Hi, everyone!

Here is part two of my Faith Journey/testimony. If you haven’t read part one yet, please check it out! 

I also just want to issue the reminder that everyone’s Faith Journey’s will look different and that is totally okay! I hope that my story encourages and blesses you.

As always, please feel free to leave a comment below or email me at sarahbaylorwrites@gmail.com!

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I’m blessed that I was able to see and walk with my parents through some amazing times of ministry, but there were many dark moments as well. From hearing about cancer diagnoses from close family friends, to driving them to cancer treatments, to then standing with the family as they were laid to rest after the Lord called them home. Serving in church ministry certainly has its ups and downs, but these times taught me that no one is perfect and we are all in need of the Lord’s forgiveness, grace, and mercy.  From age eleven to seventeen, I learned that church ministry can be tough, yet so rewarding in the long run. I still woke up each morning, excited to be a part of it and grateful to do it. Because I knew it was good, right, and true. I was doing all of the right things, but later on I learned that it’s more about our relationship with Jesus, and that the reason we do these things is because we want to glorify Him. However, at that time, I had accepted Him into my heart, and ministry is what you do when Jesus lives in your heart.

         During my senior year of high school, the Lord moved my family to Chico, California, located about an hour and a half north of Sacramento. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on my dad’s side of the family live in Chico and I had grown up going there to visit them, so a part of it already felt like coming home. My dad accepted the children’s pastor position at my grandparent’s church. The church and children’s ministries were already established, and my dad would be a part of a team of pastors now. The transition was easy for me in January of 2017, despite knowing that I myself would be moving almost three thousand miles to Lynchburg, Virginia that August. I quickly became a part of the worship team, alongside my grandma and aunt. I took a leadership role over the kindergarten through second graders at AWANA. I even had a role on the Bible Story leadership team at Vacation Bible School that summer.

         As I was gearing up for VBS at our new church in Chico, I met with the lady – Amber –  who I would be serving with for the Bible Story time and I was eager to learn from her leadership. She was older than me, and newly married, so I was excited to glean from her wisdom.

         While eating Jon and Bon’s frozen yogurt (if you’re ever in downtown Chico, you must visit Jon and Bon’s!), I was telling Amber about how I felt the Lord leading me to study Elementary Education at Liberty that August. I told her a semi-dramatic story of how I felt the Lord was calling me to go into teaching at the time. I felt confident that this was what the Lord wanted me to do. I will never forget what Amber had told me.

         “You know,  the Lord asked you to change your major once, and you listened to Him,” Amber said as I nodded along, “and one day He may ask you to change it again.”

         I nodded and agreed out loud, but I mildly scoffed at her remark under my façade of a confident, trusting senior in high school, believing she was doing what God asked her to do. I’m not changing my major again…that’s for sure!

         The summer continued, and – like always – I chugged along in multiple serving capacities at church, enjoying life in Chico, being close to family, and my many budding friendships.

         Soon, August rolled around and I found myself – and about three to four suitcases – in the entryway of my home that I was only able to really enjoy for about two months. My parents came with me to help get me settled on Liberty’s campus in Lynchburg, Virginia. “Moving to Cloverdale was the hardest transition I ever had to make” quickly became a major understatement as I said goodbye to my parents outside of my dorm on the first day of classes. With sobs lodged in my throat and tears streaming down my face, I ran up four flights of stairs to my dorm room, so that I could avoid any other human presence on the elevator.

My first semester at Liberty was one of the toughest times I had to walk through – alone. Prior transitions in my life had been completed alongside my parents or friends. But this was the first time I chose to walk through something and I did it alone. Especially since I was moving away from everyone and everything I had known in California, all the way across the States to Virginia.

Quickly, the Lord provided a friend group and I am still friends with many of them to this day. However, the toughest season during my first year at Liberty wasn’t moving there alone or feeling homesick daily, but it was during my second semester when my grandma passed away. 

My grandma’s health had been declining during my time away from home. Legally blind and getting older, she needed twenty-four hour care. My mom and my aunts took turns caring for her, and I helped at times before I moved to Virginia. 

Toward the middle of my second semester, my family knew that the Lord would be calling my grandma home sooner than later. Most of my family still lived in California, but my aunt, uncle, and cousin made the trip from where they lived in Hawaii to be with my grandma during her last moments on earth. My parents had decided that it would be best for me to wait until she passed before making the trip out to California. I understood this decision for me to wait, especially since I was nearing midterms during that semester, but it was also incredibly difficult for me to be the only one who wasn’t with my grandma when she passed. 

However, I was grateful for the fact that I had been able to go home for Spring break, just weeks before my grandma breathed her last. I will never forget my grandma’s last words to me.

“Hasta la próxima vacación,” Until the next vacation. I had a feeling deep within me that even though my grandma was referring to my next trip home, I wouldn’t see her again before then. I gave her a hug goodbye as I repeated the words back to her, then left for the airport with my parents. 

In the week’s that followed, I found myself at least once a day leaning over my roommate’s bed to look out at campus from our dorm window, crying while on the phone with my mom. At times my mom would hold the phone to my grandma’s ear where I was able to talk to her in my broken Spanish, but she got to the point where she wasn’t able to respond to me. 

I grieved my grandma’s death before she died. This may seem a bit backwards, but I hated hearing about how she wasn’t able to eat and wasn’t able to hold a conversation any longer. 

Despite being legally blind from a young age, she was one of the strongest women I knew. I have memories of her walking through Yosemite, ahead of the rest of us, as we hiked to Mirror Lake. She moved her four daughters to California from Guatemala by herself while my grandfather had gone before them to start their life in California. She then raised my mom and her three younger sisters after my grandfather had passed away when my mom was seventeen. 

Growing up, my grandmother only lived ten minutes away from me, so we were always over at her house.  After my parents and I moved to Cloverdale, my aunt and grandmother came up to see us every weekend. She had suffered a couple of strokes, and even though they weakened her body, her mind and her spirit were still as strong as ever. When we lived in Cloverdale, she would sometimes stay with us for weeks at a time. I would help take care of her in the evenings and I can vividly remember walking by her room and hearing whispered prayers each night before she went to sleep. She prayed through a list of people – friends and family members – every single night. 

And it was these memories that I grieved those weeks between spring break and her death. 

My roommate and dearest friend had been with me when I got the call from my dad that my Makika had passed away. I cried and I remember telling my roommate, “She can see again! She’s in heaven and she can see again!” I was comforted by this thought, though I knew I would miss her greatly (and still do). 

I was able to go home and spend some time with my family as we celebrated her life and grieved together. It was a beautiful, yet sorrowful time. I’m grateful I was able to spend that time with my family.

Soon, I was back to life at Liberty. Academically, I found myself challenged, yet somewhat lost to what I thought the Lord was calling me to do. Spiritually, I was being fed and encouraged by amazing messages and worship services. 

All my life, I had done the things that showed people that I was a Christian. I made that first decision to “accept Jesus in my heart” at four years old, but it wasn’t until much later did I hear the question, “is Jesus the Lord of your life?”. I had made the choice to follow Jesus and love Him and I did the things to show that – I served in Childrens’ ministry, in youth groups, in worship teams, at AWANA, and in Vacation Bible Schools. I listened to God as I felt Him leading me somewhere or to do something, but I simply didn’t be in my relationship with Jesus. Christianity is so much more than “do this” or “do that”, but it’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ and placing your full trust in Him. It’s not simply living out a list of rules – of do’s and don’ts – but it’s choosing to have a relationship with Jesus and letting your life point to Him through the decisions you make. It should be less of “God doesn’t want me to do this” and more of “If I do this, I know it will disappoint God, so I choose to do that instead because I want to honor Him.” I feel that there’s a common misconception with Christianity today and that’s the “holier than thou” mentality. A lesson I learned in college and have clung to ever since is that I’m not a Christian because I consider myself to be perfect. I am in no way shape or form a perfect person. I make mistakes. I sin. But I’m a Christian because I know I am a sinner in need of a Savior. I’m going to continue to make mistakes, but as I learn and grow in my relationship with Jesus, I try to be more like Him.

My story sometimes seems quite simple, but I’m grateful to the Lord for the life and experiences that I have endured. I am not a perfect person, and I definitely do not claim to be. I simply choose to honor Jesus in every decision I make. Sometimes, I don’t always make the right choice, but I try to learn from my mistakes and learn to be more like Jesus. I do not want people to see me, but I want them to see Jesus Christ living in and through me.