Running My Own Race - a post by Carson

 An update from Carson on how God continues to work in her life. To God be the glory for all He has done and continues to do for us.

I do not remember a time in my life where I did not know who Jesus was. I grew up in a Christian home not just going to church but being heavily involved in all aspects as my parents served in various roles. As a young child, my mom was the church secretary, my dad was a deacon, and they both worked with the youth group. Needless to say, we were always there serving in some capacity as a family. I enjoyed this as it was an opportunity for me to hang out with friends or eat delicious food considering many of our activities included a good ol’ Baptist potluck. My parents made the reason behind our involvement in church very clear to me as a child. I knew we were serving not only people but also God. They also made it very clear that we were to be the same people at church as we were at home and vice versa. I knew how to do the right thing no matter who was looking because I knew that was what was expected of me.

When I was seven years old, I remember hearing several of the kids in my class at school talk about how they had gotten saved, and it made me start to think about myself. I thought I was a good kid, and I knew about Jesus, but I had never accepted His gift of salvation for myself. My mom and I would do a mother daughter devotional on some evenings. One night after reading the devotional for the day, my mom led me to the Lord. I do not remember much about the specifics of that evening. What I do remember is praying to the Lord, acknowledging my need for a Savior. I then went to tell my dad and he started to cry. This seemed unusual to me as this is the first time I ever remembered my dad crying so it made me realize just how important what I had done was. My whole life had been surrounded by the gospel, so I did not realize how incredible my salvation really was. From then on, I continued being the good kid always trying to do my best. A few years later my mom became a teacher at the Christian school that my brothers and I attended. Because of this we had to change churches, which made me quite nervous as our dear little church family I had grown up with was all I had ever known. My parents knew this change was difficult, but they encouraged us to remember God’s hand in it all and sought to lead us in this new path God had clearly laid before them.

For the remainder of my elementary years to my junior year in high school, my life seemed relatively easy. I did not face much adversity, and I was coasting through life doing what I knew I was supposed to do. Academics came easily to me, and I realized I did not have to try very hard in that realm in order for people to be proud of me. I fed into this and always tried to get the best grades because I felt it was something I could be better than everyone else at. Aside from this I also prided myself on being the “good kid” as I always had. I was occasionally made fun of with the typical names of “goody two shoes” or “teacher’s pet,” but it was well worth it to me to feel I was gaining the approval of all of the adults in my life. During my junior year I began to deeply struggle with anxiety. I let it take over my life and the anxiousness I felt slowly began to control everything I did in my life. It made going to school and playing sports more difficult than it had ever been, and worst of all, I felt that everyone on the outside could finally see that I struggled too. I am not sure where this notion of pretending like I did not struggle came from, but it was at this point in my life when I was face to face with it that I could not deny its existence. There is a much longer story here that I have written about before but in summary this was the first time in my life where I faced the realization that I am nothing, God is everything, and I cannot do anything in life on my own. I felt God more in this season of my life than I ever had before. It was the hardest thing I had ever faced, but it changed me in incredible ways. My whole outlook on my life and my relationship with my Savior was not the same.

 I finally made it to college, which was something I was terrified of doing. Though I was afraid I trusted that the season of anxiety I had just walked through had prepared me to fully lean into God’s strength to do what I felt was impossible. My college experience has been full of many ups and downs, but God’s faithfulness has been shown so clearly to me. He has opened doors for me to walk through doing things I never thought I could do. I have been given many opportunities that I have hesitated to participate in because I felt like I was incapable, but that is just it. I am incapable of doing anything in my own strength. The strength to take the opportunities I have been given must come from God. At the end of last year, I felt I had learned this pretty well and was starting to get comfortable taking opportunities, foolishly thinking I had arrived to some point of spirituality that I had been striving for.

And now we come to this school year. It has been hard and surprise, surprise… I have not arrived. The Lord has shown me over and over that my relationship with Him must be established on my own outside of just falling under the umbrella of just believing what my parents believe. As my mom’s blog is titled “My Race to Win” I have come to realize I have my own race to win. Not my mom’ s race, not my dad’s race, but mine all on my own. No, I cannot abandon all I have learned in my twenty years of learning from my parents and other influential leaders in my life. What I realized now is that is all training for me to be equipped to run my own race. They have lived their lives as an example to me so that I can have a great head start. What I have also come to realize is the importance of the gospel in my own live. As I mentioned before the gospel has surrounded my life since before I existed. I realize now that this is truly a blessing from God, but for so long I did not stand in the wonder that it truly is. God created me knowing who I would be in all of my sin. He sent His Son to die for me knowing I would reject Him. Jesus rose again to defeat death in order to live with me forever. God loves me unconditionally and continues to have a personal relationship with me even though I continually fail to love Him. What God does for me makes no sense at all, yet there it is for me to partake in freely. It only takes a second for me to be amazed at the goodness of God and the truth of the gospel when I stop to think about it. These thoughts have challenged me to live out the gospel. The love of God is unfathomable. If I truly love Him, why would I not want to share what He has done for me? I am not perfect, and I have been faced with that fact many times over my life, but I know a God Who is. God has given me so much, and I have come to realize the least I can do is spend my life serving Him and living for His glory. I am challenged to find new ways to show Christ's love to others and live out my love for Him. If you find yourself questioning God’s love, just take a moment to look at the life He has enabled you to live. Life is not easy, and He does not promise us it will be, but God is faithful. God knows you, and He loves you anyway. He is the answer. All we have to do is run to Him.