I would look at other couples or see couples on TV and wish I could have what they have.
I began to tell myself that I was incapable of being loved. But I know now that was not true. I have family and friends who love me. God loves me. Jesus Christ loves me. It just took me a lot of years and a lot of heartbreak to finally realize that. I finally realized one day that I don’t need to search for someone to love or for someone to love me. I woke up one day and realized that I needed to find myself and find God. I needed to become a better Christian. A Christian that God and Jesus Christ could be proud of. A Christian that I could be proud of. And this is where my journey begins.
Journey to Faith 
Thank you for sharing, Shelbi. I know how difficult this must have been for you to make public but you are right in everything you said. I think that each of us must come to that point where we have no one to turn to but the One we should have gone to first, Jesus Christ. He loves us not for what we have been or for what we have done in the past, He loves us for what we can be as His followers. A walk with Him isn’t always easy and He warns us numerous times that our journey will be hard, that we will even be hated just for speaking His name. People may try to bring you down, question your belief, challenge you in any way they can just to prove to themselves that you aren’t a changed person but take it as a complement to Him because He has made that change in you. Never doubt His love for you, He never demanded that you do anything to “earn” His love. He has loved you from the beginning. He loved you enough to die for you and for me! I love you and you are in my prayers.
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Thank you so much!
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