Insights from a Passionate Christ Follower

My Life Motto

too passionate to be bored
too positive to be doubtful
too optimistic to be fearful
too idealistic to be negative
too “called” to be distracted
too determined to be defeated
Living life with a purpose!

Give your life away to your passion! I am blessed by helping others!

Life Scriptures

Rom 12:2  Do not allow the world to mold you into it’s way, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Eph. 5:11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, rather expose them for what they are…

James 5:6  Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Luke 4:18  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the captives, sight for the blind, and to bring liberty for the oppressed.

Rev. 12:10-11  The Accuser has been cast down…We overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony and we love not our life, even in the face of death.

My Gratitude

I am blessed to get to do what I love to do…
Thankful to Christ that He called me, chose me and anoints me…
Humbled by the grace of God that empowers me to stand…
Enriched by the friends and family that I have in my life…
Rewarded by those that I love and serve, for in serving them I live life!

My Story

I was raised in the Nazarene church, but knew little about God personally. I knew a lot about the rules I was supposed to keep as a Christian… but I could not do it.  It did look to me like all the adults had it together and were keeping all the rules. I did not know at the time that people put on mask when they came to church – posers pretending to be perfect, hiding their faults and fears, so that they could fit in and be accepted.

When I was 12 years old we had moved to another state and were attending a different church. A college age guy volunteering in the youth dept. befriended me, gained my trust and one weekend sexually molested me. I did not know what to do except stay away from him… but I could not tell anyone because in the church world culture “sexual sins” (even for the victim) are like leprosy.  I became angry at God and suppressed the shame deep inside attempting to move forward, but I began acting out. Getting in trouble, quitting sports, hanging with the wrong friends and eventually finding my peace in getting high on drugs. Being high on drugs numbed me on the inside and masked the pain I hid from… but that led to selling drugs, stealing and committing crimes to keep myself stoned… so that I would not feel the shame I carried with me.

It wasn’t long before I was getting arrested, charged and prosecuted. My parents raised me well, but my culture became a sub-culture of drugs, crime and rebellion. I was self destructing from the inside out and honestly at the time did not know why. I thought that I had it all together and could manage whatever life brought me. It wasn’t until I had my first daughter at age 27 that I began to realize things had to change. By the time she was a year old I was completely out of control and faced several felonies for false impersonation and identity theft. It was then that God rescued me and started turning everything around.

I started trying to pay back to society this great debt that I owed for so many years of rebellious behavior. I also began working with teenagers in our community and at our church in the hopes that I could help them not make the mistakes that I had made in my teen years. It was while working with teenagers that I started realizing that what happened to me when I was 12 was also happening to many of them in their childhood and teen years. And consequently, many of them were struggling with similar deep feelings of shame, defilement and betrayal. The resulting behaviors were similar to mine: withdrawing, bad choices, hanging with the wrong crowd, finding drugs, sex and alcohol to cope and not really knowing why they were in self-destructive mode.

Even with all the great changes in my life after becoming a Christian, I still struggled with one area of personal sin that held on to me from my past… an addiction to porn. I tried to resist it in every way I could find, I went forward in every prayer line where the speaker promised freedom, and longed to break it’s control over my mind. Eventually God helped me to put two scriptures together that was my answer and His word began working for me. Eph. 5:8-11 expose the darkness in me to the light God brings, and James 5:16 confess my sins to others so that they can pray for me and I can be healed. I began exposing my hidden sin to my mentors, leaders and others to get free. I became part of a mens’ accountability group and through their support I began experiencing the freedom promised me in Christ. We have been meeting together for over 15 years and each of us have been profoundly effected by the grace that comes from brothers holding one another accountable.

Then in 2006 I learned about Human Trafficking – modern slavery and in 2008 came to learn that it was happening here in the US to young girls and boys in the sex trade industry. Eventually learning that prostitution and the porn industry were much darker than I had any idea and that many were trapped in it at a very young age. I first reached out to churches and christian men to join me in a ministry to help end this problem… but was sad to learn that the religious community at large was not ready to “get their hands dirty” with such sinners… so I started a non-profit: “OATH” to bring awareness in our area, work with law enforcement and those that cared about such issues. I assisted in public presentations at universities, law enforcement trainings, headed two regional Task Force units and eventually launched the She’s 13 Campaign because the average age that girls are recruited by pimps for the sex industry is 13 here in America.

After pouring all of my energy, time, resources, savings and soul into raising awareness, law enforcement training, conferences, and presentations I came to the place that I was satisfied with all my hard work and results. Our board and I decided our next step would be to open a shelter and recovery program for victims of sex trafficking. Through my awareness efforts and partnerships with women shelters across the state there was good movement on their part to help adult victims… but nothing was happening yet for minors. We partnered with DHS and began moving towards opening a safe home and shelter for minor victims. At this point “all hell broke loose” in that many of my partners that operated women’s shelters felt threatened by our direction in that we would be competing with them for funds. A number of the women that headed the main programs turned on me and OATH to blacklist us and try to prevent us from moving forward. Unwilling to fight back against those I respected, I resigned my position as director and returned to giving much needed time back to my family and personal career.

Currently, I enjoy time with my family – especially my beautiful daughters and amazing grand kids.  In work I  am helping people following catastrophes as an independent adjuster to assist them in settling their insurance claims following a flood or disaster.  I get to travel, help people at their time of need and get paid well for doing so.