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My call to ministry and journey to seminary has been unfolding throughout my whole life. But, two distinct and pivotal times stick out to me. Before diving in, something important to know about me is that I have always been an organized person with a plan. I like to know where I am headed and prepare for the best ways to get there. Also, I was raised in a Christian home and have always been active in the church. I was baptized at a young age and went to all the children's and youth ministry activities. While I loved all of the time I spent at church, as many high schoolers experience, I had many extracurriculars vying for my attention and time.
Basketball has been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. It had always been my dream to play basketball in college. When I got to high school, my coach helped me realize that it could become a reality with hard work and a lot of time invested. My early high school life was a balancing act between school, basketball, sleep, and other activities, including church. Before my sophomore season, it became clear that if I really wanted to play basketball at a high level, I would have to commit fully. While I did not want to give up all the other activities, playing basketball in college was my dream.
Fast forward to the first practice of my sophomore basketball season. I suffered a freak knee injury. Luckily, I was able to play the season with a brace on, but once the season was over, I had to have my first knee surgery. With surgery came a slowdown of life. All of a sudden, my ability to play basketball was taken away, and I had the time to evaluate where my life was headed. Needless to say, this quickly became a very dark and difficult time for me because, as I now know, I was making a tragic error. I was seeking and finding my identity in being an athlete. When that was stripped away from me, even for just a couple of months, it felt like I had nothing.
Luckily, I had an incredible community at my church and the church that some of my close friends from high school attended. I had incredible friends and mentors at both churches that walked with me and listened to me as I processed all my thoughts and feelings about what was happening. All of this culminated in the decision that was best for me, which was to no longer pursue playing basketball in college.
With reducing my time spent with basketball and other sports, my schedule freed up quite a bit. This allowed me to become more involved with activities at church. I stepped into leadership positions that allowed me to utilize other gifts and talents I had. This, along with the many conversations I had with friends and mentors, helped me grow and begin to find my identity in Christ. The combination of firmly grounding my identity in Christ and taking on leadership positions within youth groups was pivotal in seeing my calling to ministry and seminary unfold. Through these experiences, I found myself thinking, "Wow, wouldn't this be the best if I could do this forever?" As I brought that up to one of my youth ministers, we talked about what it would look like to go to seminary and begin to discern my call to ministry. This was the first distinct time I heard my call to ministry during my junior year of high school.
As I mentioned, this is a two-part story. Even though I felt this strong calling in my junior year of high school, I had to decide where I was going to go to undergrad and what I was going to major in. As this decision was happening, I was sitting in classes with some of the best teachers I ever had, and I felt a pull to be a high school math teacher. So, I set to have an incredible first year of undergrad pursuing a degree in secondary math education.
I felt confident about my plan for my future and excited to spend my summer with my dream college job, being a camp counselor. Quickly, this was flipped upside down as an opportunity was presented to spend my summer serving with an incredible nonprofit in Atlanta through a program called student.go. I was off to spend the summer as a day camp counselor teaching STEM and Lego robotics. I knew that I was going to either feel really secure in my calling to be a teacher, or I was going to be seeking another career path.
My summer serving in Atlanta was incredible. I was deeply challenged, and I learned a lot about God, myself, and the world. I learned that while I love teaching and math, I was not called to be a math teacher. Realizing this led to a quick change of major during the first week of classes upon my return from my summer. It was a crazy blur of listening to trusted people in my life and prayer that led me to change my major to recreation management. I was unsure where it would lead, but I knew that was what I needed to be pursuing.
This was a very exciting, but major (excuse the pun), change. My change in major, coupled with a change in the church I was attending, meant a complete reboot. While this sudden and drastic shift was difficult at times, I was able to find a church with some incredible ministers that mentored me through my last two years of undergrad, provided opportunities for me to gain experience with church ministry, and helped me through the process of applying to seminary. Changing my major and spending time volunteering with the local church meant my call to ministry, and seminary became a rejuvenated excitement that I had my junior year of high school.
Part of my involvement at the church in undergrad was participating in the college ministry. Each year, that group went on a midwinter retreat. At my first one, there were some booths set up with people from various seminaries. I had my eye on a seminary in Virginia, and I ended up visiting it the following spring break. While it was a great school, the thought of going there did not sit right in me. Taking that into consideration, I began to look at other seminaries. Truett was not even on my radar except I remembered seeing the table for it at that same retreat. One day I let my mind run with the idea of, "wouldn't it be funny if I moved to Texas." I did not realize that that thought was not going to be a joke, but a quickly unfolding reality. From there, everything fell into place to attend Truett located all the way in Waco, TX. Moving from South Carolina to Texas was never on my radar, but after I visited and received a scholarship to attend, there was no way I could go anywhere else.
Now that I've finished my first year of seminary, it is humbling to look back on how I have made it to this point while being excited about what is to come. My journey thus far has been just that, a journey. For someone that has long been a planner focused on the arrival at a destination, I have learned to enjoy the steps of the journey on the way there. The people I have met, the things I have experienced, and the continued faithfulness of God are all things I am immensely grateful for. While I do not know where these next few years of seminary will lead, I am excited to learn and grow as a person and minister while journeying forward with my ever-present and ever-faithful God.
About the Author:
Hometown: Anderson, SC
Undergrad: Appalachian State
Favorite Verse: "But he said to me,“My graceis sufficient for you, for my poweris made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delightin weaknesses, in insults, in hardships,in persecutions,in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor. 12:9-10
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