Freshman Year

It was my Freshman year of college, a crazy and confusing time for any eighteen year old. You are finally getting out into the “real world” but then realizing that you don’t know how to do anything on your own! The first week of college felt like summer camp, everything was new and exciting, then reality started to kick in. I don’t know how everyone else handled it but Freshman year I had the biggest crisis of my life so far. If you have been reading my posts from the beginning you will understand why. I had been through a lot! The thing is when you are going through those things it doesn’t really occur to you all that you are enduring. Your only focus and goal is to just get through it. So when I was finally away from all of that, I sorta snapped. I had six years of emotional garbage that I had never allowed myself to deal with.

Thankfully I had some really great friends that encouraged me to go talk to someone, so I did. That was when I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. It was one of those things that when a label was finally put on my emotions, it all made sense. I had seriously bad anxiety issues and we pinpointed that it all started when I was twelve, the exact time that we moved back to Southern California. I don’t blame anyone for my anxiety. I feel like that would be a horrible thing to do to someone, so instead I look at it as just the way my body and mind chose to react. We all handle things very differently and at the time holding it all in was the only way twelve year old me knew how to handle it all. My ‘road to recovery’ was a semi-long process. The first thing that I needed to do was talk about it with my parents. It was hard for them to digest at first and in their defense I can see why it was so hard for them to accept it, I had done a really good job of hiding my feelings. It took awhile but they are very supportive and understanding now.

The only issue that I faced during that year was learning how to cope. The guidance counselor at my school was really great with letting me come and talk to her about my problems and just having someone listen was very beneficial but after some time I needed a little more help. I don’t know how I did it, I guess it was just my instincts from getting through things but I learned how to cope with my anxiety all by myself. It was incredibly empowering and I thank God that he gave me that strength to get through it. I am not ‘cured’, you don’t get better overnight but I have a better control on my anxiety now and it has made life a lot simpler.

If you have issues with anxiety don’t be afraid to talk about it. Admitting that there is a problem there and acknowledging that can do wonders. Find a support group, look for a friend to hold you accountable, and definitely find out what your coping mechanisms are. For me when I am feeling anxious I can do a number of things, I listen to music, read a book or a passage from the Bible, I put on a Disney movie, or play a game on my phone. All of these are very helpful tools. But most of all, have someone you can talk to about it all. Everyone deserves to have a friend that they can be open and honest with about where you are mentally and spiritually.

Moving Along

Moving along, my family lived in our trailer for 6 months. Now I went to a private Lutheran High School and I received a really great education there, but my peers all came from very wealthy families. Not that I was ashamed, but it was kind of embarrassing that I was living in a trailer and the majority of my classmates hadn’t worked a day in their life for anything that they had. I was self-conscious. The only reason I didn’t want people to know was because I didn’t want them to treat me any differently. I didn’t want them to try and place me in some stereotype or have a ton of pity, so I kept it to myself. But eventually people started to find out and it instantly separated me from the rest of them. Lucky for me I had a pretty tight nit group of friends and so it didn’t really matter that I didn’t fit in with my class as long as I was accepted by them.

After being there for 6 months my dad found a house for us to rent for exactly one year. It was an incredible blessing and it was nice to be in a bigger space. But sure enough a year later we were back in that trailer, same camping site, same exact camping spot. That was towards the end of my Senior year in High School. Only thing different was that we weren’t looking for a house during that time. To explain that, let me back up a little. I had mentioned before that the reason we moved back to Southern California was so that my dad could go into seminary. Because he already had a full time career he went into a second career seminary program and he was loving it. The thing is though is that it makes taking those classes significantly harder. My dad was balancing a career, seminary classes, being a Vicar, being a husband, and being a father. There just isn’t enough time in the day!

Ok so my dad was doing his Vicarage at a small church in Long Beach and the only reason we had not moved out there already was so that I wouldn’t have to commute an hour everyday for school. So once I graduated we moved our trailer to Long Beach. Only thing is there were no places to put our giant trailer, so we parked it in the back parking lot of the church. I’m not going to lie it was a little sketchy, but it was the best that we could do. That summer I packed up all my stuff into my car and my parents and I drove off to Seward, Nebraska so that I could attend college. I know what you are thinking, “Nebraska?! Why would a girl from California move out there?” It’s simple, at the time I was wanting to be a Lutheran High School teacher. I knew that I wanted to continue with my Lutheran education and this school was just perfect. It was also really important to me that I had a different experience outside of California. I wanted to get out of my bubble.

As you can see I have already had some crazy experiences and this was in a matter of six years. I know it probably doesn’t seem like a ton but that’s because I am not going into incredible detail. After sharing my testimony I hope to go back and talk a little deeper about these big experiences but I think it is important to establish some kind of timeline first.

Picking Up Where I Left Off

Continuing on with my story. Alright, so I continued through Jr. High with no other complications besides my back brace. As I mentioned before I was originally supposed to wear it for 4 years which means I wouldn’t have gotten out of it until my Sophomore year of High school, eek! But if there is one thing you should know about me it’s this, I am a fighter and have adopted the saying “Go big, or go home”. So that is what I did. I wore my back brace for around 20-23 hours every day for two years and that is how I knocked off two years. However, doing that brought about some side effects, such as I had bruising along my ribcage from wearing it so tight, I had minimal flexibility, and I lost a TON of weight. I know what some of you may be thinking, how could she complain about losing weight?! But here’s the thing, I looked awful! Being a seventh grader I was at a good healthy weight, I wore a size seven and was comfortable in my skin. After wearing my back brace I dropped down to a size three an it wasn’t gradual. I lost that much weight in only a couple of months. I looked incredibly skinny and was just skin and bones. What happened was I would be wearing my back brace when I was eating and so I began to feel full a lot sooner because my stomach pressing up against my brace made me incredibly uncomfortable. I had no appetite, my friends would beg me to eat something and it wasn’t that I was trying to keep from eating, I LOVE food, I just couldn’t.

During my Freshman to Junior year of high school, my family had moved again (count that into the 17 times total). The hardest move was my Junior year. We had been living in a house for almost three years, a huge milestone for my family, when it came time to need to look somewhere else. We loved this house that we were in but we were renting. The homeowner really wanted to sale it to us but she couldn’t bring the price down and we couldn’t go any higher. So we went house hunting…again. One thing to know is that during this time the economy was really bad and so was trying to find a house on the market. My parents found a house but it was in bad shape and would require a lot of work. In the meantime we had been living with some friends of ours until we could get settled.

Now I want to make this very clear, I am so incredibly grateful for the friends that opened their home up to us. However when you have four adults, two teenagers, and two children from 3yrs-infancy, it is enough to drive any person insane. The house that we were going to move into fell through and although we had an agreement the owner chose someone else who was offering more. What should have only been a couple of weeks with our friends, turned into a couple of months. Since we did not have a house, my parents bought a 34 foot trailer instead, we figured that we would go on a road trip and try to regroup as a family. What we didn’t anticipate was actually living in that trailer a little while after that. As you can see we had already been through a lot as a family and I was having a very hard time handling the amount of stress that we were experiencing. I ended up having a anxiety/panic attack that sent me to the hospital. Doctors just said that it was acid reflux and some other things but in reality it was the first time my anxiety disorder had presented itself. I started internalizing everything. We were going through so much that I didn’t want to burden anyone else with my troubles, of course this only made things worse because no one understood what was happening when I would just lose it at times.

Because of my anxiety we moved into our trailer so that I could have some peace. My dad had found a nice camping ground that allowed us to rent from them  and that is where we lived for 6 months. No one but my close friends knew that was where I was living. It wasn’t really as bad as it sounds, the camping spot was beautiful and we had always lived a simple life so it wasn’t incredibly hard to adjust, but also it was our only option so we just went with it.

This is a lot of information about me and I know a bit of information overload but like I said before it is really important that I share this. All of these events and experiences have lead me to who I am today and I am so proud of it. I hope that by sharing all of this, you will come to understand me a little better and like I have mentioned before, hopefully find some comfort in my story for whatever it is that you may be going through.

Where It All Began

So I thought it would be good to start off with some background information on me. I was born in Southern California but raised in Northern California in a fairly small town. My family lived in Illinois for one random year and then ended up moving back to California. Basically what you need to know about my childhood was that I moved a lot…17 times to be exact. And no we are not a military family. Most of our moves were to be closer to my moms family or my dads family and then because we weren’t in the best financial situation which caused us to jump from place to place. The biggest move we made was from Northern California back to Southern and I know that doesn’t sound like a big move but let me explain.

My dad has a career in clean energy and air conditioning and all of those cool complicated sciency things that go straight over my head. But it’s brought him a lot of success and he’s been moving up in that industry. Well in 2006 my dad felt that God was calling him to be a Pastor. My parents had always been involved at our church and he was a natural. However he felt that the only way for him to carry out this vocation was for us to move back to So. Cal. It was a very big decision for us but we decided to take the risk and we moved to Orange County the summer of 2006. I was going to be starting 7th grade and my older sister her first year of high school. If you weren’t already thinking it, this is a really terrible time in any pre-teen or teenagers life to start with this big of a change. Needless to say my sister and I did not transition well…at all. This is where my testimony begins.

My first day of seventh grade started with learning that my grandfather had passed away in the middle of the night. I was already traumatized by the culture shock of moving from a small town to the city and preparing to start Jr. High at a school that I had never been to and had no friends at. It was awful. My sister, the poor thing, was left at home to begin her Freshman year of High School online (it was the best they could do for us moving there when we did). Then like right after all this I found out that I had scoliosis. If you don’t know what that is it’s a severe abnormal curve of the spine. Fortunately I did not have to have surgery but I did have to wear a back brace. Lucky for me though I only ended up having to wear it for two years instead of the planned four years, hallelujah!

You are probably wondering why I am sharing all of this with you, it may not be clear now, but if you stay with me along the way hopefully you will begin to understand. I share all this with you so that you may understand me better. I see things a certain way and I don’t back down from challenges and as I share more about myself I hope that you will see that and maybe have courage that if I can get through it so can you. Now I don’t mean to say that I am some saint but I think everyone should know that they are never alone in the challenges that they face. So that’s just a little about me for now.