It could be risky to share about your faith in a professional space, but I feel it is an imperative part of my story and has shaped me into who I am today.

I learned about this God of the Bible in an Old Testament survey class in 5th grade, and I was ALL in!  I found myself in a brand new context surrounded by pastor’s kids, missionary’s kids, and Christian educators. These teachers told me the stories of a trustworthy God who is faithful and devoted to his people.  I loved hearing about God’s mighty acts of power and holiness. Eventually, I would connect the dots of this great Love and Redemption story that a good Father put in motion by sending his Son Jesus as our Rescuer. And I agreed to trust him and follow him.

As I made my way through adolescence there would be lots of trying times and I found a real comfort in knowing that I was never alone, never unloved, never cast out because God was with me. I was instructed in the ways of God. Precept upon precept the community of faith at the Christian school taught me how to live and conduct my life as a daughter of God.

Funny story… in my junior high years, my family started attending a spirit-filled church. I attended a very strict Baptist school! One day in school we had an assignment to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I said with the most sincere conviction and confidence that I would be a pastor. And boy, I can’t tell you how many years I got razzed for that. Pastor Sally! The Baptists informed me that I could only really hope to be a pastors wife, but I didn’t care. I knew I would serve God’s church and be devoted to it one way or another. And I have. And it has been a great joy.

I am very thankful for the tension between these two spiritual communities that were a part my youth. I feel I got the best of both worlds. Trained in the scriptures and a wise way of living AND aware of the Spirit and living with an expectation that God is accessible, alive, powerful and will act on our behalf!

I remember the nearness and closeness of the Lord through all of these years. He was a trustworthy Father and a mighty Rescuer to me.

In college I would continue to be anchored in the habits I had formed and stay along the path of following Jesus in most ways. But in these years I came face to face with an abandonment wound that I could not make any sense of. I would learn about the trap of compromise, the pain of isolation, and experience the dark chasm of being separated from God in a new way. Those were sad days. Dark, painful days. But God did not leave me. He rescued me again and again. Pulling me out of the mire and muck and setting my feet back on the rock of his trust and himself.

Clif and I married in 2004 and we started off in our first ministry setting together as leaders of the youth group and the worship team. There were many beautiful things about our experience there, but there was also the hurtful comments, the yelling, the temper tantrums, the incompetence, and the lawbreaking by the pastor. Somehow the Lord gave us the sense to get out of there and we landed at this wonderful church down the mountain, Northshore Fellowship.

The first 5 Sundays I attended Northshore, I wept. I wept because I had never heard someone talk about the love of God and the grace of God so beautifully. It was resonating so deeply within me and I would truly never be the same. This community of believers gave me the categories for a relational God and they showed me how we can be the hands of feet of Christ to each other.

These two very different church stories and experiences would just repeat over and over a few times. There would always be something redeeming and beautiful about God’s people gathered together, but I would be injured again and again and deeply disappointed by those leading the church who seemed to be very much, not like the God I knew at all. There would be other instrumental people of faith in my life who would come along and nurture the flame inside of me that deeply connected with the love and patience and glory of a relational God. And somehow, God kept me. And God is keeping me.

God and I have journeyed through many trials outside of my experience of his church, loads of suffering with family, marriage, medical issues, death of loved ones. And he has never left me. I have often talked about the familiar “desperate place” and how very sweet it is when the moments of stillness come in the midst of the chaos of suffering. He is there and you are there. And all will be well, somehow.

Somewhere along the way, I connected with the story of my family and began to appreciate the generational heritage of faith that i have come from. That has been a gift. I am very passionate about passing faith on the my children and I have gone about that by trying to live as authentically as I can before them. My flaws have hurt them, which deeply grieves me. I can only pray that any faith and trust that I have lived will also bless them and encourage them along the way.

I experience God today as very close. We have been together for 30 years now. Most mornings I awake with thoughts from him. I sense he is with me in all the spaces I inhabit through a day and for this I am deeply grateful.