Hey there! My name is Kathryn Meyer, and I have lived for seventeen years on this crazy planet. I believe that my life is not my own. I was created by a magnificent Creator and I believe that if He is the center of everything I do, then my life will point towards him. Jesus Christ is my bestfriend.

I love walking on my tippy toes, the color yellow, dogs, daisies, going to random fields, picnics, fireworks, ice cream, catching fireflies, being outside, The Hunger Games, nutella and black and white movies, the beach, my family and friends, curling up under the covers, church, playing dress up, disney princesses, running, reading, Justin Bieber (judge me), traveling, Chinese food, writing, journaling, New Life Ranch, music, getting dirty, and campfires. I wish I was Taylor Swift almost everyday - I swear the girl knows my life, and I’m in love with almost any guy I see wearing khakis or Chacos.

As much as I love my life and everything in it, God is more important than any of it. And I would give all of it up for His sake. Everything I have is not my own. It all goes back to my Savior and who He is. That might be very hard for you to understand if you do not know Him. But I want to tell you why I think and feel this way.

I grew up in a christian home. Both of my parents were pastors so I went to church every Sunday and was always learning more about God. But that was my problem - I had all of this knowledge about God and who He is, but I didn’t know God himself or have any real relationship with Him. I didn’t have any reason to need God or run to Him, because I had never experienced anything hard in my life. I had always seen everyone strong and happy and I couldn’t imagine a life any different than that. But when I was 8 years old, my little brother died. My family was broken, my parents’ marriage struggled, everyone suffered from depression, and the little, real “faith” I had was shaken. I was angry at God. I didn’t see how any “loving” God could let this happen to good people who loved Him. I decided that I hated God and that God obviously didn’t love me. None of the knowledge I had mattered anymore. I was broken because Jesus wasn’t my true foundation. But it was there at my little brother’s funeral when I knew I needed to make a decision - either cling to God or run from Him, and that was when I made the decision to accept Christ into my life and pursue a real relationship with my Savior.

We always ask ourselves why bad things happen to good people. I think that everything good that happens to us is God intervening. We live in a sinful, broken world where everything is destined to go wrong. But luckily, a perfect God is in control. I think that the bad things that happen to us are just God not intervening. I believe that God chooses not to intervene because He has something better that will come out of these bad situations. If we had never gone through anything bad, we would not realize His goodness.

Through that horrible experience, God really taught me that He should be more important to me than anything else. Even my family. I cherished my family more than anything else in this world, and when I lost my brother He revealed that He wasn’t the most important thing to me. Because everything we have is His to begin with, we should stand with open hands. Everything we have; the people, places, clothes, money, cars, relationships, education - it’s all His. And that is one of the scariest things for me to admit. It’s not easy to look at all you have and tell God he can take any of it away. But that is why Jesus commanded us to die to ourselves. Because if we “lose” our lives here on this earth, we will gain eternal lives in heaven.

Since then, I’ve been continually growing in my faith. I still have struggles and trials. And in many ways, being a christian is harder than not being one. The past year I’ve really struggled with this need for attention and acceptance. I’ve allowed other things to distract me from building my relationship with God. It started feeling like a chore to read my bible & pray, so I just stopped. So I had been going through this period of drought where I didn’t feel God’s presence in my life. However, a big thing that God has taught me recently is instead of my relationship relying on feeling, it should rely on the fact that God is God. I need to rest in His identity. That’s not only a huge problem with relationships with God these days, it’s also a huge problem in our earthly relationships. If we don’t feel like we love a person anymore, then we quit. We get divorced. We find a new bestfriend. We stop talking. But that’s not what love is. True love is not a feeling. It is a decision. I have learned to choose to worship God for all that He’s done in my life.

So that is where I am now. Still learning. Still pursuing a relationship with Jesus Christ. I still mess up and make mistakes. I am everything but perfect. But that is the beauty of His forgiveness and sacrifice on the cross. I can’t earn God’s grace on my own. All I can do is accept that the price has been paid and rest in it. All I can give to God is my whole self. He has called me to go out into this world and show other people who He is, and that is what I intend to do.

That is just a little bit of my story. That is just what God has done in my sixteen years of living. I can’t even imagine what He has in store for me in the years to come or what He will challenge me to do. But I know I am called to a hard life. I am called to make hard decisions and do hard things. But I can rest in the fact that my identity is in Him and that He will work in me and through me to reach the world. I guess this isn’t really even my story. It’s His.