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 My testimony begins at a very young age. As a young girl, Sunday mornings were spent at a church service, Wednesday nights were spent the exact same way. While I was there physically, I was not invested fully. And while I was constantly surrounded by family and friends that loved the Lord, it took a while for me to open my heart up to the Lord’s goodness. 
When I was 7 years old, I attended vacation bible school one summer at our local church. Of course, at the end of one of our sessions, the pastor asked for everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes and “repeat this prayer after me.” I participated in this and repeated this prayer. Afterwards all of the kids who said the prayer raised their hands and were congratulated on this wonderful thing that we just did.. We then met with the pastor and were baptized a couple of Sundays later. 
I spent the next twelve years believing that I was saved and simply going through the motions of life. It wasn’t until high school when I realized that I was living as an unsaved person… I was living two separate lives, and it was becoming hard to keep up with. There was one life that I had with my family on Sunday mornings, and there was another life that I had on every other day of the week with my friends. While this was an awful realization, I was not ready to give up my ways and my desires. This continued until college. When I left for college, the Lord truly began working in my heart. During my first two years of college, I felt an enormous amount of loneliness and I felt quite disconnected, as if there was something missing. My junior year of college, I decided that it was the church and the fellowship with fellow Christians that I was missing, so I joined a small group at a local church in Starkville. Being surrounded by people that truly loved the Lord was so refreshing. It gave me a sense of peace and comfort to be vulnerable and confide in these friends about my spiritual struggle. 
Finally, one evening, I was sitting in bed going over some notes from our small group session and I cried out to God. It was the first time that I truly spent time alone asking God into my heart. I knew that I was constantly battling between living a life for sin and living a life for God. I consistently chose sin over my relationship with the Lord, as terrible as that sounds. I finally in this moment decided that these worldly desires were no longer worth it, that it was time for me to let go, and cling to the One who has been holding my heart this entire time. It was in this moment that I confessed, repented, and received God in my heart. The Lord was so gracious in that He watched me lose these battles with sin and the enemy over and over again, yet He never gave up on me. Glory to God!