There was a time in my life when I was striving for approval and affirmation, but Jesus showed me his unconditional love, and now I get to live from the abundance of love he gives.
I grew up in a conservative Mennonite community in Ohio, a denomination within Christianity where simplicity and separation from the world were important values, such as wearing dresses and skirts, avoiding makeup and jewelry, and not getting involved in politics. It was a close-knit culture where higher education wasn’t emphasized, and most people married young, with men often following their fathers’ trades and women primarily staying home to raise children.
However, as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a nurse and knew that would include college and that my life would look different than my friends’.
I remember giving my life to Christ at a young age and wanting to serve God with my life. However, I was a very strong-willed child and was constantly butting heads with my parents, especially my dad. As I got older, I became increasingly frustrated with my temper but felt completely incapable of changing. At 16, I finally recognized my anger as sin, especially toward my dad, and knew I didn’t want to live that way anymore. I had a moment of complete surrender to Christ and experienced freedom from anger. This became a turning point for me, recognizing for the first time the Holy Spirit’s power to truly transform me as I allowed him to change me.
After that, I surrendered everything else to him, including my dreams of becoming a nurse. I told God, “I don’t know where you want me to go in the world, but I surrender it all to you.”
In my junior year of high school, I attended my Mennonite school part-time and a public school part-time to prepare for college. Every day, I would go back and forth, and it felt like culture shock each time. At first, I was fearful of public school and being judged for my culture, but it became almost harder to go back to the Mennonite school because my friends there couldn’t understand why I was choosing a different path. I attended public school exclusively in my senior year and went on to a Christian college in Florida for nursing school. Both these experiences were very formative for me as I began to truly seek God for myself, apart from the faith of my parents or my community, and I began to seriously ask him what he’d want for my life, whether that would look similar or different from people around me.
I remained open to wherever God might be leading me. After college and additional three years with my family in Ohio, I was invited to visit Dallas by a good friend I met at Camp Barnabas, a Christian camp in Missouri for individuals with additional and special needs. Through a series of events, I moved to Dallas the next spring, where I soon found Watermark.
Watermark is very different from how I grew up, but God has used it to deepen my understanding of God. For most of my life, I knew in my head that God loved me unconditionally, but experientially, I felt that if I didn’t do what I was supposed to, God would be disappointed in me. Over these past four years at Watermark, I’ve come to see that God’s delight in me has nothing to do with my performance or striving to earn his approval. He really loves me, and I know it deep down. Now I can live out of that anchored love on both my best and worst days.
I’ve always loved serving, so after becoming a member at Watermark, it felt very natural to start serving with Watermark Health as soon as I heard about it. As a nurse, I want to meet practical needs, but as a Christian nurse, the Holy Spirit lives inside me, and people get to see God’s light through me as I serve them. What a privilege it’s been to sit across from countless patients and pray for them and hear their stories while also caring for their physical needs. It’s also been such a refreshing environment for me because I know I’m in a place with people who love Jesus and are unified in serving God and our city together.
Watermark Health has been an amazing place to be prepared for even more new adventures and ministry. This summer, I get to go to Africa for eight weeks as a pediatric surgical ward nurse, and my time serving in the clinic has only made me feel more equipped to share God’s love with people from around the globe as I continue meeting practical health needs, too.
The ways I serve now flow and live out of my identity in Christ. Before, my desire to serve came from a subtle need to earn God’s approval, but now that I know that I’m already loved, everything else flows from that—an overflow of the love that I’ve already received from God.